AW15 / 17 R2 BIOS A05 (CPU Fix?)

There's only two ways I can think of to fix it --
A. Disconnect the internal battery for the laptop to MB and the MB Bios battery.
B. Clean install of system without the Dell/Alienware bloat stuff from respawn recovery. IE by going to Microsofts creation media for your windows 8 type to usb flash drive.

I had this issue where after Bios update and reboot (every time I would reboot), the system would freeze, each fan would spin max RPM for 5-10 seconds each. Clean install fixed this issue. I believe your issue and mine are caused by a service running from "Dell Support" App.

 

Screenshot (1) by David Kirchik posted Jul 3, 2015 at 1:15 PM

I also got XTU you work work from first removing "Dell Support" from my system and in registry and in HKEY/LocalMachine. I could finally get it to install.

I also have a 240w PSU; the 970M would throttle like there was no tomorrow with the 180w psu

 

Does anybody had a look to the temperatures under A05?
From what I read on a cheaply translated german forum, it seems that dell did not change the fan profile and people flash back to A00 again....

Did they just repair the sleeping mode issue in this bios or what?
If true, after 2 months or so of development, what a joke....

We are under a heatwave in western europe and my room temp is exceptionally high (28-30C) and I cannot really play the keyboard is just boiling, even with A00 :/
I never had any issue with my m17x r3, even OC and during heat waves.

I just hope it will break before the end of the 3 years guarantee to get a new version as an exchange (if they go back to sturdy laptop conception of course)

 

WOW! This conjures up an impression of anti-customer conspiracy and diabolical underhandedness beyond anything I might have in a bad dream.

What the heck are these nut-jobs doing? They go from being world-class leaders in the gamer and performance enthusiast niche market(s) to devious boneheaded losers in two blinks of an eye.

This kind of over-the-top Nazi stuff just makes me want to puke. How dare they intentionally interfere? Just who the hell do they think they are, anyway?

I find it difficult to see how Dell Support software preventing the installation of XTU could be an accidental blockage. It could be, but I suspect it is intentional. It is consistent with how they have intentionally crippled everything in the BIOS. This is not the Alienware we grew to love and appreciate over the years. It is impossible to endorse a brand pulling Hitler control freak shenanigans like this.

This is definitely not your fault and we truly appreciate having you here, Brother Porras. Wouldn't it make more sense to just discontinue the inadequate 180W AC adapter and make the necessary 240W AC adapter standard equipment? They are wasting money, generating unnecessary technical support tickets, frustrating and alienating customers by selling machines misconfigured this way. (This is a rhetorical question, not one I expect you to have an answer for.) It's like they are intentionally doing all sorts of things to make buying an Alienware notebook an undesirable experience, and one that nobody would want to repeat. I know that's probably not true, but it looks like it, and feels like it, from this side of the fence.

It's hard to see how posting anything at Dell IdeaStorm is actually a good idea. There have been probably a half dozen idea submissions in the last couple of years that are specific to the Alienware product line, most of which had something to do with fixing design deficiencies. All have been acknowledged, but I cannot identify a single one that has been acted upon and surfaced later as a fix or enhancement. That sends a message to customers that shouts, " We hear what you want, we know what want, but we don't care."

 

New engineers perhaps at Dell? Young recent graduate engineers who have grown up with only ipad / Chromebooks and think these are the future... They might not have been familiar with anything other than such garbage .

 

Maybe so. If that is true, they need to clean house... fire some hiring managers and the idiots in the HR Department for employing so many of the wrong people.

 

When you see what they are capable of; You're absolutely right. It's a incredibly big change from the ok 2013 models and to the latest crippled models.

 

It's all about the bottom line. I'm sure AW's hands are tied. I truly believe they(AW) want to give us what we want but mommy won't let it happen. It's a shame really. I'm pretty sure if Michael Dell was privy to what's going on, he would veto some of these bean counter idiotic money saving implementations they have going on right now.

I bet because they originally sent 180W PSU's with these systems, they will never "correct" the BIOS to stop the throttling. It would cost them to much money to ship everyone a 240W PSU. And, from what I've read on a few forums, the 240W was never fully validated across the globe. So......we are stuck with manually turning on fans and using TS.

Cheers!

 

It is not difficult to release something that is better than the new line. It had not been that much more expensive to deliver something that's much better.

 

Well, none of it really matters at this point. What is done is done. It's too late for rationalization, apologies or excuses that fix nothing. We're done unless or until they actually release something truly amazing in the future that has no traces of being crippled trash. If it's not unlocked in every aspect and able to accommodate heavy overclocking on CPU and dual GPU, then there is no future for the Alienware brand.

 

This was a pain for me to figure out. When I would do an AlienRespawn, the inability to install XTU remained. Fresh install from windows media creation for 8.1 allowed it to install. I went through fresh install, add a Alienware app and try to install XTU. when I got to Dell Support. Failed to install. I looked or changes. Once I removed those changes XTU Installed fine. There are two versions of Dell Support. The one from earlier this year and an update to it. That update to Dell Support added those registry and Local changes. If you have XTU installed before that update, XTU will still work, just won't install.

For both of those Quotes.... Its not, or wouldn't be to difficult to write into the bios the Fan Profile from A00 and a check unlock (sort to speak) for a 180W or 240W PSU in the bios while it goes through POST. If you have the 240W PSU the bios would allow changes in CPU/GPU -- have the 180W it remains "locked".

My first Semester of college we learned how to do that...

 

So has anyone gone back to A00 then?

 

Spoiler: KILL IT (AW) WITH FIRE !!!

There should be a sticky that all people who are in buying these crippled machines paying huge sums of cash that, Buy Clevo machines at a huge discounted price with moar perf, moar UX satisfaction, No tech-nazi practices.

By doing so the sales would plummet and this BS will be incinerated. It's like a deadly virus - BGA, M$ lockdown etc, no place for these diseases in the enthusiast bracket. Time to kill Alienware from every possible scenario once and for all and this should be a lesson to all those false marketing BS companies, But Alas !! the core of the cancer is not these corporations, It's the Users

 

I agree wholeheartedly with the last comment in your spoiler. Let's not limit the hate to Alienware. I'm not happy about it one bit since Alienware is a brand I have known and loved for a long time, but to be fair ALL NOTEBOOKS using BGA CPU and GPU are junk. None of them should be purchased by anyone that considers him/her self to be an enthusiast. As long as people keep drinking the Kool-Aid, the OEMs will continue to churn out this stuff at an alarming rate. If BGA machines are allowed to rot and grow obsolete on warehouse pallets and retail shelves, the industry will change and do whatever it takes to get the cash flowing again. They can only get away with whatever consumers tolerate.

 

Is it possible to influence Clevo to make something really good when the updated desktop processors now being released? Clevo should seen All the hate about crippled BGA hardware in Crapple thin laptops... Then maybe they see that there are many who want something different than all the garbage that is now being produced by the major companies.

 

Oopsie. Posting error.



...but yeah. HQ chips suck.

 

I believe the same brother Fox. We've talked about this a lot with the engineers and hopefully that'll happen for the next line of laptops.

About ideastorm.com, I know it might seem like they don't really pay attention, but they do when they have those and have our comments internally to back it up. Say, I have 100+ comments of people who need that + many votes on ideastorm on a related thread... Then I can push a lot more than just giving them my comments.

Edit: Removed last part of the comment due to a recent change in the policy about this. Contact local support for details on this.

 

Not for the next line. The current line must repaired first...

Even if it works fine for 90 % of the time, it is suppose to be an high end and expensive product (3000 euros)

I cannot understand why we should beg on this ideastorm things to see the machine working as it should.
when i say as it should the minimum would be to meet the statements in the advertising on alienware website.....
full throttle laptop...........

 

So at this point which BIOS version is the best option?

 

A00 IMO

 

I want to be crystal clear. Do not even bother with those idea storm things. All you are doing is telling DELL what options they need to make unavailable unless you pay for them, i.e subscription or elitist only, they will basically, do what they have always done. Gather analytic that show what you want, what you are most attracted too, and then charge a premium for it. They will begin to make what you want, harder to get, unless you are willing to pay exponentially more for it. They are dirty, they know it, making money is like waging war, there is no being nice. You want performance, then shut your mouth and be quiet about it, go where you can get it, but do not advertise it, in the end, that emotional attachment you have, is being further exploited, and they are collecting our tears in little jars to be prized and analysed.

Since they are in this to make money, not some charity, letting them know how you think, feel, react only strengthens them, and their resolve. They were right to buy the Alienware brand, they have crushed it. It presented an opposition, and instead they have exploited it and us through it, because we let them know we liked it. That's the damage caused by intelligence based on our efforts to cause a change. All we can do to help, is literally fund a change, convince everyone of two things. Go AMD, and Go Clevo. (Again Eurocom has both, for the best price).

AMD has been making some leaps and bounds with the new stuff they came out with. Also, the things we're trying to fight for with nVidia is all uphill battles. AMD offers the equivalent of G-Sync for free, and there are monitors out there that work with it, galore. MUCH MORE then nVidia. Silly, but seems no one knows.
There are WAYYYY better and faster laptops out there, that are much cheaper and work much better then Alienware. You can hav e a Desktop Graphics card work through this : http://www.ebay.ca/itm/111682179200?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

There, it works, i've tried it, and I have a 970 working on my M17X-R4 keep in mind, I also have a 980M inside. Both are about the same performance. Messed up, right ? You can get that working on an M17X-R1-3 even. Alienware knew this, and tried to make something like the graphics adapter (Which has been done plenty of times by many companies, like ASUS and MSI)

Anyways, it works even better with AMD cards. They take up less bandwidth while running faster. They have it right.

 

Dude, Eurocom notebooks look awful... also, what about the benefit of doubt?, Maybe they screwed up this generation of AW but that doesn't mean they can't go back to what made AW laptops awesome in the first place...

 

Its 4 generations they have progressively been screwing up, everything we voice them NOT TO DO, they do. Literally, they do EXACTLY what we have been asking them NOT to do. I can not explain it better then that. Its for a reason. The M15X had the benifit of Doubt, so did the M17X-R1, and R2.

Eurocom look the same as XoticPC, or Sager, or ORIGIN , EON etc... they are all Clevo's with slightly different quality parts in the interior.

 

With Bga hardware? You are joking. LoL

 

Thanks for posting, so I don't have to waste my time on this bios.

 

Strange how this laptop keeps getting good reviews.... Just getting mine for a GREAT price, and testing it as soon as I get it. Any issues and it's an instant RMA. But come on... If somebody doesn't care about changing their CPU or GPU down the road, this laptop can't be THAT bad...

Right?

 

Mmm, not if you are looking at performance results. If you want the diminutive form factor and are fine with the deficiencies, then buying whatever makes you happy is all that really matters. Those are personal decisions that require no apologies or explanations to others with different opinions.

Professional reviews are often worthless and frequently misleading. Professional reviews are frequently biased, reflect lack of technical skills (at least at the enthusiast level) and personal preferences of the person doing the review. If your preferences are in sync with those of the reviewer, it might turn out nice. If not, it can have a less than happy ending. The best buying choices are usually based on reported experiences of multiple expert end users, along with their critical feedback and their optimized performance results. Nobody sells laptops that are truly performance optimized and all you can see from most professional reviews is their personally biased out-of-box, down and dirty test results.

Experienced PC enthusiasts do care about changing their CPU and/or GPU down the road. Ability to do performance upgrades and to perform basic repairs are important to them. That's why these machines have lost their appeal for some folks. Sometimes casual gamers morph into experienced performance enthusiast end users later on and only wish they had not been so short-sighted earlier in their journey.

 

I firmly stand buy my personal review = best 15 inch laptop in the world, no competitors at all. Is it perfect? Nothing ever is..........

 

Some don't like processor throttling... Some don't like to replace the entire motherboard if the processor or graphics card fails. The motherboard will be damn expensive to replace or difficult to obtain after the warranty has expired. Easier and cheaper to just swap the processor or GPU if same happens. Also much easier to obtain / purchase only processor or GPU after the warranty has expired. Many desires to keep a laptop longer than the warranty lasts.

 

LOL I won't have any money down the road to upgrade for the next 4 years, especially not with a $10'000 tuition (and that's just the tuition).

But I get what you mean. NotebookCheck's review seemed pretty thorough, but in the end long term usage still means much more. Like I said, one fatal issue will deter me from buying another Alienware until they prove themselves worthy of my near $2000. Thanks for the reply, though today I don't consider myself an enthusiast (tech is a small hobby of my many).

 

Yeah, couldn't really find much else other than 960m laptops or lower worth buying in my price range.

Edit: Except the Eurocom M5 Pro... My next go-to laptop if this one goes to s***

 

Yeah it's really the only quality 15 inch (most popular laptop size) that has the 980m. The Clevo that you refer to does, but the case quality is very cheap and rattles. I bought one, before the 2015 Alienware launch, and returned it due to its inferiority.

 

It is like being totally satisfied with a Bugatti limted to 200 km per hour because the engine overheat.
One could say that he is satisfied because anyway there are speed limitations on the road....
better buying a toyota in that case

 

Glad to see another BIOS update which does not address the true problems with the machine.

A+ Dellienware.

 

Dell know for certain that there is no need for an updated bios that work better than those they have already launched. They believe that they have done their job. Now it is fully focused on a crippled bios for 2015/2016 models that come this fall / spring. LoL
Dell does not focus on the current model now. They have all focus on the next model that come later this year / spring. Become these models to be launched just as crippled? Who knows.

 

So what should I use to test the throttling issues? Meaning benchmarks, monitors and stress tests?

 

Run Wprime 1024 (choose 8 threads) and Heaven simultaneously and monitor with Xtu or Hwinfo. Wprime, xtu bench, Cinebench11.5 for the processor and 3Dmark11, 3DMark Vantage, 3DMark suite, Heaven for the gpu.

 

Thanks, I'm already thinking about getting the Eurocom right now, but we'll see. I'm getting the AW in my hands next week, so I'll make my decision by next Friday.

 

Anybody have news on AO6? LOL

 

Why wait for something which might be a disappointment? Dell is Dell. LoL

 

Hello, i would like to ask for Help i was requesting Free 240W PSU from Korea DELL support, but they was just saying it not free support is not possible and they want only Sell it whole behavior of local support was just caring for selling it not giving me new PSU, i even sent them link http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/SLN295814 about that issue and requested new and they was just making excuse like, its not on the supported list etc... i did effort contacted alienware US to get ID's of the parts and make them contact koreans is possible to preplace 180W by 240W after was koreans ignoring more than month and in the end it was new excuse sorry this is not free support and only caring how to sell it, i paid for next buisiness day DELL PRO support, but they even did make effort to come on site and try do something just excuses. Deeply dispointed by behavior of local support in Europe i had excellent experience with Dell,but korea is way darker story. Sorry for my english I am not native.

 

Are these problems also happening on the current M17?

 

idk about you guys but running A05 or A04 my laptop gets hot like ALL THE FIRES OF HELL......

I sit with my laptop on my lap with word open and my temps are just absolutely stupid..........it literally burns my leg through my shorts or jeans.......like a serious almost smoldering burn.

its so hot idk if i can even consider it a LAP-top still.........

im currently sitting here with just chrome open and look at my temps.

Specs are 4710hq with gtx 980M with 4k display...........

 

Are you blocking the intake fans with your lap? It is considered a "laptop", but it's really a portable desktop replacement kind of thing. However, I've had it on my lap for more than half an hour and everything is fine.

 

I have early 2015 Alienware 17 R2 and yes it still happening

Ask Support to repaste it and also try clean exhaust from fans or ask also for inside cleaning, if you still have warranty.

 

Is this the best Dell can do ? Dell is delivering crippled laptops. How many Aw owners will never come back to Dell ? It's not you. The problem is Dell. Dell must fix this problem before it's to late. None high end laptops shall Trottle like this. The new Aw line is crippled.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/bios-a05-cpu-not-turbo-boosting.778514/#post-10041994

 

It took me one year to decide to buy an Alienware. When I went on to buy it I realised that there are all these issues with the hardware/bios combos. Anyway I ordered the 15 inch with the 980m and yes, the laptop idles at 62 degrees and it is pretty hot. Instead of playing games, I am spending all my time checking bioses, forums and checking termal/power throttling. I wish I got the 240w adapter but the UK support didn't want to sell me the lapotp with the 240w. I had to buy it with the 180w. They were saying that the UK model has the 180w because of the battery capacity... non-sense.

 

Now I am on bios A04 and I am afraid of updating to A05. Maybe I will downgrade to A00 and see if idle temperature is more reasonable.

 

When are you all going to get tired of this and complain? I wrote a thread regarding complaining. If a bunch of people experiencing the problem all complain at the same time this can get handled. It must be done in a planned way. I experienced this exact thing with the M15x. They ended up having me test different video cards (MXM slot at the time) and after much time they flat out admitted it was a design issue that couldn't be resolved and sent me a M17x r3. Now it took me from Jan to May and a lot of people on here backing me up before this took place. One person here and there complaining doesn't even give them the big picture of this issue. First step I would say is everyone doing a Dell BBB complaint. All at the same time. Complaints in numbers at the same time is what will get some action here. If not then I guess we just have to take it. Please get motivated people.

 

They told me there is not covered in warranty and i need to buy it. Well i feel i never buy Dell again in Korea after 4 months of demanding what i am supposed to get.