M17xR2 BIOS A06 Discussion Thread

Hmm... I tried this today on my R2 with 5870 Crossfire and an i7-920 and couldn't duplicate. I disabled bluetooth and the WLAN and my system booted fine. Do I need to do anything specific to duplicate?

 

This is a good point - any time you flash the BIOS on these systems, it is a good idea to load defaults and then make sure everything is set the way you want. For whatever reason, the BIOS flash doesn't save all of the previous settings. This is most obvious with RAID settings being reverted to non-RAID.

 

I have the same problem, if I disable any one of those I have to pull the battery out every time I unplug from the wall, otherwise it will never boot. 100% reproducible every single time and never happens when all of those are turned on. I wanted to leave Firewire and Wired LAN off because I will never use either, but that's not an option right now because of this. Once I have USB tethering on my new phone, I won't want Bluetooth on anymore, either.

 

i think maybe just the firewire is the cause of the problem ?

 

I get the same problem, or at least did with A05. I flashed to Ao6 a few min ago, but the first restart I had to powerdrain it. I get the same problem when the system locked up and needed to be restarted. It's the biggest complaint I have about the system thus far.

 

Can someone with the 920XM test this for me please:
Using the BIOS and overclock to the maximum 5% and boot into Windows. Now let the computer automatically sleep. When wake up, is your 5% OC still there?
I noticed that with 5% OC, my FSB reads 140 Mhz but after waking up from sleep, it goes back to default which is 133 Mhz. No problem with hibernate though (the OC sticks).
I have been seeing this with A02, A04, A05, and A06.
I have been asking this numerous times but have not received any feedback so far.

 

I'm still on A05 and never had any issues with it at all. I think I will stay away from A06.

 

if not the virtualization issue i'd go back to A02

 

Yeah having dell upgrade me to 5870cf after I received it screwed me. I have to run A02 and they cant find a fix. A05 and A06 wont post. Im about to the point they need to send me another lappy. If I cant get my virtual box back up and running im going to get fired!

 

I get no post at all trying to run a06 on my R2, does that count?

 

i agree that when i first changed to a06, it required a power drain but after that it has been fine everytime i change something(mostly i only change cpu oc%). just that when you change something and save and exit, the laptop goes totally off(lights off as well unlike older bios where it looks just like a warm reboot and the lights stay on) and takes a while to turn on again

 

How technical are you? Any chance you could open up the system and get to both video cards? I'm looking for the part numbers on the cards, both on the PPID label and on the green labels. I think I may know what the problem is.

 

Really weird - I'll try to duplicate some more tomorrow - I have multiple machines now that I can fool with.

Thx and appreciate your patience. This appears to be affecting a very small subset of the population from what I can tell. Not many calls on this.

 

erawneila, in case you have an SSD try to run a benchmark (ie CrystalDiskMark or AS SSD) in safe mode and in normal windows mode and compare the 4K random reads and writes. It seems to be another BIOS issue except from what it is described here.
Also another BIOS issue is the ATA mode. Try to boot using the ATA mode and tells us if it took you less than two minutes for your laptops just to POST. In ATA mode the DVD drive is not recognized from the BIOS which is another issue and the cause of the delay.
I don't know if there is a connection between all of those issues but for sure it affects lots of people, they simply don't want to call because they don't feel like waiting for hours on the phone for a representative that will tell them to do a clean windows installation or wait for a new update.
I will PM you with all the necessary information and will call tomorrow myself the technical support. I will let you all know what they told me about all those issues.

*EDIT*
Btw, I have reported this power on/off issue from the very first days I got this laptop via email to the representative that took care of my replacement but never heard back from him. I don't know if that means anything.

 

I would like to confirm that what stamatisx is complaining about happens to me as well 100% of the time.
@stamatisx please inform erawneila of the SSD speed issues as well (the way you wrote it, it could be interpreted as just a speed difference between safe mode and normal mode which is understandable).

 

Yeah I have sent a PM to erawneila with all the necessary links to confirm that it not a driver issue (since I tried all of them) and that is rather a BIOS issue. An SSD is a very expensive investment and it is a shame for a laptop of this price not to allow us utilize 100% of the SSD's performance.

 

i can confirm what stamatisx said too. reduced SSD performance in comparison with R1 and ATA mode cant be used

thus i cant post on 5870 CF upgrade on 4870 CF machines, as I cancelled my order for them due to huge delay without knowing when they will send them. If Dell ever (in one year maybe YEAH ok) decides to sell them as spare parts i will report on this too. Available for purchase but never shipped. Dell crap policy. except if all machines with 5870 CF had issues and they used them all.

 

I'm still trying to get my hands on an SSD to look into this. Hopefully I will have time to really dig into it tomorrow. Sorry for the delay, but have been super busy here lately.

 

thanks for helping!

 

Thanks, one request though, please try to find a fast SSD like the Intel X25-M (or even better X25-E) or OCZ Vertex 2, etc... that can achieve high 4K random reads and writes otherwise you will see no difference if the SSD cannot push numbers higher than those you see on the screenshots provided.

*EDIT*
For reference, please use the numbers from those benchmarks in order to make comparissons
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/128 (select the SSD of interest and press "view single product")

 

RV546 and C8245. Thats off the dell service request. Theyve replaced both cards like 4 times. They are sending a new lappy, but I still want to know what it was. If those numbers dont help I may dig in to it later. I have this suspicion its the vbios...

 

Those are the Dell part numbers, but I don't know if they're quite what Brian is asking for. You'll probably find some other numbers on those stickers, which indicate if there are minor changes to the hardware.