M17xR1 BIOS A06 ('Plugged in, not charging' + Touchpad Polling Fix) Discussion Thread

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

 

DIRECT LINK to Download page @ support.dell.com site is here:

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...dateid=-1&formatid=-1&source=-1&fileid=438965

 

What was this problem ?

Fixed PSID read timing- delay 1 second

How did it manifest itself to the user ?

 

Plugged in, not charging

Haven't tested it yet but hopefully its resolved. Also, looks like the touchpad polling has been resolved as well.

 

I will investigate overclockability

 

In terms of their update notes, do they actually include all changes they made?

 

A new bios finally. But i wait the official realease...some experiences with bugs

 

Touchpad finally works like it should. Can someone tell me what the PSID read time is all about?

 

Is this true that we finally got some attention?
Next step throttling issue fix and Dell you'll regain a lot of trust back!

 

Is it just me or does each release of Dell's alienware M17x-R1 bioses look even sloppier than the last?

first they had a program that installed the bios in windows, then a bootable CD ISO? then a USB stick... it's as if one person is just making these things and releasing them as he sees fit.

With each new bios comes a whole new slew of problems. From video card issues, to LAN issues, to charging issues, to BSODs...

It is such a shame that Dell has all these dissappointing issues, because although this laptop is the worst I have ever had, it is also the best I have ever had, and wouldn't buy anything else.

 

This is the main part that concerns this thread.....are you seeing any problems in A06 currently or just venting that you have to use a USB stick?

 

wait for Dell to post it on their website and they will give an easy option to install it i'm sure,at least they did come up with a new one.

 

updated to A06 so far no problems =D

 

This is weird, and I don't think it is related to A06 however I only just noticed after updating to it.

In HWmonitor I can no longer see the temps of any of my graphics cards. Only my CPU.

The GPU's now only show voltages. Any ideas? Or did I just mess up on some setting and am sounding like an idiot?

 

not related to A06 so you probably messed up your hwmonitor settings

 

I have never been able to read my 4870s temps in HWMonitor

 

Yeah, I pulled up another monitoring program and they're appearing correctly so I'm no longer worried.

 

I have a problem, I can't see the USB storage option when pressing F12 to get to the boot menu, I only see, HDD, cd/dvd, network, removable devices, and diagnostic... Oh and USB emulation is enabled in bios. Had the problem with both A03 and A05 bios so I am not able to update my bios.

 

This might be a stupid question, but you do have it plugged in right? I think it only shows up if a drive is connected.

 

I am using a Micro SD memory through an usb adapter.I don't have any other usb flash memory to test.

EDIT: I just tested with my external HDD, and now the boot list shows me the USB storage, option. I need to find out now how to make my external HDD a boot hdd.

 

Umm...

Can anyone who has the micro-stutter issue check if they see any improvement in their gameplay while running in SLI or Crossfire?

I think this is an odd coincidence, but all the games that had the micro-stutter before have completely dissapeared right now and I've been doing some sustained playing on all of them since A06 came out and before A06 it would occur within the first 5 minutes of gameplay.

EDIT: That was kind of why on the first page I was asking if they detail all changes to the BIOS they make. Nothing in the current notes really correlates to eleviating our issue.

 

^^hey if this is true it'll be great! What were you using before A03 or A05?
Hope I'll have the time this evening to try it out(been busy lately).

 

Prior I was using A05, but I had been on A03 regularly while doing system tests.

I in no way want to make it sound like the issue is gone, just in my experience currently I haven't seen it in my games.

In Battlefield: Bad Company 2 I did have two hiccups, but they did not "feel" the same as when I had the actual micro-stuttering occur. One happened about 15 minutes into the game, and the other happened maybe... 20 minutes after that?

And they were much harder lockup then what happened when it micro-stuttered for me before.

 

If they admit they changed it, they are admitting it was a problem. They can just fix it and not say anything and to them everyone wins lol

It is very possible that they raised the power threshold or removed it all together. Someone with a kill-a-watt and GTX 280m SLI needs to verify this (my 4870s are more power efficient and make it harder to throttle)

 

Sadly, I don't have a kill-a-watt so I'm going to be competely useless on my end.

But I agree with what you said, if they had it in the notes, it's an admittance.

I think I'm just being overly optimistic at this point, but hopefully we'll get more concrete evidence once more upgrade to A06.

Umm, has the USB key actually been formatted so that it is bootable?

If it hasn't, that may be why it's not appearing as USB storage.

Mine only showed as "Removable Device's" until I had made it a bootable key.

 

I will put it through its paces with my 4870s but they never took as much power as the GTX cards

 

Try to monitor throttling if possible.

 

fantastic news that Dell are still doing some updates for R1 users, perhaps it had something to do with that Engadget article. will hopefully give this a lash over the weekend! on A03 atm.

and hopefully this won't be the last R1 release we see from Dell!!

 

I'll install BFBC2 and see if I can get it to throttle. It was always the game that gave me the most throttling. Before TS, if anything exploded in my face, my framerate would drop to like 5.

 

Well, if they increased the throttling threshold, it wasn't by much. with the settings in my sig, even Wow makes it throttle and it only uses 2 cores.

 

Great, thanks to FreeDOS, I was able to boot from my phone and flash my bios to A06. Day and night difference in touchpad polling rate, jumped from 24 hz to 63 Hz , wich makes it really smooth, it is even more faster now when clicking by touching the pad. I am really happy, this laptop is getting closer to perfect =) ..

The only problem I am facing is HWmonitor not showing my card's temperature.

EDIT: HWmonitor version 1.15 works great =) ...everything is perfect now

 

While throttlestop makes everything perfect, the throttling issue is still a HUGE problem imo. Anyone who owns one of these things who doesn't know a lot about it, no doubt thinks it's worthless if they've tried to play BFBC2 with it.

 

It's on dell's driver download page now.

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/bios/R293843.exe

 

Must update it myself tonight.
Won't fix my not charging issue though, think my battery is shot

 

Works, and FIX ! Tanks Alienware.

 

Now that it is official I will take a look tonight

 

how do i install, wich exe should i install from? i don't want to mess anything up

 

I just ran the A06W64.exe and it worked.

 

thanks a lot, i will try that

 

the flash went flawless. i can really feel the difference on the touch pad. i haven't checked the charging issue yet.

does anyone else notice a quite faster boot?

 

Is it worth updating. I am on AO3. I use an external mouse but I do get throttling.

 

I would update. The touchpad alone is enough reason to update IMO. The plugged in not charging issue I seldom ran into but if its fixed with this release, even better.

So, I haven't run into any *NEW* issues resulting from updating.

 

Thanks. I'll do the update tomorrow when I install my new hard drives.

 

Tried this, and I am happy about the following:
- Touchpad has been fixed.
- Battery is now charging properly.
- Correct PSU being detected when system's powered up.

The bad?
- It still throttles, and this is with my dual core T9550.

Still, a step in the right direction and some development on the M17X-R1 front.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with my system. I seem to have the throttling brought down to at least a very minimum and in games it used to throttle a ton, it's now almost dissapeared.

I can't pinpoint what I did to my laptop recently that could have caused it. Weird.

 

Actually, it has gone down, but it's still there. Plus, I run some of the most demanding PC games, which are known to bring the system to its knees at times. Those games still cause the system to throttle quite quickly.

I am sure if I ran some of these games that are either ports of console games, or partial-ports, I wouldn't have half as much throttling. For example, it takes a good while for Lost Planet to throttle.

 

Yes you are right, before TS BFBC2 was terrible to play, awful fps drops. But now using TS the game is totally playable and TS helps me to overclock my cpu over 3 GHz. I think without TS this laptop will not be able to show it's maximum performance.

 

I agree completely. I am able to enjoy this computer to its fullest due to TS.

 

Put this on mine last night, so far so good - documentation for the upgrade seemed to be non-existent, so had to guess it was A06W64.exe that I had to run.

Only had the PSU issue once so can't really say much about that, but finally after 18months of ownership I can actually use the trackpad if I need to - that must be a record-time to fix - lol

 

So I finally had time to flash it myself.
Personally I only encountered the "pluged in not charging" issue ONCE in my R1's life,didn't thaught it was a commun problem since it doesn't happen(A03)
I always use a USB mouse on laptops so the touchpad could even not be there I won't mind.
As for throttling also didn't use to happen offten and for long time before(GTX 280m SLi,A03 never flashed the useless A04,A05) so I have to test ingame for a decent amount of time with this one to see if actually it gotten better.
Conclusion: no issues resulting from this "fix" (don't know about performance in benchmarks) and as long as it's only possitive things it's welcomed(better "a little late" than never)

And @scook: great idea hope to see you start a thread named "CF 5870 on R1 enabled!" or something like that