IdeaStorm Petition: Unlocked BIOS for the 4930MX

The Alienware 17 with the 4930MX cannot be overclocked properly because of BIOS limitations ( see here). This issue exists for both the AW 17 and AW 18, confirmed by several members, including myself. The community has petitioned for a solution to this issue through IdeaStorm, and I am calling all of those out there who own an Alienware 17 to please vote and promote this idea. Even if you do not have this processor, please promote this so those of us who do can benefit from it.



Thank you very much! :thumbsup:

Kind Regards,
J.Dre

 

I'd like to bump this post and will do so every day until the issue is resolved.

If you haven't done so already, please take a few moments and make an account to promote this petition by voting. It would be greatly appreciated. For those of you that have, thank you! Much appreciated.

Thank you,
J.Dre

 

Promoted the idea, not only for actual users but also for the ones that are planning to get an Alienware 18/17 in the near future.

 

Glad to see Alienware representatives are taking action, and not only standing up for us, but with us as well.

 

This thread needs to be revived. It's not fixed yet. In fact, there is more than one thing that still needs to be fixed. Please take action by commenting in all of these forum locations (see links below) as well as voting and comment on this at IdeaStorm. Even this does not affect you, your participation and support by expressing a desire to have these problems fixed for those it does affect will be most appreciated. Dell / Alienware appreciates knowing how you feel about things, but please remember to be courteous and respectful.

 

There are 2 sides to the story here...

- Users who ignore this and do not promote, last thread had over less than 1% participation rate.
- Alienware, who doesn't wanna do much by the looks of it, If I remember correctly, M1730 had the exact same issue and it took Dell 11 bios revisions to implement new fan tables, by the looks we will probably have to wait till 2015 before a fix is released, if history is anything.

 

Count me in on the petition

 

Yes, that is terribly disappointing and it is hard to understand how so many people can act as though they do not give a rat's butt. Hopefully, the participation rate will be better this time. I'm not holding my breath on that, but I would love for this Community to prove both of us wrong.

Thank you. Please also take action using all of the links in post #6.

 

Hopefully techinferno might have some unlocked BIOS' like the older models had eventually.

 

Nope, not gonna happen. BIOS is not like what M18xR1/R2 had, its locked down. You can dump it to file and edit it but cannot flash it.

Only way is to change whole BIOS chip on the motherboard. Which I was seriously considering, but the issue becomes, you have no idea what will happen with new BIOS on new CHIP, as recovery option isn't there either. You cannot do the blind recovery trick on AW18. And since BIOS chip itself would have been replaced, even if one manages to reset the whole BIOS by removing cpu/ram and everything else from it, still it will read the unlocked BIOS and do the exact same thing. Pretty much dead motherboard.

So, only choices left, Dell/AW provide UNLOCKED BIOS, or Dell/AW provide BIOS with proper fan tables and current limitation removed for CPU.

 

Secure Flash requires a "signature" to be programmed. Once it is modded it the signature is broken so it is seen as "invalid firmware" when you attempt to flash it. They can remove Secure Flash if they want us to be pleased with the product.

Just one more advantage to traveling the advancing UEFI road to oblivion. Facilitated by Micro$lop with garbage like Windows 8 Certification, we are on a crash course that may prove to be fatal.

 

Oh, this thread was moved. Glad to see it's active once again, though.

 

This why IMO Secureboot is flawed, because it has the option to disable it. Not that I'm advocating for secureboot

What happens if you try FPT?

 

Secure Boot isn't causing anywhere near the problems that Secure Flash is. I absolutely despise both of them, but thankfully we can disable Secure Boot. Secure Flash has basically ruined everything.

The Range Registers are write-protected, so FPT is not useful. Even when booting from DOS you get an error message to that effect.

^^^ Sucks, doesn't it?

Additionally, UEFI shell commands don't appear offer anything particularly useful thus far. Seems that SMI puts things back the way Alienware wants them to be set at reboot, so that sucks as well.

 

Yep, thankfully I don't have to deal with that on MSI.

It's says the ranges are protected but does not say they are locked so have you tried resetting the protection bit?

 

Yup, doesn't work. The protection bit can't be changed.

 

bumped... please take action and let Alienware know this is important.

See opening post and additional links below...

 

Bring it up.