M1330 A15 Bios speeds up boot time

Just upgraded to the latest A15 bios and saw about 15 second reduction in boot up time

With A14 Bios 61 sec from power on to google search
With A15 Bios 45 seconds from power on to google search

 

Wow, that's awesome!
/Do not have an M1330 anymore, but good to know!
Thank you for sharing this info.

 

i better put that on for the new owner of your laptop (he is yet to be found, he will be by 10:30 i think xD )

 

Yeah, looks like you're going to get quite a bit for it. Nice!

 

i hope so...
actually, i thought no reserve would be a good idea, but then i realized that it was a bad idea...
so i asked a friend to bid, but he put $625 instead of $425
so i hope it sells

 

Even if he's the highest bidder, you can offer it to the bidder below him as a "second chance offer" and say the first bidder backed out.

 

good point, i forgot about that!
(also, im going to have him log in and try to retract the bid, because it is high enough to cover what i paid for it, so yea xD)

 

wait, so does it really speed up boot time?

 

Very hard to believe that a BIOS update can reduce boot time by 15 seconds. The only place it can have a direct impact is in the initial POST stage; but 15 seconds cutdown in POST alone is not possible, because it doesn't take that long. I don’t see how it can have much of an effect in the Windows boot up sequence. But before I make any judgments I’ll try it my self. Right now I have A12, I’ll post back later with my results.

 

I am sorry that you do not "believe me".
All I can do is report on my findings.
I am sure the Bios made an effect for me since I timed the boot up before and after the Bios update. The speedup in in boot up sequence occurs in the time taken to reach the stage you have to enter your windows log in password.

Anyone else applied the A15 Bios and noticed faster boot time?

 

I’m not saying you are lying, you may have seen an improvement, but that most probably has nothing to do with the BIOS upgrade.

I did my own test and found out there is NO DIFFERENCE in the boot times.

Hardware configuration:

• M1330, BIOS A12 then upgraded to A15
• Motherboard version A6
• Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU
• 4GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
• Seagate Momentus 5400 120GB Hard disk
• nvidia 8400M GS GPU

Software configuration:

• Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit SP1
• Removed all startup applications except Creative X-Fi sound driver related applications, ESET NOD 32 Virus guard and Synaptics Touchpad.
• I have openSUSE installed therefore my boot loader is GRUB, I timed the Power ON Self Test (POST) up to the initial GRUB OS selection screen using a stop watch; Windows boot up time is measured with Windows Performance Toolkit.

Testing methodology :

Tested THREE times with A12 BIOS



Then THREE times with A15

My findings :

POST:
Initial time spent on POST is roughly 7~8 with both A12 and A15 (in all 6 times it never went below 7 or went above 8.7) the differences are most likely due to my delay in operating the stopwatch.
Windows:
I have marked two reference points (start of logonui.exe [Windows logon process] and egui.exe [NOD32 Virus guard])

One of the three MS Performance analyzer results before the upgrade:



One of the three MS Performance analyzer results after the upgrade:


As you can see there is no noticeable improvement due to the BIOS upgrade. That is my conclusion.

 

All I can say is that I definately have a faster bootup time since ugrading to the A15 Bios.

My testing was not as extensive as yours. Since getting the laptop a couple of weeks ago I did a clean instal of vista and I timed the boot up to a google search (so as to ensure successful network connection). Each time (4 or 5 tests) it took 60 to 65 seconds. After upgrading to A15 and the boot up time is now takes 45 to 50 seconds (4 tests).

Maybe the difference is in our configurations. I have a solid state hard drive so maybe this boots faster with A15. Also I had prevously employed the "Disable TMM" tweek as described here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532
Since the A15 Bios says it has enhanced Fn F8 maybe this has something to do with A15 working faster than A14 when Tmm is disabled?

Also I went from A14 to A15 wheras you compared A12 vs A15. Maybe A14 was slower than A12 and Dell corrected this in A15?

 

Has it been added to the dell linux site yet?

 

Well I have a newly purchased M1330 that came shipped with BIOS version A11.
I was thinking of upgrading to the latest BIOS version which is apparently A15 BUT Dell's site lists the A14 version as the newest version as seen below.

http://support.dell.com/support/dow...etag=&catid=-1&libid=1&impid=-1&osl=en&os=WLH

Where do you guys get the A15 version to download?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

you can download from the main M1330 downloads page, here is the direct link.
The link in your post is for Older BIOS releases, that is why you don't see A15 there.

 

Thanks for your help PhoenixFX, my next question to you all is do you think the update is necessary?

Sure ive been reading about the video card getting hot and the update keeping the fan running. However, how widespread are these issues really although a lot of people on this forum seem to be having motherboard issues relating to the card are many people worldwide having this problem with the XPS M1330?

I guess maybe ive read that the updates make the fan run constantly and that to me is annoying and in any case fans can go bad. It seems that the fans will not be overworked. Anyway, im just asking for opinions, thanks.

Thanks again in advance for the advice.

EDIT: I just updated the BIOS to A15 I immediately noticed a slower initial startup and the fan is now constantly running kind of annoying as expected

 

They are wide spread, haven’t you seen the amount of press and the sheer number of threads related to that issue in this forum ? It is a worldwide problem because DELL only makes notebooks in few factories, and nVidia chips in even fewer number of factories, therefore you are likely to get an inferior GPU no matter where you are.

I’m in Japan and already replaced my motherboard once, and I know few others who did the same.

You will start seeing the symptoms after several months, better be safe than sorry. I suggest you keep the upgrade. On the other hand if you have more than a year of warranty, hate the FAN noise and don’t mind going through the hassle of replacing the motherboard then revert back to A11.

 

LOL I dont intend to revert thanks for conversing with me!

 

This is just a one time thing everytime you upgrade your BIOS to another version. Your subsequent reboots will be as fast as before you upgraded from A11.

 

And if you really want to go backwards you can always reflash the bios with an earlier version...

 

Since I upgraded to A15, my screen seems darker. Anyone else notice this? I am wondering if that is related to the heat issue.

I got a new mobo last week and it is working fine. I have propped my computer up to improve air flow until I get my cooling fan (NC1000) on Tues. Seems to be helping it run cooler.

 

This applies at least to the integrated graphics (X3100) for the M1330: If you install recent graphics drivers the maximum brightness level will depend on the maximum available level which can be defined within the system BIOS.

Certain system crashes (and maybe even BIOS reflash resets?) however may reset this value to some arbitrary value. This results in a reduced maximum brightness level in Windows and Linux.

 

wow just updated from a12 to a15. the fan is loud. I hope it doesn't stay like this xD.

 

Since my upgrade to A15 the fan seems like it is hardly on, actually. This could be though because I propped up the back of the machine to improve air flow.

 

Another update about A15 my fan ran a lot last night but tonight as alphatwolf said it is like its hardly on.

I also see the screen being a bit darker but still bright enough

 

Updated to A15 yesterday (from A14).

I don't see any difference at all.

.

 

When I installed A15 during the BIOS flash the fan went to full speed, and then it went back to normal when Vista booted up. I wonder if it is staying on full speed for longer for some people?

Does anyone know if A15 supports 8GB or RAM? Dell is selling M1330's with 8GB of RAM and Vista 64 preinstalled now.

 

This is the behavior with any BIOS up- or downgrade.

A13 was the first BIOS supporting 8GB on the M1330.

For the A14 BIOS we had users reporting that 8GB didn't work:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=4192615#post4192615
but also others who reported 8GB working with A14:
http://pubforum.info/welcome/BLOG/tabid/78/EntryID/8/Default.aspx

I suppose A15 offeres 8GB support as well. Otherwise Dell couldn't sell 8GB M1330 machines since I don't see a special 8GB marked download section on dells download drivers site.

 

If the fan is too loud, you should consider cleaning your M1330. Just remove the cover on the fan, then clean it, it could really improve the heat of your laptop if it's quite dusty. It helped a lot in my case.

 

Same here.

 

the guy just had Throughout/Complete POST scan enabled in BIOS and when he flashed BIOS he has its option set on QUICK/AUTO so he is experiencing faster startups...

now we need another forum with a climax of installing new nVidia drivers or something like that and improving quality 100 times (violet is finaly red and blue is more bluish than a sky - reminds me of Windows 7 placebo effects I am seeing here which is nothing more than Vista properly defined - which runs blazing fast on my XPS rig with the same speed as Windows 7)

 

I had no idea on the new bios release. I'm updating my 1330 in a few min.

 

I apologise if my post was inappropriate for the forum.

I'm not a computer expert. I only posted my simple observation because I was very pleased and surprised to see a faster boot up time after upgrading my bios. I naively thought that this may be of interest to other M1330 owners.

 

I didn't find this post too bad. At least it pointed me towards the new BIOS version.

Maybe his HDD acoustic management was set from "Quiet" to Default (which is "Bypass"), which could also explain a boost in boot time.

Cheers

Matthias

 

the fan seems to be consistently now? argh gonna downgrade to A10 again i guess :/

 

I'd like to throw in my story:
My M1330 had slowed to a crawl. I found that at full CPU load it was stepping the CPU down from 2500Mhz to 1600 or even 1200! The CPU was getting wicked hot and the fan was going nuts.

I vacuumed out the fins behind the fan and after that it would run at full CPU load for as long as I wanted to without stepping down for more a few MHz for no more than a few seconds at a time.

So yeah, clean that puppy out! It was really stupid of me to let it get that way, but I've never owned a laptop before that had this problem. That's what I get for waiting five to ten years between upgrading.

I make cleaning out those fins a regular chore now.

If I worked for Dell I would build some sort of program that takes notice of unusual heat trends and warns the user. It all happened so slowly over the course of several months that I didn't realize that it had happened until I started running certain programs that I hadn't run in months and found they seemed oddly slow. I'm sure a lot of users out there have very slow hot noisy laptops and just think that Vista or a virus is to blame, when really a little canned air could make their machine like new again.

 

Can anyone check the Time in the bios. My laptops seconds, minutes, and hours are going way too fast.

Thanks

 

I second cleaning the cooling fins out. This M1330 seems a lot cooler since I put about 3 lungfulls through the output vent (I advise doing outside and try and avoid breathing the dust)

 

Anyone know of a version for linux? I usually get them from here