Clevo P6XXRS owners - DO NOT flash BIOS 1.05.07a/EC 1.05.05TR (hosted by XMG)

I want to put this out as a PSA for any owners of the P6XXRS line to NOT flash the above BIOS and EC that are available for download from XMG. I had updated to these in order to see if they would address the issues of messed up fan curves in my P670RS. I then noticed an issue with sleep mode and my external monitor.

As one of the last troubleshooting measures, I tried switching the machine to MSHybrid (Optimus) mode from discrete (NVIDIA only), and that's when the brown stuff hit the proverbial whirly thing. and that's when I observed something interesting. In this mode, the display works as it should. The dual-screen issue seems to be confined to the BIOS' discrete setting. I posted a couple videos as proof.

This is discrete mode:



And now MSHybrid:



Driver version doesn't seem to matter as it happened with 376.20, 376.60, 376.66, and 378.49. Hopefully the powers that be can get to the bottom of this.

 

That's very not good to hear.

Can you at least flash to another one?

 

Never try to downgrade to BIOS/EC with an older/different EC. It will instantly brick the system, without a chance of recovery in most cases.

 

I've downgraded EC with no problems at all but never try with BIOS.

Wysłane z Mi5

 

Hi All

I have excliated this to our BIOS team, they will intestigate and report back. If they had encountered any issues before releasing the BIOS and EC then of course they would have spoken to Clevo about it - but as far as I am aware the only XMG specific part of the BIOS is the XMG logo; therefore it's come straight from Clevo and should be the same as any other 1.05.07a version.

 

Thank you for the reply. Since we as end users have no pipeline to Clevo directly, and the BIOS is available for public download on your website, I figured it reasonable and prudent to reach out to you directly.

Please keep us apprised of your findings, and I have asked a moderator to edit the thread title to better reflect that the BIOS is merely hosted by you. I've tried to describe the issues as best I can, but if you need more information or clarification, please do not hesitate to PM me directly or continue to post in this thread.

 

@saturnotaku - Which BIOS version are you running with this XMG BIOS you flashed?

EDIT - Nevermind, I see it in the title. I'm going to poke around our R & D department about it.

 

Thanks a bunch. The dual-display sleep/wake issue is annoying, but the shutdown/restart lockups in MSHybrid mode are very concerning. Am I completely nuts to think that the BIOS and/or EC is responsible for these issues, especially since they manifested themselves on a completely clean Windows installation? Is there possibly some other troubleshooting step I missed?

 

Anytime.

I recall an old [BIOS] revision having a display issue when coming out of sleep, on both the RE and RS systems, when running on MSHYBRID that was addressed awhile back; although I haven't heard of any recent bugs, I wouldn't be totally shocked if this was another firmware bug.

 

That issue might have been related to the one that pegged a CPU core at 100% when connected to an external display in discrete mode. It was sorted in relatively short order. Hopefully this is something that can be replicated and fixed. I'd be happy to take a video and post it privately to my Youtube channel if need be. Just say the word.

 

I checked in on this: No problems reported from tech support (no end-user or resellers have the issue), and R & D has not found any such bug(s) with the current BIOS + EC.

What I can't speak for is if this is a modified BIOS + EC for XMG; the stock Clevo one should omit the "A" and "TR" suffixes.

 

And the versions noted in the title of this thread are the current ones your R&D folks have examined?

 

a = alpha
TR = TestRelease

 

Delete

 

It's not like they are forcing us to snoop around on their servers and flash everything we can find.
These releases are usually to target specific problems which user with certain configurations may experience and for their testing.

 

This firmware is supposed to address an issue with the flexicharge function not working, and it does indeed do that. I also thought that it would have additional fixes for the wonky fan curves, which again, seems to be the case; the fans don't seem to ramp up randomly as often as they did before. However, there appear to be some unitended side effects that I can't explain through any other means. I was concerned when @Prostar Computer said its R&D hadn't noticed any issues, but I still want to get confirmation from them that they are looking/have looked at the exact versions referenced here. And of course, XMG is still apparently on the case as well.

Just out of curiosity, how far along are you in creating your custom BIOS for these systems? I assume it's still weeks, or even months away.

 

Can you not go back to a previous BIOS/EC

 

I'd like to but there's a strong likelihood of bricking the computer if I do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

@saturnotaku

Nooooooooooo, not correct!

a = angepass = customised, it has our XMG logo on the splash screen

TR = whenever you see one of our EC versions with the suffix "TR" it means that it has our customised fan tables, it is never a test release.

Apart from these ammendments, this is a stock BIOS and stock EC.

As mentioned yesterday, our BIOS team has escilated this both internally and with Clevo. One initial suggestion is to try Nvidia driver 376.20 which you can download from our driver page in the XMG_P507 section.

 

Ooops...Sorry!

I am used to something else. e.g. like when we where recently working with them on fixing an EC2 bug Clevo labeled them '1.05.03a' (test) '1.05.03b' (test) etc...then in the end, once stable, it was pushed downstream as a full revision like 1.06.01.

 

Update: I managed to fix the shutdown issues in MSHybrid mode by disconnecting the primary and CMOS batteries to reset the BIOS and NVRAM.

With that sorted, I was able to do the display test in MSHybrid and observed something interesting. Here is a video illustrating the issue. The first video is with the BIOS in discrete mode using the XMG recommended 376.20 driver.



Now, here is the same test with the BIOS set to MSHybrid:



In MSHybrid, the machine behaves exactly as it should. The NVIDIA driver version doesn't matter. I saw the exact same behavior in both scenarios with 376.20, 376.60, 376.66, and 378.49.

Hopefully this will help the troubleshooting teams further. @Prostar Computer @XMG @Prema

 

A little late to reply to this, but yes: We're currently using these versions of the BIOS & EC (again, minus the "A" and "TR" suffixes). I asked tech support here to be on the lookout for suspect firmware, while R&D maintains that they have not experienced any issues personally or have had anything reported to them.

 

Another update/observation: Another thing the XMG BIOS seems to have fixed was a black screen during full-screen video playback while running in MSHybrid mode. Whether it was a local media file with VLC and Windows Media Player or streaming with YouTube, anytime I would enter full-screen, the audio would play but not the video. I could work around it in Chrome but that didn't solve it with MS Edge or the dedicated players. Now it works great.

The other thing I noticed regarding the dual-display problem is that the monitor comes on a lot faster when waking from sleep in MSHybrid than it does in discrete. I opened the laptop in MSHybrid, and the external monitor comes on almost immediately. In discrete, neither screen powers up or shows anything for a good 3-5 seconds, sometimes longer.

 

3.1 GB?

 

LOL, yeah that was fun to download, but the package includes one Intel and like 3 different NVIDIA drivers.

 

Tried discrete mode with the newly released 378.57 NVIDIA driver - same result. So I think we can definitively rule out drivers here.

 

Bumping back to the front of this forum to maintain visibility.

 

Hi, I've been following your posts about this issue and I can confirm that my P650RS-G behaves exactly as you describe with XMG bios version 1.05.07a and EC version 1.05.05TR. When it's set to output to external monitor only (discrete mode) and I wake it up from sleep, the built-in display turns on and shows a black screen, while the external monitor works as expected.

 

Hi, I'm going to tag @XMG here and can you please send them a PM/start a conversation, providing them with answers to the following questions:

The serial number should be on a sticker on the bottom cover of your system and start with NKP650. Thank you!

 

Done! Hopefully they can fix this problem...

 

Don't know who you bought your machine from, but you should probably reach out to their tech support as well, just to get it on the record. Provide them the link to this thread, and they are welcome to reach out to me directly (I'll PM you my email address) so I can direct them to the video documentation. I don't want the videos showing in search or in my subscribers' feeds, so I've marked them as private. The only way for others to see them is for me to email them the links.

 

Hi All

Please take a look through this post:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...s-owners-lounge.795090/page-521#post-10460186

Thanks