Help with M17XR2 BSOD reboot cycle

I need some help narrowing down the cause of a BSOD reboot cycle my machine has been getting stuck in. My M17XR2 will lockup or BSOD when i switch it from battery power to AC adapter while the machine is turned on. It will then no longer be able to boot into windows, BSOD will occur during boot between black windows loading screen and blue windows loading screen. If i attempt to boot on battery the system it will get all the way to the login screen before BSOD. I can correct the BSOD reboot cycle by booting into repair mode and using system restore to go to my last restore point. The only changes recently made to my system were upgrading to the BIOS to A10 and dell replaced my video cards with 5870's. I tried rolling back the BIOS to A09 and reformatted and reinstalled windows and the problem remains. I am currently thinking that one of my new 5870's is causing the BSOD, my thought is that one of them is not responding properly to the command to switch from the Battery Powermizer profile to Plugged in profile and the system is BSOD. I wanted to know if what i am saying is possible and makes sense, i am planning to try and turn off powermizer when i get home from work today and wanted to also know if anyone else has any troubleshooting steps i can try.

 

You'll probably find that your new video cards came with the original A00 VBIOS, and this causes issues with the newer video drivers.

You can follow these steps to get your system working again. Make sure to have your AC adapter plugged in at all times, and do not remove it until you have completed all of the steps. Note: You'll need either a blank CD/DVD or USB flash drive.

• Boot your computer into Safe Mode by spamming the F8 key just before your get the Windows boot screen.
• Once you've booted into Safe Mode, bring up the Device Manager by clicking on the start menu then typing "devmgmt.msc" (no quotes) and hitting enter.
• Look under Display Adapters and uninstall any graphics cards you find.
• Reboot. You should now be able to boot into Windows without any BSODs.
• Download the A01 video BIOS and A01 drivers from Dell.
• Install the graphics driver from Dell. Reboot if required.
• Run the VBIOS updater. This will use the CD/DVD/flash drive to create a bootable disc/drive that is used to perform the actual update.
• When the update disc/drive is created, make sure it is inserted then reboot your computer.
• At the alien head screen at the very start of boot, hit F12 to bring up a boot menu. Select the appropriate boot device (CD/DVD drive or USB), and let the system boot off the disc/drive you created. This should automatically perform the update.
• When you are told that the update is finished, you can reboot (using Ctrl+Alt+Del) and boot back into windows.
• All of your troubles should be gone.

There's a big thread with more information about this process. Have a look there if you have any questions.

 

Looks like i was missing the latest VBIOS. I was stupid and made the assumption that if Dell just installed these cards in my system they would have come with the latest VBIOS. Since I have run the update i haven't had any issues switching between AC Adapter and Battery. I'm still keeping an eye on it to make sure it was not Win7 SP1 (just upgraded to again last night), but so far so good.