Force downgrade Alienware Area-51m Bios (or any alienware) to locked lower versions

I followed the instructions in the OP to downgrade the bios on my 15 r2 from 1.11.0 to 1.8.0 just to restore the beloved undervolting feature, went and formatted my flash drive using the dell diagnostic tool, double checked everything including the files on the flash drive, all good. after entering the recovery menu by pressing ctrl + esc the bios couldn't find any external device no matter which USB port i plug it in, I tried reformatting the flash drive to FAT filesystem and add the files on it manually but without any luck, after wasting some time searching for a solution i managed to get it done by adding the extracted bios image to the EFI partition of the c:\ drive, the exact path and folder of the image files must be: (your efi partition letter):\EFI\Dell\Bios\Recovery\ (in case yours doesn't exist), by default the Recovery folder must contain 3 files
*(BIOS_CUR.RCV) + (BIOS_PRE.RCV) + (BIOS_BIR.RCV)* as the name tells one of them is the current bios image and the other one is the pre version of it (dunno what BIR stands for), so i made 3 copies of the BIOS_IMG.RCV and named them according to the names above*, went and copied them to the recovery folder, restarted the pc to bios recovery, selected the flash bios option, the reflashing went smoothly, machine rebooted normally, checked for the undervolt and it's there, perfect!

PS: updating or downgrading bios must be done in order (means you should flash the version that is right below the one on your machine) just to avoid any corrupted bios drama whatsoever.

regards.

 

thats not true at all, i downgraded sucessfully from 1.13 to 1.5.0 , im sure something went wrong with your flashing.

 

Maybe, but at the time the BIOS was new and there was no one reporting issues as of yet. I wasn't going to try again and risk something even worse if it turned out the machine didn't like going back from 1.13. I think it's safe to say most people are avoiding 1.13 like a plague though, it's horrible for CPU performance.

 

So, I seem to be having trouble trying to downgrade my m15 R1's BIOS using this method. Everytime I hold Crtl + ESC, it goes straight to Windows, and selecting the USB drive manually doesn't work because it "Can't load kernel file". Am I doing something wrong?
Edit: Looks like I don't need this as the BIOS I wanted to downgrade went through fine the normal way.

 

Hi all, I have an alienware M15 i7 8750h rtx 2060.
Am stuck in 2.6.0 bios unfortunately.
Tried the method of copying the file on EFI partition 3times etc. Didn't work.
Tried the with bootable usb after doing all the steps mentioned, it won't access to bios recovery (I keep holding esc+ctrl) but nothing..
I am grateful if anyone would help with this.. It's burning when it has some demanding tasks

 

Hey all, I've grabbed a 17 r5 from eBay and repasted and temps are ok but it was on bios 1.11.0 so no undervolt. I've tried the first tutorial in this thread but getting no rom valid downgrade not allowed

I will try the two usb approach tonight but wondering as I've put in a new SSD no recovery image on it, does the bios run only from the USB?

What are my best options at a downgrade, I can live with the temps so wondering if worth the hassle. It's a 8750h 1070 QHD

Thanks

 

Thank you for this!

I reverted back to 1.5.0. I have verified bios version in system information in win 10 and at boot. Command center is still locked at 75c and cannot be modified. I have completely uninstalled AWCC and reinstalled, still locked on slider. After finding it dis not change, I did use asus tweak II to modify max to 87c and then verified in gpu-z that it had changed, seems to take just fine, yet in awcc slider is still 75c and locked. Any help is appreciated.