Utility Downloads - BIOS Central

Many files here are outdated and are kept here for historical purposes. Use at your own risk!

Got a tool or know of one? Let us know by posting it in the forums.

Below are some utilities that I have used to diagnose, troubleshoot, test, benchmark and obtain general information about a system. Please feel free to download and use these programs and support the developers in making them. The programs come "as is" and I offer no warranty for them, there use, or the end results from them. Read the documentation that comes with them before using them! Some of these programs are designed to erase data. It is your responsibility to to ensure that your data is backed up before using these tools. Again, use these tools only at your own risk.

These tools and utilities are targeted towards the diagnostic/troubleshooting environment. None of these tools are designed for enhancing the performance of a system's hardware. There are plenty of hardware sites out there that are more tailored towards that.

Freeware/Shareware Tools and Utilities for DOS/Win9x and NT/2000:

BIOS Specific Tools and Utilities:

BIOS 1.35.1 - What it does: - Saving and restoring the BIOS settings - Validating actual settings to saved settings - Deleting the BIOS settings (there are some strange cases...) - Displaying information about the BIOS, BIOS Extensions and BIOS beepcodes - Finding BIOS passwords for Award, Ami, Phoenix and AST BIOS - Finding BIOS universal passwords for Award BIOS - Dumping the whole BIOS segment to disk - Switching the 1st and 2nd level caches on/off - Turning the PC into Standby or Suspend mode (requires APM 1.1+) - Turning off the PC (requires APM 1.2+) - Rebooting the PC (cold/warm/int19) - Returning DOSERROR codes for batch processing.
(missing) WinBIOS 1.2 - What it does: - Displaying information about the BIOS, BIOS Extensions and BIOS beepcodes - Finding BIOS passwords for Award, Ami and Phoenix BIOS - Finding BIOS universal passwords for Award BIOS.
Port80 - What is does: This project decodes the port 80 diagnostic port common to nearly all PCs and displays the last component tested, in English, should the computer hang on power up self test (POST). This information can be used by technicians to diagnose and repair a faulty motherboard. As is, this project allows you to select one of four BIOS's from the data burned into an EPROM. A Visual Basic 6 Program, Port80.exe is provided to allow you to create an EPROM image for the 27512 based on what the four available POST code definition sets you want from a list of 74 supported BIOS's. In addition this program allows you to use your own Bios definitions that you can create using any text editor.
Ivecs 1.0 - What it does: - Displays the interrupt vectors - Differentiates addresses in memory and bios ROM by colors.
(missing) CMOSPassword 4.1- What it does: Works with the following BIOSes - ACER/IBM BIOS - AMI BIOS - AMI WinBIOS 2.5 - Award 4.5x/4.60 - Compaq (1992) - Compaq (New version) - IBM (PS/2, Activa, Thinkpad) - Packard Bell - Phoenix 1.00.09.AC0 (1994), a486 1.03, 1.04, 1.10 A03 - Phoenix 4 release 6 (User) - Gateway Solo - Phoenix 4.0 release 6 - Toshiba - Zenith AMI.
Unicore BIOS Wizard - What is does: A quick and useful utility for discovering details about your systems BIOS from within Windows.
BIOSMD - What is does: Another nice utility for discovery of various aspects about a BIOS from within Windows. Very nice and fast.
UniFlash - What it does: UniFlash (Universal Flasher) is program created by Pascal Van Leeuwen and Galkowski Adam. It was abandoned in 1998 (v1.17b). It was almost dead project, but it LIVES AGAIN NOW! UniFlash supports a wide range of chipsets and Flash ROMs (read uniflash.doc for a list, it's also included in the ZIP package). Rainbow Software. (link removed- site is dead now)
BIOS Mod V1 - What it does: This utility was created to help solve the problem of the WinXP, 2000 or NT owner with a NTFS partition not being able to mod their bios's under the OS conditions. I have found out recently that WinXP and Modbin do not get along even under FAT32 and the command prompt so this will help in that situation too.

Hardware Tools and Utilities:

(Currently missing) PTS - What is does: PTS DiskEditor is a program you can use to view and edit the raw contents of your hard drives in various situations. For example, to restore useful information from damaged logical drives.
(currently missing) Sector 1.0 - What it does: - Viewing the contents of disks and harddrives - Offsets in hex and decimal - Choosing the sector per C/H/S.
#1-TuffTEST-Lite v1.52E Favorite What is does: #1-TuffTEST-Lite, with its own boot-loader and operating system, is a highly specialized diagnostic software "tool" that provides superior "hardware" testing because the target system's native operating system is never used or called into memory. Thus, #1-TuffTEST-Lite can directly test major system components such as memory, fixed disk drives, diskette drives, serial & parallel ports, video, keyboard, etc. False positives and false negatives that can be induced by the system's native operating system are eliminated. However, since the PC's native operating system is not available to #1-TuffTEST-Lite, it cannot use the operating system's functions or interact with the various devices that, due to their proprietary design, are not supported by the PC's BIOS. Examples include pointing devices, CD-ROM drives, sound cards, network cards, etc. These devices require the availability of their own special native operating system-based software drivers and only a utility that runs under the system's native operating system can see and interact with these drivers. Since numerous operating system-based diagnostic utilities have always been available to see, exercise and resolve conflicts with these devices, #1-TuffTEST-Lite has remained specialized in doing what it does best - directly and rigorously test the PC's basic hardware.
(Down currently)TestDisk 2.2 - What it does: Tool to check and undelete partition Works with the following partitions: - FAT12 FAT16 FAT32 - Linux - Linux SWAP (version 1 and 2) - NTFS (Windows NT) - BeFS (BeOS) - UFS (BSD) - Netware.
(currently missing) DiskEdit 3.0 - What it does: DiskEditor is a full function disk editor that supports (A) graphics or non-graphics printing of all data displayed onto the screen (B) a DOS shell (C) Directory: displaying, viewing, and editing, (D) On-Line Help, and (E) Mouse support. Pressing the F1 function key or pressing both mouse buttons (at the same time) will pop-up the main help screen. I hereby pro- claim, being of unsound mind and body, this program a freebie. Enjoy!

System Tools and Utilities:

(missing) Advanced Hex Editor (A.X.E) 3.0- What is does: The Advanced Hex Editor (AXE) is a powerful hex editor for Microsoft Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP.