Dell Precision 7540 and 7740 Owner's Thread

I bought the 7740 with 64GB RAM. The only thing I did was to change the NVME it came with and use 4 x Samsung ones. I did not attempt to update without the NVMEs but a Dell Technician is scheduled for Friday to replace my motherboard.

I hope all goes well. I've had pretty bad experiences with these technicians where they broke things rather than fix them.

 

7740 owner here too. I can't seem to update my bios to 1.11.2 either. I have a dual boot(Linux + Windows) setup on my machine. My first attempt at flashing bios was initiated through Linux, however it got stuck at 5% for 1hr 30 mins. After forcing a shutdown, my partitions were corrupted and I was forced to reinstall my operating systems. Whilst I was in the midst of doing that, I figured I would try flashing bios through Precision_7X40_1.11.2.exe file. Welp, I am now currently 1hr in stuck at 0%. Looks like I am going to be reinstalling Windows again, provided that my motherboard doesn't decide to brick.

Overall, looks like a botched update indeed.

Oh and there are no aftermarket parts in my machine, they all came from the factory and the notebook is still currently in its original configuration, besides the fact that I had a dual boot operating system.

Update: Aborted the BIOS flash which was still stuck at 0% at the time of abort, booted to Windows successfully so at least the motherboard is still okay, as well as Windows did not get corrupted. Going to install my Linux partition and just do my best to ignore this BIOS update until a confirmation is released that the issue has been fixed.

 

@Soromeister @roycearnold @Haroldas

Is your model with a 4K screen? It seems that the issue is as funny as 4K screen crashing the BIOS update. When we connected our 7740s to 1080p external screens with the laptop lid closed, the update went through. With the internal 4K screen of the laptop, we had the same freeze issue.

 

Yes, my 7740 is indeed with an internal 4K screen. Going to try your method as well, cheers.

 

Yes, it's the model with 4k display. Unfortunately, I don't have any external monitors.

 

When I restarted my 7740 that was plugged into an external monitor via HDMI(whilst keeping the lid closed), the laptop simply displayed BIOS flash screen on its internal screen, with no signal going to external monitor. How did you guys force the external monitor to be the primary monitor? Did you completely disable internal monitor in Windows settings somehow?

 

Either disable Optimus / graphics switching (for the duration of this "experiment"), or connect the monitor via one of the USB-C ports (with an adapter).
I suspect with graphics switching enabled, you will only get the BIOS to display on a display attached to the Intel GPU ... the rear display output ports can only attach to the dGPU.

[Edit]
Also, if you're working from a cold boot, make sure that you shut the lid immediately after powering on the system because the BIOS will not switch displays dynamically after deciding which one to use.

 

Thank you for this, did the second suggestion where I used USB-C adapter to connect the monitor to the port, and it worked.

Also, as a result I finally managed to successfully flash BIOS and upgrade my firmware. In all honesty, not quite pleased that I lost my dual boot partitions due to such a funky update. Time to reinstall my Linux now.

Thanks for the help guys!

 

@Aaron44126 - I did install128gb Samsung 2666 RAM and 4x2TB 970 Evo Plus SSDs, but had the same problems even after reverting back to the factory parts. While waiting for the new mb, I tried a few more things to get emergency recovery working and finally got it to run with a single 8gb module and moved the original factory Micron SSD to slot 3. It recovered to 1.9.0, then I immediately updated to 1.11.2 with no problem. I put the new parts back in and now everything is fine. I do have a recovery partition on the new SSDs, but I'm not sure why the mb couldn't see it and couldn't see the original in the other slots.

 

I'm also unable to update to 1.11.2 on my 7740. Update hangs at 0% and requires complete power pull to restore operation.

I'm presently on BIOS 1.10.2.

Except for the SSDs, all hardware is as originally supplied by Dell

I do have a 4K screen

Fortunately the machine is working fine, thus I will skip this firmware until I get confirmation that the problem is solved.