Power adaptor not recognized?????

Im not an expert but i would imagine that resetting your laptop back to factory would give you the bios it shipped with whatever that was....obviously as you had vista initially, you would have to reinstall windows 7.

Dont know if bios is the issue causing power a/c problems tho......

 

A factory reset is not going to change the BIOS that is running. You can get the older BIOS files from the drivers section on Dell's site. From the individual latest drivers pages there is usually a link to older drivers.

Many of us had no adapter warnings on A00-A03 but A04 started causing the warnings to show up. Reverting to A03 caused the errors to stop appearing. You can come to your own deductions.

 

Apologies for any misleading info...i said i wasnt an expert but i DID think that restoring to factory settings would revert the machine to that state in time.....learn something new each day eh? - sorry again!

 

I don't think I can do a factory reset as I didn't get the alienware respawn partition updated to Windows 7. Has anybody attempted to flash back to A03? If so, did you have any trouble? What kind of problems could I reasonably expect if I went to an earlier BIOS?

 

You can flash back to any of the prior BIOSes all the way back to A00 you really want to. Flashing back to A03 will not cause you any problems, and should fix the power adapter warning. You won't lose any functionality. I wouldn't personally go earlier than A03 because A03 is the BIOS that fixed the DPC latency problem.

It's completely safe as long as you follow the directions and don't decide to power off in the middle of it. I went back and forth between A03 and A04 half a dozen times.

 

Could you point me to where you find the A03 BIOS on the dell site or another reliable place to download it? I've been over to the dell support area and just aren't smart enough to locate it.

 

For whatever reason, they've made this incredibly difficult to get to now. The "previous versions" link has been removed and even an old post that I had that got me to the previous versions page had all of the links just go to A04. I did find a direct link to the A03 page, and the download link does still work.

Drivers and Downloads

 

I followed the link. The icon for the BIOS is the same one as all the other drivers. When the tech guy had me grab it last time it was .iso not .exe. Did they change from .iso for A04 from .exe with A03?

 

It was always an exe before A04. So many people had problems with A04 that Dell decided to try the ISO route. Being that the BIOS itself was at fault and not the installation method, obviously it made no difference. Just run the exe right from in Windows and it will work.

 

So it looks like BIOS A06 for the 17xR2 fixed the charging issue? Only a couple of posts here on that front.

Has anyone heard anything new on the 193W front for the 17xR1?

 

Currently, im running A06 and OSD 113 and have already had a new adaptor/power cord from Dell UK....it was running fine but the night before last, i got the same message, not upon boot but upon plugging in whilst my battery was dwiindling....(i was running the battery low to check for any errant power messages,of which obviously, i got one).

Spoke to a Dell guy today regarding my ongoing problem and he said that there was a small board on the motherboard that dealt with the power and this could be the culprit for my problems....

Not sure but all i can report is as above....A06, OSD 113 and still got the dreaded "non dell adaptor - will continue on battery" message...

 

Alright so I've only read through the first 5 pages of this thread so sorry if it's been talked about.. I basically want some reassurance in alienware!

Background info: I had a pretty high end xps m1710 for about 4 years and worked flawlessly cept for one pooped out video card in the first year, I had complete care and got it replaced due to a spill. They replaced it with a refurbished m17x which upon startup for the first time had screen artifacts. I called up Dell and they had me download some drivers and try to flash the bios. It froze during the flash and bricked the thing completely. Soo, a guy came out today to replace the motherboard and during the process broke off a screw that held down the heatsink over the CPU. In addition he forgot where a screw went while putting it back together and screwed it through the hand rest into the screen chipping it near the top. So basically three things needed to be replaced and he called Dell to tell them. They called me back shortly and told me that they would send me a box so I could get depot service. I asked him why not just replace the computer since you are replacing so many things anyway? He checked into it and told me that they would do just that and since this m17x was only a few days old they would replace it with a brand new m17x which I am VERY happy about. So that computer is coming regardless.

NOW: I got home with the current m17x to screw around on it and it was telling me that the adapter is not recognized. I tried power draining to no avail. I could not in anyway get the computer to use the gtx 260m sli cards only the integrated 9400. Finally I did by just not using the battery. I restarted the computer to change some startup programs and after that all hell broke loose. From that point on no matter what(except for a few lucky instances) the computer would get past the initial "F2 for bios" screen and turn itself off. Sometimes during the windows startup, sometimes IMMEDIATELY after the first screen another time After it started up but Never during the bios setup menu or during the warning messages. I got them all from adapter not recognized to something about the over clocking not being right(I never touched that setting). Eventually after trying to turn it on a million times I turned on the APSM setting to no avail then tried it off again and after that it gets to the first "F2" screen freezes up and starts flashing the caps lock button which is what warranted the motherboard replacement in the first place. Ugh...

Conclusion: I'm getting a new m17x regardless so this issue is a non issue really... I'm just not very confident about what's going to happen in the future..

Curiousity: Does anyone have a clue what was going on with that laptop? It had the flextronic adapter which apparently sucks and it seemed to shut off after a predetermined amount of time; if I were to stay in the bios settings for a few minutes it would shut off Immediately after I saved and exited. If I skipped the bios menu it would shut off sometime during the windows startup.
Anyway thanks for reading my novel of a post.

 

Well,

There is something going on. My M17x was not really used for half a year due to moving and now plays the old: not charging trick. As an addition it sprayed many white pixels yesterday. I think it is high time to call dell. Doing a big backup today first.