BIOS Upgrade ruined my M11xR3

Backstory
I noticed that my battery life was 2-2.5 hours on max battery saving mode instead of the 6-7 hours I got when my laptop was new after trying to determine why I decided to buy a new battery. After installing the new battery the battery life seemed a little better but it still said 2.5 hours or so whenever you unplugged it. I thought maybe it needed to re-calibrate somehow I've seen some laptops have this feature in their bios, these apparently do not. A friend of mine suggested a BIOS update would probably reset anything and it's probably due for one anyway so I figured why not. So...

Problem
I updated my bios to version A05 from DELL's support website
Upon doing so my laptop would no longer charge "Plugged in, not charging" no matter what.
(I tried everything, took out the battery and held the power button a few times, read everything i could find on the internet etc. etc.)
In desperation I downgraded my BIOS to A04, still no charging, A03, A02, then finally A01 and charging magically started working again!

I figured I was back at square one, no harm done. Wrong...

Alternative Problem
The laptop stays at 8x multiplier no matter what.
(again hours of searching the internet, tried throttle stop, tried changing bios options, tried changing options in realtemp, etc. etc)
In desperation I tried bios A05 again, maybe I could at least play a game on AC before I sort this all out. After some messing around I got it to at least clock up to 1.6 (non turbo speed) but nothing I did could get it to clock to 2.5-2.6 as it did before all of this.

Currently
I'm back at A01 so I can charge my laptop but I'm completely at a loss here, I briefly looked for the cmos battery to try and clear the cmos but I didn't find it. Is there any easy way to properly clear the cmos? How hard is it to get to the backup battery? I loaded factory defaults plenty of times, but that's not quite the same thing.

I suspect my version of A01 BIOS is older than what dell had on the website but there was no option to back up the old bios before upgrading, if anyone knows where I could find another A01 besides what's on DELL's website I'd like to try it. Other than that I don't even know where to start.

Thanks,
-Kurt

 

That is very interesting.. I upgraded to A05 few days back and my biggest fear was bricking the machine as some others have done necessitating blind flashing.. luckily that didn't happen...

My battery seems to be charging ok, although the remaining time, even on 'power saver' seems to be shorter than before, but I could be wrong, since I repartitioned and reinstalled the hard drive from scratch.

Also, the turbo boost, that is very interesting. I have this gadget that shows frequency at all times and I haven't seen it exceed 1.5GHz since the Bios update and reinstall..

BUT, Skyrim plays at 30fps in 1920x1080 on HIGH (with a little graphics overclocking), so I am guessing whatever clock the proc is running at - it is just fine

cheers

 

Ironically I wasn't the least bit concerned about it, I've updated thousands of BIOSs over the years and this is the first time I've had an issue of any kind... Honestly I'd much rather have to blind flash it and have it work afterwards than these issues...

Since I immediately tried to solve the charging problem I don't know if the initial upgrade to A05 effected my CPU speeds I didn't notice until I'd downgraded back to A01.

 

I just tested my R3 after upgrading to A05 for full cycle battery discharge, and at 'power saver' it took about 2hrs.. Interesting, when I switched to "High Performance" profile time remaining estimate stayed the same, instead of decreasing?

 

Well I have good news!

I tried using the blind flash method to re-install A05 instead of DELL's exe and it was still stuck at 8x multi so after running through everything a few more times I got on the internet and started draining the battery so I could check if it would even charge this time. When I plugged the cord back in at 90% battery EVERYTHING suddenly worked! My clock speed jumped up, the battery started charging everything seems to be fine now, even the turbo frequency kicks up...

I hope nobody else has to deal with this issue but, unfortunately, if this does happen to anyone I have no real advice here, I don't know why it happened, I don't know why it works now. =C

I'll try to remember to reply back in a week or so if everything is still good, also if my battery life is back to what it was when new or still like it was.

 

let us know

 

Yeah, I'm just sitting out A05, with all the people complaining about bricking etc. rather just stay on A04, nice and safe. and working. Feeling hopeful dell will address this with a fix, until then not with a 10foot pole. Too high a risk bricking my only laptop lol.

 

I was in the same boat when flashed the Bios. I postponed doing it for about a year, but then I decided that it is better to have the latest, as it is probably they won't make any more updates after this one.

 

Still running flawlessly, my battery life still leaves something to be desired but at least it works. I'm considering getting a new SSD soon and if I do I'll be able to check if a fresh install will fix my battery life issues. I also may be able to get a lower power consumption SSD.

 

I finally found the source of my power draw! I'd been thinking that my battery life sounded like the Nvidia dedicated graphics were always on but I couldn't make out why. I finally realized that Real Temp was the culprit! If I disable GPU monitoring my battery life is back to over 6 hours, I can still use it for CPU temp monitoring with no ill effects. I guess I'll just bring up GPU-Z when I game or something, either way success!

 

That's great! At least you are now back to the normal usage. +1Rep for the finding!

 

Got my new RAM and SSD in and I'm seeing bigger numbers than ever!

 

So not only is my laptop still doing just fine, I tried out the unlocked A05 bios with no issues (besides not finding any advantage to using it) then switched back to the default A05. Still no recurrence of the previous issues. Also I bought another M11x R3 and updated it's A04 bios to A05 without incident.

I want to ensure that nobody is frightened off by this thread but rather if you have this strange issue don't despair, just mess with it a bit and everything will be fine.

 

good advice

 

Final answer to mystery?!

Well before I even posted this I saw that RealTemp was showing 62.5% clock modulation so I looked over ThrottleStop again and was able to lock it at 100%!

So although I have to intervene to make this all work now at least it works for now.