XPS9560 Bios 1.2.4 bricking systems

Just a heads up I updated the BIOS and the system hung on the BIOS screen, pressing F12 or F2 resulted in the blue bar but the system didn't progress to BIOS of the boot selection screen, caps lock was responsive.

The system seemed to be soft bricked.

The way out for me and the only other person I know to update was to hold the fn key when powering up, this forced a system reboot again and it went back to windows.

As the soft brick can be reproduced by the 2nd person to update I suggest Dell pull this update and people don't update as this may render the system unusable.

Don't do this without a warranty in place!

 

No problems with the 1.2.4 BIOS here. Just updated fine from 1.0.3 (the original BIOS). Only thing I noticed was the fan blowing at maximum speed when it was flashing the firmware and a black screen for over a minute after the computer first rebooted. After that the Dell logo with the loading circle under it appeared and withinn seconds i was in windows.

Hoping they fixed the fan profiles. That's the number 1 issue i have with this computer. It should remain silent when doing nothing. Also going from load to idle it should revert to a silent profile after hitting a minium temp. The previous bios update (1.1.3 ??) was even worse in that respect.

 

Fans going flat out is part of the EC update, they are set to full as the EC update stops all hardware control over the fans, same with the Toshiba's I fix.

 

Ok, i understand. I really hope that Dell fixes the fanprofiles. I don't mind a cpu temp of 60-70 degrees (celsius) if that means the laptop remains silent.

 

Umm I said the fans were fixed afraid a laptop with a chip like this will not remain with the fans off, you can select the quiet profile in Dell's power manager.

Having a chip sat at 70 degrees would eventually cause the board then chassis to heat up until you couldn't touch the keyboard. Considering a hot shower is 40 degrees I hope you see my point.

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I went to download the BIOS and I noticed that the release date for it is listed as April 10 (i.e. today) which is strange given that it was first released yesterday, April 9. Did Dell get the release date wrong or did they sneakily update the file in response to this issue? The latter would explain why some people have the problem and some people don't. Can somebody with the version that causes problems confirm that the checksum of the file they used is the same as that of the file on Dell's website right now?

 

Well the one I got the morning is the same as the one I just downloaded again, if you have one from yesterday can you check the file sums, I got this.
CRC32: ED3342A4
MD5: 1E7C421B51072A7551E7CC7429C3200B
SHA-1: BC3A1FE9AEE43F5CF39084CBE653AAFAA0281435
SHA-256: CF95AB6011A1FB6CC4401BC57D4C38056AA202DCC8D09C61DDB0C31DC740D2BB

 

Thanks, those are the exact checksums of the current file. So they didn't fix anything; they just uploaded the file on the 9th and labeled it as uploaded on the 10th. I'm going to hold off on this update -- it's nice to know that you can rescue a broken system by holding Fn, but BIOS is the one aspect of the system where I prefer my updates to be rock solid.

 

Well it does have a lot of fixes and could be as daft as those who had the soft brick being in AHCI mode?
Now no one has had an unrecoverable and another mentioning it took a minute before it would boot it should be safe to update.

 

Ehm...after update the xps hungs on the logo...tried to press fn key, but nothing happened.... Any help?

 

power off, hold FN while powering up and keep it down until the laptop reboots (should be within 30 seconds)

 

I'm using AHCI btw. Can't remember if the previous update gave a black screen for about a minute too.

Perhaps it's a combination of different hardware. Dunno if Dell also uses different kind of ddr4 sticks. My SSD is a Toshiba and I know you have a Samsung. Wondering what kind of SSD the other person who had to press Fn has...

 

Mines a samsung 960 evo and aftermarket crucial 32gb ram.

 

I don't know what happened but i tried that way many time without no results... now i simply kept pressed both fn and power key and after 2 or 3 sec system restarted lol... Thanks GoNz0

I'm on ahci and mine has a toshiba ... Could be that i have enabled speedshift before the update? Or maybe because i had the 1.0.3 version and not the 1.1.3... I tried to do another update and the pc booted normally mmm

 

I suppose, but my worry is that if it hangs for some people and nobody understands why, there's a chance that for another subset it not only hangs, but the Fn solution doesn't work. Maybe I'm being paranoid -- the machine is still under warranty so I will give it a try.

 

The update worked fine on my computer

 

I decided to be adventurous and encountered no problems. It took a long time to update all of the components, but went straight to Windows without any intervention from me. My starting point was 1.0.3 with only a single modification (the battery mode was set to primarily on AC usage) which the update preserved. It would still be nice to know why it works properly for some people and gets stuck for others.

 

One of those things, Dell wouldn't have released it if it did this in the test environment, I did have speedshift enabled and it still is like undervolt92 below.

I guess we need to see if anyone else with the hang had SST on and/or AHCI?

 

For those having brick problems after 1.2.4 Bios update follow the steps below to wipe Bios settings which will allow you to clean CMOS and start fresh with settings. Go back into Bios and set the SSD/HDD to proper boot AHCI/Raid or whatever you had it before.

Dell Logo screen stuck after Bios 1.2.4 update. (When FN key trick is not doing it's job)

Plug in AC adapter (Make sure laptop is off)
Press and hold Power button for 25 seconds (put a timer on it, it has to be 25 seconds or more, not less)
Charging white LED will flash few times.
Let it do it's thing and power the laptop on and go immediately to Bios Settings and set the proper ones for your boot drives etc....
Done

Cheers,

Peter

 

If I had to choose between those two, I would bet on SpeedShift. AHCI is a standard BIOS option that is quite likely to be used by anyone installing Windows from scratch and they almost certainly tested it. SpeedShift is more or less a BIOS hack and there's practically no chance that they tested it... although it is not obvious to me how changing a single value could result in the observed behavior. I would expect that it would either work without issue, fail to work completely or fail and revert to a default, but you say that the change is preserved. Thus, it's probably something else.

 

Went from 1.1.3 to 1.2.4 and didn't have any issues. Running AHCI as well

 

Also went from 1.1.3 to 1.2.4 without any issues. I was on AHCI too. I disabled SpeedShift (through Throttlestop) before updating BIOS though to play it safe, and reenabled SpeedShift after the BIOS update. All settings seems to be intact. I am on the latest (official) Creator's update.

 

I'm the person mentioned in original post.
For the record: I was on 1.1.3 and AHCI mode, no SpeedShift enabled

 

Have been away for a week, have Dell finally gotten a test environment of their own instead of just shipping it to the customers and let us do it for them?

 

I guess test environment was a bit much to expect :|

 

Perhaps the issues are related to the modified bios that enables Speedshift?

 

It doesn't look like it -- if you look at a few posts above yours, it also happens without SpeedShift. At this point, I would guess it is some subtle hardware difference.

 

Hardware difference in a BIOS update?


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Based on the posts I don't think there is any correlation between BIOS bricking and SpeedShift here

 

The same BIOS update applied to different hardware. For example, we know that Dell uses at least three different SSDs (the Samsung, the Toshiba and the LiteOn). They could also be using RAM of different brands and possibly (though much less likely) also different variants of most other internal system components. It could be any one of these things or perhaps something else altogether. Dell hasn't pulled or modified the file on their site so I suspect it is relatively rare.

 

Ah, you mean SUPPORT for new hardware?

 

Wrong

 

via Imgflip Meme Generator

 

I put it here...
Latest XPS 9560 BIOS (1.2.4) may brick notebook

"Dell's most recent BIOS for the XPS 9560, version 1.2.4, seems to be causing many notebooks to become unbootable after upgrading.Ironically, the update (which is for some reason still available on Dell's site days after the problem was reported to the company) says that it will improve the Thunderbolt Adapter Boot feature."

What good is to report problems, when the response is as it is?

 

because owners of warranty can use that as proof that Dell were informed and didn't act so they can claim a free repair.

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To chime in, I had the same experience. Applied the update, and the laptop hung on the Dell splash screen. Same as in the OP, F2 and F12 didn't do anything, and the first time, holding Fn claimed it was going to do a Diagnostic Boot, but never did anything either. Fortunately, I tried booting while holding Fn one more time, and that time it did as mentioned in the OP: rebooted once more, and then finally got in to Windows.

 

XPS15/4K/32GB/1TB(samsung), build date 16/03/2017, no mods
BIOS 1.2.4 applied without incident and system boots normally.

 

Dell finally replied 9 days later. One was not amused.

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XPS 15 9560 / 7700K / FHD / 512GB (Samsung) / 16GB owner here - I flashed from 1.0.3 to 1.2.4 last night without a problem what so ever.

Liam.

 

XPS 15 9560 / 7700K / FHD / 512GB (Samsung) / 16GB - I flashed from 1.1.3 to 1.2.4 this morning without a problem, it rebooted immediately.