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

I just wanted to add, after having used the machine for a good day with the new BIOS. I am vey happy with the touchpad fix. Funny how such a small factor can make such a big difference to the overall experience.

And Scook, best of luck with your venture; here's to the possibility of an R1 unit armed with Xfire 5870s.

 

Right.. I've updated to A06..lets see if any of you are able to replicate my findings..
Open core temp , and close any other programs you may be running at the time.. (you should only be able to see your desktop, with the core temp window open)
Now franticly move your cursor around on your desktop, and tell me what you see happening to your CPU usage, (my core#3 rockets)
And for those of you that have not updated yet, try this so we can see whether it was the same before..
If it was the same with older BIOS versions then that's fine ofcourse..other than that, the update seems all-positive so far, mouse polling makes a huge difference.

 

It's not A06 related,it did it on A03 (Core #2,which is the 3rd,would climb to 63%) tried this on a desktop and get the same result must be Windows related.

 

I still get the no adapter warning at boot, and I have two brand new Dell 240 watt adapters. But, other than that fairly minor irritation, A06 does seem to eb an improvement.

 

Make sure you successfully flashed to A06,if you did try removing any power source(the battery and charger) and unplug the CMOS battery for a while(next to the CPU fan) now press the power button for a slow count to 20.
See if you get the same results.
Also have you ever been able to charge your battery using those 2 chargers?

 

I've updated to A06 and no problems at all yet

 

Battery still not charging for me. But as i said before i think the battery is shot
When i first plug in the PSU it starts charging for about 15 seconds then stops

 

^^ Check your cable it might be cut somewhere.

 

Which cable? the PSU cable?
The laptop powers on fine, it just doesn't charge

 

You ba$tard , mine is still in the mail I challenge you to a mobilegraphicscardinstallationduel, sir!

 

Greetings,
Is anyone experiencing random keyboard lag? I'm able to re-produce the issue using notepad and any stock windows application. Keys are only registering if you use 1 second presses. I'll test further.

Thanks,
Gabe

 

I've actually noticed this before. The way I personally fixed the issue was to do a power cycle by disconnecting the power, as well as the battery and holding the power on button for 30 seconds.

Not sure what makes it occur, but I only notice it once I've logged into Windows, prior to that [ sitting in the login screen typing my password ] it acts normal which suggests is probably a driver issue.

 

Make sure the battery is activated. FN+F2 (Toggle to Battery enabled and you see the green in the power bars)

Not sure if you tried this already, but worth mentioning.

 

Very Interesting,
This is the first time I've discovered this particular issue, and only after flashing to A06. Perhaps it was just coincidence.

It could possibly be the video driver colliding with the new bios.... Two things have changed since I've discovered the issue. The first was installing stock video drivers in an attempt to resolved some issues with stealth mode (which did work). The second was upgrading the BIOS after reading some of the stories related to touch pad fix. Prior to the BIOS updating, the keyboard was fine.

A different issue: I'm sure some of you are boarderland fans, and I was wondering if you experience random black bars (objects) from time to time while playing the game. Using the very first release of the stock video drivers fixes this issue.



Thanks,
Gabe

 

I tested notepad,stock wordpad,renaming files..a lot of stuff that involves keyboard typing and there's no delay.
Also i'm playing Borderlands for a while now and don't have any issue with it whatsoever. Might want to try clearing the CMOS.

 

Could someone please take a moment and explain how to make my usb thumb drive bootable? I find a lot on installing Windows on it but nothing to just get me booted and to a command prompt.

 

zFactor has a link in his sig with the necessary links and procedure

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...sh-drive-flash-aw-bios-updates-under-dos.html

 

That keyboard lag was something I noticed would only happen occasionally in A05 and I had previously made a post about it. Nobody else seemed to have the issue. It was something totally random and would only happen after logging into windows. I re-flashed from A05 -> A03 and it completely went away. I haven't updated to A06 out of fear of this problem.

 

Would it go away completely after you power cycled it in such a way? Or did it randomly show up now and then?

 

may i know what monitoring program do u still use other than HWmonitor?

 

I am getting a windows freeze after coming out of the game.
As soon as I quit the game, if I start some video or something graphical, then the windows would freeze and have to do a hard reset.
Strange....

 

^^What game and what video drivers are you using? i don't see those issues eighter..hmm.

 

Hey man, you just got yourself a brother-in-arm here . At first, after flashing , there was no problem , but just a few days later , I got myself freezing randomly while surfing with Opera. I thought it was the old same prob " Hardware Acceleration " . But just last night , I got freezing while playing MW2 as well, which was an important event as I had never encountered before. It didn't happen even when I used the buggy Bios like A02 and A04, freezing while playing games , that is . If the problem persists , I might consider reversing back to A05 , Touchpad is not that important as I use an external mouse all the time ( It's an Steelseries Xai ) and I've never got a " Plugin Not Charging " either .
P/S, Is it a Dell's customary to release the buggy bios named with even numbers, you know , like 02 then 04 and now 06 ? Oh mannnn

Oh yeah , one more thing , the machine nows randomly makes some noise as well, I mean the VGA Fans speed up without me doing anything heavy , just surfing really

 

Are you using Verde drivers? i.e. the 2xx.xx.

If you are that is not an issue with the BIOS. You may have just been lucky up till now using the Verde drivers, as the freeze can be extremely rare (i.e. I ran two whole months without a single freeze). Lockups for me were usually flash/WMV related, but I did get some with The Witcher.

Have had no lockups with Batboy's modded drivers.

Opera (11?) doesn't use GPU acceralation (yet), so could be a couple of things (not including hardware issues): a) Aero (Win7) is running, b) you surfed to a website that has flash and you still have the hardware acceleration ticked in flash's settings and you're using a Verde driver.

 

Well , I had no problem with Bios A05, even with the GPU acceleration being turned on and Verde Driver , 266.35 beta by the way , no crash, freeze, lock up, ... not even ONCE . My point is all the time I got the freezing, it was always something like you say : Flash, Video ,... But now it happened while I was gaming. So I suspect it would be bios related. But thanks anyway KracsNZ, I'll try turning off the Acceleration once again . But if it still happens , I will stick to A05 until A07

 

The problem with the Verde drivers has been present in all BIOS versions that we know of from A03 (DPC latency fix version) to A06. As I said, you've been one of the lucky ones till now not to have had the issue. Just look at each of the Verde driver threads (lots of them) and notice they all have issues for all the BIOS version we have had recently.

Not saying it is specifically a driver issue; it could well be driver, hardware or bios related, or even a combination of all three. What we do know is many on these forums have experiences crashes with all the Verde drivers and bios versions A03, A04, A05 and A06. We also know using the Dell beta, or Batboy's modded drivers makes for a completely stable system.

If it is BIOS related it's been in there since at least A03, but I don't think anyone would want to go back to a pre-A03 (DPC latency fix) bios to check.

 

Lockups with the verde drivers are easily corrected. To confirm its the driver, install the dell driver and retest. I can say with near 100% confidence, your locksups will cease. The verde driver releases by NVIDIA have been nothing but problems.

 

I seem to notice something funny:
People that flashed to A06 from A05 encounter issues(at least they think or they might have had them before).
I never flashed to A04/A05 and flashed the A06 from A03 and nothing new arrised.
Anybody that comes from the A03 and encountering anything( BIOS related,if you're not sure use the search feature first!)?

 

Hi guys.
I haven't used throttle stop before, is there a guide or thread here that will help me to set it up on my R1?

Thanks.

 

See this link -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...arket-upgrades/531329-throttlestop-guide.html

This thread is on the BIOS A06 and doesn't have anything to do with Throttlestop.

Thanks.

 

HERE you go!
Have fun!

 

Thank you!

 

I am using the latest drivers from Nvidia and it happens with Bad Company 2 6/10 times in a day.

 

Sorry, but this is a Verde driver issue and unrelated to the BIOS. Please post in the appropriate driver thread. We have a thread in place for the current NV Verde driver.

 

Spradhan01 go with the dell beta drivers P06,you're problems will be solved or the drivers in BatBoy's thread 197.
Sorry for not posting links but I'm on my phone a simple search will do it.
Note: Post here your BIOS A06 related feedback only,check first if you're issues are not already discussed.

 

Works like a charm, finally my pc charge again without any 'press the power button' trick.
Hope i dont find any issue with this bios.

 

No , the bios doesn't have any issues at all, with dell drivers 196.84. It's just that everyone was waiting for a fix for the throttling issue.

 

quick question. should i go back to default clocks on my cpu before flashing then reoverclock?

 

i would just make sure your clocks are stable before flashing it. So if you want to feel safe you can revert to your default ones

 

doesn't matter,but you won't want your pc to freeze due to instability so it's better to get back to stock -> flash -> redo your OC.

 

Anyone seeing the plugged in, not charging message return after moving to A06? Two R2 owners are seeing again. I haven't yet on my R1 but then again I haven't really been unplugging it enough.

 

i have no problem re-charging on my R1, finlly Dell released something we can actually use

 

Nothing of the sort to report there; charging just fine.

 

No problem re-charging here. I unplugged several times today in SLI / Boost Performance. Drained the battery both times to less than 50%.

Bios: Went from 04 straight to 06
Video: Was already running Ver. 260.99 off of Nividia site.
Had the 9400 and 280's enabled in bios before flash.
No keyboard lag that I can tell. So far things are Great!
I think we have a winner.

btw.....
Thanks BB for the link to make a bootable USB

 

Well so far the Ac charging seems to be fixed, have run the battery down to 5% and it detects the ac adaptor and charges properly so far.

Still have not fixed the stupid AC Adaptor Warning during boot up.

 

Whats up all!

So I read through this thread trying to find some info on how to Flash the A06 bios from A03 (i'm not to knowledgeable about flashing Bios and have never done it).

I had to do a clean install with Windows 7 Pro cause my M17x R1 was having shutdown issues. It was shutting down at least 2-3 times a day.
(Divers and Security Up to date)

I would either be surfing the web or playing a game and my Laptop would just shut off. I have not a clue why, so I though I would do a clean install and delete my C drive partition and start over.

I finished the "Clean Install" and everything is great now. The M17x is running smooth and faster then before.

Then I thought I should Flash my Bios but not knowing how, I came here.

I ended up getting the latest A06 Bios(for the Win 64/M17x R1) from Dell's Website Here.


After flashing the Bios everything seems to be going fine and I forgot to mention I didn't use the .ISO to do this. I used the A06W64.exe file within the Download, Link above.

Thank you for the tips.

 

I can't get the bios to flash. I use the A06W64.exe for my Windows 7 64bit installation, and it does everything but freezes at the flashing the new bios part. I thought maybe it was just taking a white and left it alone for two hours and it had done nothing to my knowledge. Any tips?

 

Do it with the flash USB storage device. It takes no more than 5 minutes.

 

Well, did the A06 flash and no dice, still not detecting the AC power cord, so I have to go through the enabling of the graphics before startup. Doesn't seem to drain anything from the battery while using it, but also does not recharge the battery itself.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions? It's really a minor issue, but it's basic enough to be extremely annoying.