M17X Battery not charging - R2 owners, *test BIOS* available

Applying the x33 BIOS followed by the x34 patch helped my situation tremendously. It was happening several times per week. It happened once or twice shortly after applying these updates, but we are approaching 2 months without a single occurrence of the "plugged in, not charging" error.

lancorp, what you described here is typical, but the "CHARGED" status seems to be a little different. Maybe that is because you are using BatteryBar instead of the system applet giving a different status message. BatteryBar may be able to provide a bit more robust verbiage in status reporting. Maybe that is meaningful to some extent, but dropping the battery down and re-engaging it frequently cleared the problem without doing the forced power discharge routine for many R2 owners.

 

Hi guys. I have the same problem with my battery not charging. I recently purchased a Alienware M17x R2 and from the day it arrived the battery showed "plugged in, not charging". It came with a pre-installed windows 7 and i re-installed another copy of windows 7, but the message remains the same.
I found this topic and tried the following:
unplug the ac adapter, remove battery and hold the power button several times (all options i found here and on other links you guys posted, i hold it for 10, 15 and 30 seconds) no luck.
Now it`s under 20% (6%) and still not charging.
I don`t know how to apply the x33 BIOS followed by the x34 patch, i believe it says it`s not compatible with the windows i`m running. I have a 64 bit copy.

Please help as i am not that good at computers and i need some help please.

Thank you

 

Per Alienware Support, the correct process would be:

- turn off your laptop
- unplug the AC adapter and remove the battery
- hold down the power button continuously (not several times) for 2 minutes
- plug in the AC adapter and turn on your computer
- after logging into Windows, insert the battery
- remove and reinsert the battery again

The BIOS updates are not specific to your operating system and compatibility is not an issue. Download and unzip the x33 package. The x33 BIOS can be installed within Windows using the Winphlash64.exe utility or launching the W851X33.EXE file. The x34 patch has to be installed in DOS mode using a bootable CD or bootable USB thumb drive. Be sure to apply x33 before attempting to apply x34, and be sure you are running on AC power rather than battery power before attempting either update.

You can download the files here if you are a member of this forum and the Alienware Club on the Dell Community Forum.

You will find an x35 file posted there. You do not need to apply that. It's a utility (not a BIOS update) that creates data that you submit to Alienware for research if applying the x33 followed by the x34 does not cure the problem for you.

If you still get stuck with this information, post again and I or someone else can provide more detailed instructions for you.

 

there is this trick that i used for my M15x when it had that problem.

while the laptop is on and plugged in. take out the battery then wait like 1 minute then snap it back in. just be careful not to unplug it when the battery is out. not sure if this works for the M17x but worth giving a try.

 

In case anyone is interested, looks like there is an A10 BIOS that was made available today.

Release notes state:

BIOS Release Notes
:================================================================
: BIOS File name : W851A10.ROM
: File size : 4,509,942 bytes
: BIOS Version : A10
: EC Version : 15.34
: CheckSum : 2CB7 A8B3
: Release Date : 01/17/2011
:================================================================
BIOS:
None.(Just change the revision)

EC:
1. Modify EC code to get PSID delay 1 second.
2. Modify the bad battery stop charge reason ID code for debug.

It can be found on the Dell ftp site here.

 

Thanks lancorp

I just flashed it.... lets see how it does.

D.

 

OK, i tried the above too, didn`t worked, i flashed the update posted yesterday by lancorp, tried the inap method too, nothing worked.
I did installed the x33 update, downloaded the x34 update too but i don`t know how to make it bootable from CD (or DVD?) and how to boot it from DOS? I am sorry if i seem stupid but i never had these problems before and now that i bought this M17xr2 i have a lot of problems. Not to mention that the Command center button doesn`t work, the FN+F2 same, it does nothing, so i`m upset right now because i see that a lot of people had this problems and most of them fixed them in a way or another.

 

A10 should fix it flashed today seems ok so far

 

As posted, lets move this discussion now to the A10 thread since its now available. Nice work Chris and AW - thanks for the continued support!


http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/549213-m17xr2-bios-a10-discussion-thread.html