Warning to those thinking of upgrading bios to A09

Don't. A09 has some kind of bug in it that is killing the Nvidia 650 GT card on M14x r2...at least for those of us who flashed at home. It's weird, if it comes off the assembly line with it, it seems to be ok, but if you flash at home, you will brick your NVidia card. I called in today and tech support is shipping me a new m14x r2 and they want my old one back so they can look at the bios and try to figure out what is going wrong. This is not just me it's many people who own a r2 and decide to update. So for now, just wait until they figure something out, and if you do install it, you will have to be shipped a new one or a new motherboard as there is no way to revert to an older bios because of the secure bios feature. You will be stuck with a broken lappy. Installing new, older, modded, or special drivers of any kind will not fix it, nor will installing, reinstalled, upgrading to or from Win 8 to 7 or vice versa. You've been warned. Also this may be happening to other models besides the m14x as well.. I would probably hold off any bios upgrades on this family until we hear more from Dell/AW.

here's a link to the dell forum discussion on this issue too.
http://en.community.dell.com/owners-club/alienware/f/3746/t/19473652.aspx?PageIndex=1

 

I flashed a little while ago, but since I never use my m14x for gaming, i guess I have not noticed.

I will have to try tonight to see if mine is botched too.


EDIT, I think the x51 had some bios issues with the newest version (for win8) So I have been holding on that one.

 

I saw someone mention this a few weeks ago, so I did not flash my system. Shipped with A08 and I'm not going to upgrade to win8 so...

 

I normally NEVER do Bios updates. I've been a MCT and Microsoft Engineer for nearly 17 years now and one of the first things I tell my new students is don't mess with the bios unless you know you will benefit significantly from the upgrade...I should have taken my own advice. I imaged my SSD and storage drive with Reflect and installed server 08 r2 so I could set up hyper V for a class I have next week and not have to take a full size server onsite with me to do demos...when I went to the dell website to grab drivers for 07(server 08) I noticed there was a bios update and my inner stupid said "oooh get that" and well...the rest is history. At least Hyper v works ok with the Intel video card..so my overall plan will be ok until my replacement gets here, but it puts a kink in my Diablo 3 and skyrim plans for a while.

 

When did you start to experience problems? Was it as soon as you flashed the new Bios?

I have been running A09 for about a week now with no problems, updated it myself at home. Aside from turning on turbo boost and setting my system to RAID, I have not experienced any problems with A09.

Also, why is the A09 update still available through the Dell website?

 

I just checked my system last night, fired up bf3, then alt tabed out to the device mananger. Seems with a09 my 650m is still running just fine.

 

As far as when it happened, the result was immediate. On reboot my Nvidia card now shows as disabled error 43 in the Device Manager, and no manner of driver reinstall of OS setup will bring it back.. It appears to be a 50/50 issue as far as frequency. Some folks are able to flash ok, and others like me are bricked the second it happens. There has to be some sublte difference between these systems if that's the case, maybe slightly different chipset, different vendor of a specific MB resource, etc...who knows, but if you are like me and quite a few others, you will lose your Nvidia card after the update. That's probably why they haven't taken it down from dell, half their customers are ok with it. As long as Dell doesn't mind doing exchanges and losing money on tech calls I guess they will leave it up.

 

@Trith, ejohnson and alienowl

I wonder, when did you guys buy your systems?

 

7/16/2012 is when my system came in.

 

I didn't have any issues either when I went to A09 a couple weeks ago.

 

No issues with mine as well after updating to A09 BIOS. I got my M14x R2 around May 2012.

 

Mine was 5/23/12. Went to A09 Monday and lost my Nvidia immediately. I have the 1GB model video card MB..what do you guys have?

 

I have the 1gb card too.

i5, 1gb 650m, bluray, killer 1202, 8gb ram.

 

I wonder could it be because of unlocked bios or modified vbios. I wonder if this could be the problem. My system came with A08 and I haven't flashed yet, don't want to risk it.

Maybe some of you skipped A08 and that messed things up or maybe flash from A08 to A09 goes wrong...

but yeah it's pure speculation here at my end, so...

 

I skipped a08 and went from a06 to a09.

I skipped 8 mainly because 9 came out the day after 8 did

 

I got my m14x in late June 2012. It came with the A03 Bios and I updated to the A04 and then to the A09, skipped A08 as ejohnson said. I have the 2gb card, no modified or unlocked anything.

 

Oddly, my m14 just went from slightly broke to completely gone now. It stopped even powering on. Not sure if its conincidence or related to the other problem. Oh well at least i have a replacement on the way and my old m11 to keep me occupied.

 

At least we are taking care of the issue for you. It might be just an isolated issue and that is why they asked you for the PC. I gotta thank you for doing that and understanding it. And thanks also to all the users stating that their machine is fine. Let's leave it to engineering.

 

How do you check what BIOS version you are at? I upgraded mine recently without an issue. I think it may be at A09

 

Thanks. You guys have been great with the support I have no complaints at all there. Once I told the tech the deal he knew right what to do and had me set up for an exchange within 10 minutes of being on the phone. Always have liked Alienware support.

 

Open your start menu and type msinfo32. When you hit enter it will load your system info, look for the bios version on the first page.

 

Thanks!

My BIOS is at A09.

 

Purchased mine in April, Came with bios A01. Updated to A09 with no issues. I have the GT650 2 gig.

 

ok, so it doesnt matter what card to you. Must just be a random event.

 

Yeah that's what it seems to be, especially since mine now is totally dead and won't even power on...maybe some kind of manufacturing defect in some of the boards or something that triggers when the bios update occurs..who knows.

 

Hi ... Does anyone know how to unlock BIOS vA09 ?