M17x R1 System BIOS A05

It's the same for me.
With A05 bios for me the most stable driver are 260.xx but still some times the pc freeze (once a red screen and once a boue screen, not the windows blue screen) and i have to do a hard re-boot.

Now I will go back to bios A03 and check if the problem il the bios version

Bye!

 

i've had mine since A02. I've done every Bios update that dell has posted, as soon as they posted them. the only bios that had any issues w/ me is A04, which i had the a/c adapter wattage issue. when i updated to A05 it went away.

 

I can echo Necrotopsy - exact same Bio rev sequence & results. The issue I had (and actually still do) is that the Video driver problem. The office release of 257.38 crashed my system (had to hard power down) as did Beta P07. I continue to use Beta P06 (R273147) with Bios A05 and it has been stable since mid August

 

Wow.. So it is not just me. ut when dealing with Support they insist that A05 is the best BIOS and is not causing my issues.

I have the GTX 260's in SLI, and I am at wits end. I started getting blue screens and red screens and blank(black) screens, after they made me update BIOS to A05, then reinstall win 7, then reinstall drivers in correct order. Then turn off all power saving features, Then do a power drain, then do a chkdsk, and now I have to do a mem test on the individual memory sticks. Take one out, then run the test, then put one back in, take out other, ect..

But with everyone here having the same issue, this doesn't sound like a hardware issue at all.

Thanks for the heads-up. Sounds like this is Dell's delaying tactics so that I will wait until A06 and then get that bios. <sigh>

 

I've been running A05 + P06 video driver since the A05 release w/o problems since last night when the "plugged in, no charging" message came back to haunt me What I've done different I think is that I started it on battery power.

 

Is there any other way to install A05 than CD?

It won't install for me via CD, it hangs at the backing up old BIOS step every time. We just bought two brand new M17x's that came with A04 (which I've learned causes the power supply recognition problems) and we can't install A05 on either one. Hangs at the same place on both.

 

can you not just get the .rom off the cd and use the winflash that all the other releases used?!

 

I read about winphlash on several sites and explored that idea but there's no .ROM file on the CD I can see nor even any .EXE file. I'm not sure how the CD actually boots, I assume it's from some hidden filesystem. I can see that there is like 5MB written to the CD but it's not visible somehow.

 

When you download the ISO, can you open it with winrar or magiciso to see the contents?

 

I did with magiciso. No iso or exe

 

the bios file is a .rom not a .iso or an .exe

 

I mistyped, I meant no rom or exe in the iso or on the cd made by the iso.

 

Since I did up yesterday to A05 it hangs with black screen (never seen this one before). So annoying. Going back

 

After fixing my video driver issues (system has run fine for the last two days after using cc cleaner to remove my drivers, clean the registry and then installing the latest and greatest for my 260m's) I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my bios from A01 to A05 in the hopes this would resolve the odd noise issue I had been getting.

Upgrade went without a hitch.

However, the system now occasionaly boots to a black screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. This is following the post and RAID initilization and rebooting the system a second time seems to resolve it.

Has anyone else had this issue after going to A05?

 

I noticed that when I had A05 on my R1, My keyboard would randomly do this thing where when I turned it on, and it came time to input my password, everything was perfectly fine. Once it loaded the profile and whatever startup items it needs to load came up, the keyboard was horrifically slow at taking any input. I could press the "a" key about 5 times and it would accept 2 as being typed. It seemed to only happen when I had my mouse and/or ext hdd plugged into the vertical usb ports on the left side when I turn the computer on or login.

I reverted back to A03 and have not had a single problem with this again since. Anyone else experience an issue like that?

 

My answer to Narkoleptik - I have not had the problem you described. Now the Main reason I'm posting: It appears that I may finally have a Video driver & Bios A05 that play nice together besides using the Beta P 06 (P07 & 258.96 both had frequent Black Screens).

I've now been running a few days with Nvidia 260.99 (downloaded directly from Nvidia site). It's a WHQL driver that has been very solid.

Just thoought I'd pass this along as who knows how long Dell will take to release it.

 

So far mine has been good with the 260.99 as well

 

I have a question, can i update my bios from ao2 to ao5 without burning a disk out because i have no disk here with me right now. Any ideas how to do it

 

You could try burning the bios .iso to a memory stick, cannot guarantee it will work. Since it's a pretty important update, I'm guessing you could take your time and buy a blank cd.

 

heard the m stick should be less than 2G, but not sure
I burned a CD and got it done

 

Should i upgrade the bios first or reinstall the window then do it

 

no real need to do a OS reinstall for a BIOS update

 

Listen to Dave-p ... not necessary ngthien. Flash the BIOS and you are done.

NOTE: If your system is configured with a RAID array, after flashing the BIOS, immediately go in and change back to RAID - the BIOS will default and you will BSOD. If not running a RAID array, no worries.

 

Just to clarify, if the OS was installed in IDE mode and you try to start it in AHCI mode you may also get a crash, unless you manually installed the AHCI drivers first and enabled AHCI support in Windows.
So make sure you had these BIOS settings set the same way they have been set when you installed the OS (or rather, when the system was running flawlessly) and there should be no problems.
Note that it usually won't damage anything if a crash happens due to wrong RAID/IDE/AHCI settings in the BIOS, simply go back into the BIOS and set the proper setting for your system and you should be fine.

 

well it pretty much happens everytime I run the battery to less than 45% (or so) the next time I use the ac adaptor and power up, it says plugged in not charging, and have to do a reset to get it working again.

Hope they have a A06 comming out

 

Looks like they've now pulled A05 as only A03 is showing on the site and RSS feed. Wonder if it means a newer one is about to appear?

 

Would be awesome if they finally listened to the list of requested features....guess we shall see!

 

I hope. A05 was just unusable.
Someone should get spanked for that!

 

I still just use A03.....A02 for benching

 

And now A05 is back again :-(

Oh well.....

 

Do we need a volunteer?

 

A05 vanishing was most likely a glitch - if in fact it vanished site wide. I see it and it still has the same date - I wouldn't worry about it.

 

Would I use BIOS A03 or A05 ? Please help me

 

A03 for me, A05 would had my M17x hang in 15minutes the latest :O

But since you can apply A03 back try A05 first.

 

I know you hate off topic - but the Christmas themed avatar is riotous!

Sandy

 

where`s our A06?

 

In the vaporware section of the dell software store.....

 

[ I have a Alienware Area-51 M17x R1 with A03 BIOS, when i try to do the A05 Bios Update appears the message:

PHOENIXPHLASH16 ERROR

COULD NOT FIND BCP DMI BLOCK IN BIOS ROM FILE IMAGE

Anybody can help me ?

Thank's

 

what is the flashing method that you use?

 

Boot from CD with .ISO Image, why ? There's other way ?

 

Did you burn the .iso as it was or did you oppened(extracted) it? are you sure you have the right bios for your system?

 

The only method that work's was burnig just the .iso file, without extract. I use the file from dell's website.

 

So you actually have the m17x R1 not the area-51 m17x? please be clear.
If it's the area 51 m17x drivers are not supported by Dell.
if you have the m17x R1 then the A05 won't do much (it was released as a fix for what the A04 ruined- charger problem) i advice you to stay with the A03 as it's stable and you won't have any BIOS related issues. If you still want to install this revision(for whatever reason) try downlaoding/burning it again,if this still fails try other methods(bootable USB,etc).

 

The description above the laptop is: Area-51 M17x R1, anyway, i try to do the update because i've install the Win7 x64 (the old OS was Win Vista x32)and the OSD application needs the A05 BIOS upgraded to works well, is taht correct ?

 

This BIOS is not for the original Area 51 M17x, this is for the Dell version

Look on the bottom of your laptop and confirm if you have a Dell Service tag number or not, before you brick your laptop

 

mine is not a dell version... there is an alienware version ?

 

here is the thread you need

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ms/357640-m17-general-information-thread.html

 

This is what i was talking about!

 

A06
* Improve the PS2 polling rate
* Fixed PSID read timing- delay 1 second
* Disable the "wake up charge need keep 30 seconds" condition to fix some battery may not charge issue

* The PC should be plugged into the AC adapter
* Go here to get the M17xR1A06.zip file
* Unzip M17xR1A06.zip into its own folder
* Copy the files to a clean USB boot key. Make sure it is not loading himem or anything else. Boot to the USB boot key and run A.bat
* When finished, reboot the PC removing the USB boot key
-OR-
Wait until it is on the Dell File Library. Maybe they will make it an EXE that can be run from within Windows

M17x-R1 Bios A06 - Alienware Forum - Alienware Club - Dell Community

 

A06 Discussion here please:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/548639-m17xr1-bios-a06-discussion-thread.html