I’ve got a pretty new Dell OptiPlex 7080 Micro SFF PC here at the house. Today, I went through the first BIOS upgrade since I first obtained that machine. When I opine that a Dell BIOS update covers many sins, I mean there was a lot more going on and involved than I expected. The so-called BIOS update was, in fact, 5 updates rolled into one update package. I used the Dell Command | Update utility to handle this, and am climbing its learning curve as well.

How I Learned That Dell BIOS Update Covers Many Sins

At first, because the utility also found a couple of other items to update, I couldn’t get the Command | Update utility to work. Then it dawned on me: perhaps the BIOS update needs to be run by itself? Indeed, that proved to be the ticket to eventual success. It also showed me 5 separate items being updated as the so-called “BIOS Update” was applied:

1. BIOS
2. USB-C firmware
3. Intel Management Engine (IME) firmware
4. Primary BIOS EC (Embedded Controller) update
5. Backup BIOS EC update

Thus, where I’d been thinking this was a straight-up, in-and-out BIOS update, it was actually a whole bunch of chained updates that included other device controllers, IME, and embedded controllers. Not having a lot of experience in dealing with such updates from Dell lately, this came as a surprise.

All’s Well That Ends That Way

But once I put my thinking cap on, it became obvious that BIOS updates — which invariably require a restart to be applied, and another to take effect — are best handled separately from other updates. That seems to reflect recent experience with Lenovo updates too, now that I think upon the subject.

In fact, I wrote about a similar situation on March 24 in a post entitled Lenovo Vantage Updates Take Patience. Maybe I should try that thinking cap more often: it seems to work reasonably well!

In installing the Kioxia (Toshiba) M.2 SSD late last week, I was reminded of something interesting. Hence this article title: new device may require second reboot. In my rush to set up and learn more about the drive, I was initially surprised to find it absent when I first ran Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) to get that process going. Then it hit me: maybe it’s not showing up in UEFI.

But to access UEFI, another reboot was required. And by the time i did that, sure enough the device appeared in the list of drives present in the 7080. However, I had to reboot a second time to see the UEFi/BIOS settings and that produced the results I was after.

Why New Device May Require Second Reboot

Sure enough, when I rebooted a third time to get into Windows, the drive appeared in the Disk Management utility. I was able to choose GPT disk layout, and to format the drive as a single contiguous volume named Tosh1TB. It shows up as “Disk 1” in the lead-in graphic for this story, in fact.

What sometimes makes a second boot necessary is the way that UEFI/BIOS supports device enumeration. On many laptops, certain changes to the hardware — especially RAM changes — automatically trigger a trip into the BIOS interface upon the next reboot. This gives admins a chance to make and review config changes before booting back into the OS.

Adding the Kioxia (Toshiba) 1 TB SSD didn’t trigger the UEFI on its own. But when I rebooted and forced a trip into that environment, the Toshiba device (identified as such in BIOS, not as Kioxia) appeared along with the primary SSD. The second trip was enough to see the device recognized in BIOS/UEFI. In turn this made it accessible to Windows when I returned to that environment. That’s how I was able to choose GPT layout, format the drive, and give it the name that appears in the screenshot above. Case closed!

Don’t Panic: Boot Again

If you find yourself in similar straits sometime, try another reboot (or two, actually). That will probably get the device recognized and make it available to Windows. Only if this fails should further troubleshooting be needed.  In that case, I’d start looking into possible SATA lane conflicts next.

At the end of last year, the Adobe Flash Player hit end of life (EOL). Yet today, when I ran the excellent free Patch My PC Updater on one of my test machines, I noted that Adobe Air was still present, plus Shockwave. too. My thought was; “Time to say so long Adobe add-ons Shockwave & Air!” Upon checking into both, my presumption proved valid. When I checked for Adobe elements on my 2012 Vintage X220 Tablet, I found serveral related elements, all of which I’m removing post-haste (see lead-in graphic).

Why say: “So long Adobe Add-ons Shockwave & Air?”

Both Shockwave and Air are at End-of-Life, at least as far as Adobe is concerned. HARMAN International has taken over Adobe Air support. But I hardly ever use this, so I’ve decided to uninstall on PCs where it’s still present. Not surprisingly it’s absent on all of my PCs acquired in 2018 or later, including 2xLenovo X1 Yoga 380, X1 Yoga 390, and X1 Extreme, among others. The free version of Revo Uninstaller is more than equal to this task. That’s why I used it to generate the lead-in screencap for this story, and to remove Air and Shockwave from machines where they’re still hanging ’round.

For the record, uninstalling Air left 2 registry keys and one value behind, as well as 3 files. Revo happily cleaned those up. Shockwave left 1 key with 13 values and no files behind, and took care of two entries (the one I selected, plus another) on its own.

More Info on Air & Shockwave

Read more about the future and status of these Adobe components online. Check out “The future of Adobe AIR” (5/30/2019) and “End of life/…Shockwave Player” (April 9, 2019). Going, going gone, and (hopefully) soon forgotten. Don’t need ’em or want ’em anymore. Sayonara!