M18x BIOS A05 released - Discuss here....

ARGH - sounds like you need a motherboard replacement. Here is a relevant thread that Dell-Bill_B has been visiting: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-sata-iii-speeds-dropping-sata-ii-speeds.html. I recommend that you elaborate on your problems there.

 

i already had a new system replacement because of this during the 21 day return policy

i'll read up on that thread.

 

Are you running aftermarket drives, or the factory drives? It's also possible you have buggy drives, and especially so if they are SSD drives with Sandforce controllers. If you have SSD, what are they? Did you check for firmware updates?

 

mechanical drives, "aftermarket". i went through 4 different brand new pair of drives so i know it cant be the faulty drives.

only the toshiba and samsung based controllers are dependable with ssd drives. so i went back to mechanical drives after experiencing the crazy instability of the sanforce and marvel controllers.

so yeah, it has been a terrible year for the drives

 

That's because they are not sandforce based drives. Seems a common problem with sandforce and dropping is emerging....

 

Mr. Fox, I followed your instructions to the letter and cannot get the BIOS to update. I've got seven Dell systems currently on the go and have probably worked through 10+ Dell laptops, and have always found BIOS updates easy. But for some reason this one is not working.

I clicked on the downloaded program (M18xR1_A05_W32_X64_ZPE.exe). It unzipped its files to a particular folder (C:\Dell\Drivers\K0XYF\). The only file there was (M18xR1_A05_W32_X64.exe). Clicking on it resulted in an error message in which it said that the requested action required "elevation".

Normally, when I update BIOS with a Dell laptop, it does all the work. I just double-click on the downloaded file, and away it goes.

Any ideas? I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that would fix this problem. Thanks!

SpikeToronto.

 

You need to right-click on the file and choose to run as administrator. It needs elevated permissions to run. I am not sure why Dell did not set the file to prompt for it. But, that should do the trick.

 

jasonanderson is correct, Spike. For some reason certain users have needed to select run as admin. This is mentioned at least once elsewhere in this thread if I am not mistaken. If you right click the file and select properties, you may see an "Unblock" button. Clicking that may eliminate the need to run as admin, but either way... doesn't really matter as long as it works.

 

You guys are geniuses!! Thank you so much! It worked perfectly. I guess somethings have changed from WinXP to Win7. It was amazing how perfectly your instructions worked. Also, I read through the thread and must have missed the other instance of this question. Sorry.

Again, thank you both so much for your incredibly fast and perfect response.

SpikeToronto.
P.S. Now how do I make one of those neat signatures that provides all the hardware info?

 

You are welcome. You have to have 5 posts before you can do private messages or create a signature. This one tripped me up when I first joined as well.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/site-suggestions-help-announcements/480350-cant-send-private-messages-create-signatures.html

 

You're welcome, Spike.

You need to have more posts before you can create a signature. You do this in the User Control Panel. You should see "UserCP" on the left edge in the blue bar across the top of the page.

Please review the links below. The links have information you'll need to know as a member of our forum, including information on signatures. I frequently have to reach out to folks to ask them correct non-compliant signatures. There is at least one person posting on the last page or two that has a non-compliant signature that I have not asked to fix it yet. After you review the forum rules, see if you can identify the individual(s) that I will be reaching out to.

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Can somebody he Can somebody help me out i'm having the blue screen on my alienware m18x I installed the amd gpu latest drivers fron amd webpage, dunno what is going on but so far I think could be the ing dolphin because staring to happened since dolphin. But the first time I dowloaded the gpu dtivers it says error has ocurred but the games run normal since then. Mmm

 

Any ideas yet on what (if anything) has changed in the 'new' A05 BIOS?​

 

hello i just got my alienware m18x two days ago. my cuestion is.. how do i do the flash, i'm worry about because i remember last time i did a flash it was on my asus g72gx-rbbx05 and messed it up with the black screen with no response, so please tell me thanks so much

 

just download the driver from the Dell website

A05 Bios

Extract it, Make sure then your computer is plugged in, Close all programs running and save your work. Then open the file up, it ask your to do a list of things as i stated. and hit ok and it will work its magic...

DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER till asked or it will do it by itself

 

I'm not sure I understand everything you are saying in this post. Are you referring to the Dolphin browser?

Did you try doing a Windows System Restore to roll back to the prior driver? If you are still having an issue with the AMD drivers, please post in the http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...s-performance-problems-discussion-thread.html as this is the A05 BIOS thread. AMD drivers are buggy and if you install a new driver over the top of an existing driver, you will have problems 99% of the time. You need to do a clean driver installation. Instructions from that are on the first page of the thread.

I have no idea. I haven't messed with it. It was an interesting observation to see a newer release date with the same firmware version number. Perhaps there was an additional tweak to assist with the AMD fan malfunction and thermal shutdown.

You may need to right click and run as administrator if you get an error message stating that elevated privileges are needed when trying to launch the flash executable. I didn't, but I have seen a number of folks posting about that and run as admin took care of the error message.

 

Should I upgrade from A02 to A05? or this is useless for my specs?

 

If you just received a brand new M18x it most likely already has A05. If it does not have A05 and it everything works properly, see below... No action required.

If it is working fine, there is nothing to be gained. The A05 BIOS was primarily for AMD 6990M CrossFire systems that were suffering from an overheating and thermal shutdown condition. Not all of them had the issue. If you have A02 you possibly don't have an issue with DPC latency. If you flash A05 you may actually reduce the overall performance of your M18x by introducing DPC latency. When it comes to flashing BIOS, unless there are killer new features to be enjoyed, or something messed up gets corrected, the old saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is very fitting.

 

Any plans to release a unlocked A05 bios?

 

Its already been done. You can download it here.

 

will installing the unlocked bios ruin an existing raid array?

nvm it doesn't.

 

Can some kind soul upload a Unlocked A05 Bios to rapidshare or the like.

Only ask as I can't grab it from Techinferno site, can't register for some reason.

 

Try this link:
unlocked A05 sBIOS by svl7

Sorry, I'm mobile and it's the only client I found that is android friendly :/

 

Many thanks Katalin your a star

 

i want my laptop to run to 3.o boost...on certain program.

how i do this? to make sure its runs?