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    xps m1330 bios / video driver mismatch

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by kabutar, Oct 13, 2009.

  1. kabutar

    kabutar Notebook Consultant

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    Weird problem here.

    I had bios A15 and nVidia drivers 185.66 (specifically for cool thermals). The fan kept turning on so I bit the bullet and flashed back to A11 which changed fan controls. All was good, but ran into some trouble which means I had to restore from an Acronis True Home 11 image.

    The image was taken while I had bios A15. I didn't think this would cause a problem - when I restored, the BIOS still said A11 when booting. But when I got into windows the fans were cycling from high to low RPM every 5 seconds - I'd read this is due to a BIOS incompatibility with the driver version (185.68 - this didn't change at all).

    I thought it might be the Acronis restore messing up the BIOS so I flashed back to A15, restored the image again (so that the BIOSes matched) and THEN flashed back to A11 only to find the same cycling fan problem. I only got rid of it once I reverted the drivers to 174.31.

    I can't figure this out because the 185.68 drivers were working fine with A11 before the restore - now no matter what I do, that combination causes fan craziness. Any thoughts? :S

    ... related to that: is it possible to flash the bios too many times? I've probably flashed it twice in the last year and a half, but today I flashed it about 10x what with all the issues I had and just now the computer hung on boot.
     
    kabutar, Oct 13, 2009
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  2. kabutar

    kabutar Notebook Consultant

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    Bump to see if anyone has any thoughts. Also, if nothing else, any ideas on whether it's possible to wear out the BIOS? :p
     
    kabutar, Oct 13, 2009
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