Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to the communications field and disclose a read-only memory (ROM) flashing method and an intelligent terminal, so as to implement lossless ROM flashing on an original system of the intelligent terminal. A solution provided by the embodiments of the present disclosure includes: the intelligent terminal includes a virtual extended system and an original system, the original system runs a factory system file of the intelligent terminal, and the virtual extended system runs a ROM flashing system file; when a ROM flashing instruction entered by a user is received, the ROM flashing system file is written into a storage image file of the virtual extended system; and the virtual extended system is started to run the ROM flashing system file. The present disclosure is used to perform ROM flashing on an intelligent terminal.