BIOS A04 for M17xR1 now available from Dell

I'll be derned. There it is. Thanks to both of you. One final Q. Can I overclock this CPU? I ask bc when I went into the BIOS to look, I can't change anything.

 

Yep, or a direct link:
Drivers and Downloads

 

What are the chances that they'll replace it with a R2 motherboard?

 

0% chance

 

Booo. I don't know if I'll bother calling in or not, it only shoots the message up when I boot it up unplugged, but it's a huge pain to have to go in the bios and change it every time.

 

I've never heard of that occurring. They'd have to send a processor along with it, plus I have the 280Ms and I'm not sure the 280Ms were even offered/supported on the R2.

 

Item #2 probably fixes the annoying bug whereby sometimes cold booting the M17x would and squak about how you are not plugged in - even though you are.

 

That bug is still there

 

Hate to be the bearer of bad news here....but looks like you just got scammed. It would appear that you simply got a machine with the 1440x900 screen.

You should see this as the monitor model for the WUXGA:
R610K€170CT

You should be able to read this from PCWizard, HWInfo32, or Everest

 

Good call on HWInfo.

 

Uhh.. you should be getting what you paid for. Those screens aren't cheap. Extreme processors are even more expensive. I'd also start a new thread. This discussion isn't related to the A04 BIOS.

 

Well after running for a few days with no issues, My BIOS is now reporting a 193 watt adaptor, and the CPU speed has dropped, along with no charge for the battery.

Going to revert to A03 I guess

 

OK. Point taken. Thanks for the help though.
As far as the BIOS goes, tried to flash AO3 and it went through the process, rebooted and still have the AO2. Think I will just leave it be till I get a correct power adapter.

 

Anyone heard any news from Dell or Alienware about the BIOS issue? Any new news or updates?

 

I read here or elsewhere that they were working on A05 and it would be out sometime in the next few weeks. Unless I hear it from Chris, Bill or a Dell resolution expert, I'll take what a rep says with a grain of salt. The engineers already missed the deadline to get back to my rep regarding the stuttering issue.

 

glad i got in before they fixed or if they fixed stuttering! i expect they will work hard to get it fixed soon so no more replacements =)

 

"Soon" is kind of funny. The only way they could possibly do that would be to update the BIOS and offer the 5870s on the R1. That's the only possible solution I can think of that would get the wattage low enough in the R1 to prevent this, as even the 4870s experience the problem. That will still take time. I don't see a 350-400W power adapter coming from them anytime soon.

 

!!!!!!!!!!!

I just installed the new AO4 BIOS and now my laptop is all @#$* up !!!

Whenever I boot I get blue screen flash and then I it says I have to insert my Windows 7 disc and repair the laptop.........I tried it and just got the same thing!!

Should I reinstall the OS... ( Just reinstalled it last night!!! AGHHHH!!!!!!!!)


Thanks,

Darthmaniac

 

Hmm.. that's a first. Since you just reinstalled I guess you could try that. I don't see how a BIOS update would cause that, though.

 

It gets even weirder.... prior to the BIOS upgrade I was running on RAID 1 and now on the BIOS it shows the SATA options on AHCI !!!

Just hate it!!!

I even lost Alienrespawn!!!

 

Any way to get Alienrespawn back, if not I'm gonna kill DELL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

ok change raid set up to raid, and in the config box below turn both hard drivers on! on my machine witha bios update, i had to turn on raid and turn on both, else it wont boot, should fix ur problem

 

Ugh. Need to read the update notes before installing. It was also mentioned in the first post. When you do a BIOS update, your BIOS settings are lost, and the default SATA operation in BIOS is not RAID. If you're running RAID you need to set it back as such, and make sure the appropriate SATA ports are turned on.

EDIT: Beat me to it, adrian.

 

gief us both rep for that tbh ;p

 

I tried that and once again got the boot manager error..... Guess I'll just have to spend another 100000000000000000 hours re installing windows and all the drivers and all my games and all my apps.... THIS SUCKS!!!!

Any way to get Alienrespawn back!!!

DAMN DELL ( ok maybe it was a bit of my fault too!!!)

 

well how could it b ur fault? u just click it to install bios update lol

 

So is there any way to get back Alienrespawn ???

Would also really appreciate it if I could get back all those Alienware account pictures......


Thanks,

Darthmaniac

 

Maybe a wild guess, but by any chance, did you check the raid tool setup (hit F10 at boot time). In my case, after a previous BIOS update, it started from the first RAID partition, whereas my computer came configured with the boot partition being the second one. Hope you don't need to go through the hassle of reinstalling.

 

The AW background/pictures are in a folder in the Windows directory. If you've already formatted, they're lost unless you backed that directory up.

 

I remember seeing some NBR member had a link to some alienware wallpapers and account picture in his/her signature.... anyone remember???

And yes I did what you said Belian... but alas! to no avail!!!!

 

It's sleey0.
http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=52...ef065d6.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public

And this is the screensaver.
alienware_setup.exe

 

Thanks Thatoe, REP UP!!!!

So there is no possible way to get back ALIENRESPAWN????

 

I flashed to A04 and now i keep getting those adapter warnings. How do i revert back to A03?

 

Drivers and Downloads

 

Thanks , Elkay! I couldn't find the A03 driver because Dell shows only the latest drivers available. :|

 

I was also experiencing the intermittent power supply "incompatible" warning with A04. I also had weird occasional boot issues where my M17x would hang after the Windows 7 boot screen with crazy HD activity. One time it even reverted all of the custom display personalizations back to factory when it did this. The rig would run off of the battery until I unplugged the power supply from the laptop, then reconnected.

Reverted back to A03, all issues gone.

 

Np. There's usually a link on the Dell driver pages for "previous versions".

 

Strange. I have run A04 for over a week now, and my M17x R1 is running fine! I have unplugged the power and run it on battery and plugged it back in again no problems here! I flashed from A01 to A02-A03 and to A04 on the same day.

 

mine ran fine for 2 weeks on A04, then it started giving me the errors

So back to A03

 

Not sure if its my eyes playing tricks on me but it seems that Dell has re-released the A04 Bios. The release date has changed to 04/06/10. Not sure if the ac adapter issues or other problems have been fixed or not.

Guess theres only one way to find out.

 

That's always been the date as far as I know..

 

That is actually yesterdays date. Dell has released a new A04. The bios file size is a couple megs smaller too from 8 somefing meg to 6 somefing now. The previous release date was mid May sometime.

 

I'm going to give it a go soon and see whats what.

 

Ah bugger what happend to the easy winflash or whatever it was. I have to make a boot bios cd for this one now.

 

The only good about this new BIOS is that it keeps the settings and it doesn't revert back to the defaults after flashing.

 

Hey theres Stamatisx,

Have you tried the new one ey? 04/06/10?

Any ac adapter problems anymore?
Cheers.

I need to find a blank disk first lol.

 

Yeah an engineer sent me the new BIOS via email but I couldn't or can say more because of the NDA. Yeah for me there is still the AC adapter warning and they dispatched a new one that I should receive on monday.

 

Downloads

 

Ohs the problems still are there ey. Bugger.