BIOS A08 was released on 6/15/2009 with the following fixes:
Enhance graphic controller performance.
Enhance system memory performance.
Has anyone tested it or do we have any additional info?
My Studio XPS 13 (M1340) freezes every now and then, getting to an unusable state, and the HDD LED stays continously lit during the period. This condition lasts for minutes (more than 2, one time I got a 10 minute freeze!), and then the system gets back to normal. No BSOD, no error message, nothing. During this "frozen state" I can't do absolutely nothing: can't ALT-TAB windows, system doesn't respond to mouse clicks, not even CTRL-ALT-DEL works. After the system resumes to normal condition all key presses and mouse clicks done during the frozen period are "interpreted", as if they had been queued while the system was frozen.
I'm running Vista Ultimate 64 bit (even did a fresh install). The HDD is a Western Digital WD3200BJKT. There's no clicking sound whatsoever, as a matter of fact I can't even hear HDD activity during these freezes, it is just the HDD LED that gets continously lit (i.e. no blinking).
I called tech support in Brazil, upgraded the BIOS to v A11 and did a thorough HDD test while in the call. HDD passed each and every test. Because of this the tech support guy refused to authorize service on the notebook, saying it is a software-related issue.
I'm waiting for my Windows 7 upgrade kit to arrive, hoping that this is an issue with Vista. I'd appreciate any suggestions.
Specs:
* Intel P9600 processor
* 4GB RAM
* WLED display
* NVIDIA GeForce 9500M
* 320MB, 7,200RPM hard disk (WD P/N: WD3200BJKT)
* Dell 1510 WiFi
* Dell 370 Bluetooth
* Vista Ultimate 64 bits
I am about to purchase the XPS Studio m1340 with the following features. Can the current owners please help me out with some info? Does your laptop get very hot only when you run high end games or does it get hot even when browsing as well?
Features:
* 13.3 inch Widescreen Display
* Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz, 3MB cache, 1066MHz FSB)
* 4GB DDR3 RAM
* 320GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
* Vista Home Premium 64-Bit Operating System SP1
* 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9500M Graphics Card
Well i currently have a m1330 best laptop ive ever owned. It serves as my only computer. I have the 9cell which is awesome. I take it to class all day and down to the lab to take data on.
I dont play many games any more but id like to be able to if i wanted to. I mainly use it for internet browsing, listening to music, school work (excel, word, etc.), and occasional games.
The deal is my HD went on my m1330 and my mom has always liked it. so ive decided to fix the hd and hand it to her...
she currently has a 17'' laptop that she hates lugging around. I know i hated my 9300 for the same reason... 12lb monster. Im looking to spend around $1000
I can get the m11x built on dell epp with a 1.3 dual core. 4gb ram. 1gb video. 500gb HD for only $1050
OR i can pick up a m1340 on ebay since they are not on the website anymore for some reason... with a 2.5 dual core. 320-500gb hd. 4gb ram. and either a 9500M or 210M card.
On my invoice is says that
Display: 13.3in WXGA (1280x800) - White-LED Display with TrueLife (thinner & brighter)
Camera: Integrated 2.0 Mega Pixel Camera with Facial Recongnition Software (Software install, no media)
Shouldn't it be CCFL = 2.0 and WLED = 1.3 or am I missing something?
If Dell has made a big mistake like this, should I then take advantage of the situation and demand compensation, because "I thought" it really was a 2.0 webcam and not a 1.3 installed in my laptop.
I ran the other diagnostic accessed prior to boot up and it reports SMART is good.
I have an ST950042 0ASG. The Bios reports eSATA-NONE. Device manager reports it as SCSI. Anyone know what is going on.
I hate to call Dell at this point for fear they will automatically want to replace the HD or even try to have me send my laptop in.
I read somewhere that a 1640 user had a similar scenario going on and that they removed the Nvidia drivers and used the Win7 generic. How do I know what drive I really have.
Is this a on going problem. The drive is suppose to be a 500GB 7200rpm SMART drive.
I bought a 1340 very recently with a GPU. when i checked its display adapter properties its showing that its has got approx 1GB memory in it (GPU MEMORY) But GPU comes with 256 MB dedicated memory.
I want to know whether it is sharing my system memory? if it is sharing Please tell me how can i stop it from sharing my system memory. it is sharing approx 856 MB of system RAM.
I checked it when i'm NOT using any heavy graphics applications or games
I was wondering if any of you knew if it was possible to change the stock dell 1515 wireless card with a real card like intel's 5300 ? (the same one you can find in the 1640)
I'm asking because i want to install linux on my lappy and besides having crappy performance, those dell cards are not really compatible with linux.
Since awhile my screen use to bother me when i tried to open it more or less then 90°...from time to time it use to close down and I had to close the lead and open it again verry slowly, under 90° to be able to see the screen that was acceptable to me untill this week when this trick didn't work and now my screen is black all the time .....
View 1 Replies View RelatedMy warranty on my SXPS m1340 expires soon. I started a system exchange two weeks ago and I'm getting a replacement system. This will be my second replacement, I've had various problems with my system. I don't want this system exchange to arrive without a warranty. I recently chatted with dell for a warranty extension and for a 1 year extension it cost $421.75. I said that's a little high and the agent called me and offered me $320.20 with a $75.00 gift card urging me to take the offer as it is "Limited". I told the agent to call back later. Should I take the 1 year warranty for $320.20 with the gift card or still try and play hardball with Dell. I definitely need to buy a warranty extension, I cant even count how many issues I've had with my system.
*Do these quotes include taxes?
The thing they call "edge to edge glass" which is really just plastic above an ordinary screen. The thing is, that the screen under that edge to edge plastic is a nice anti-glare screen, no kidding! You can see this if you take your laptop in sunlight and tilt it the right way.
So what's happening is you're getting the worst part of an anti-glare screen (reduced contrast ratio) plus the worst part of a glossy screen (unless you have a really pretty face).
I took the plastic thing off, cut along the black/clear border, pulled out the middle, and stuck the centerless border back on the laptop.
Result? THIS SCREEN IS FANTASTIC. Yeah ok, of course I would say that. But if you knew me, you'd know that was way out of the ordinary and really meant that THIS SCREEN IS FANTASTIC.
One thing you may not have considered is that the screen in its default position has yet another flaw, both sides of that glossy plastic thing are glossy, so some of the light coming from the screen is reflected back to the screen, and as you know light reflected onto the screen has a yellowish tint. That is my guess as to why the whites on this screen are really really white now, and the screen is much brighter. This also explains why other 300nit screens used to look so much brighter than this.
I will have more pics when I am able to charge the battery to my good camera. If anyone has any questions about removing that plastic thing I'll be happy to answer your questions, it's actually pretty easy. For those interested, here is how I did it:
1. I removed the "star" head screws, this was accomplished not with a special star head screw driver, but an ordinary flat head precision screw driver.
2. Put some paper over a hacksaw blade to avoid scratching, wedged it under the plastic near the top where the camera is, and snapped out the first of the several lock-in points on along the top edge. I proceeded to detatch the rest of the top of the screen in this way.
3. Both the left and right sides were held on mostly by adhesive, the very edge point locks in slightly, but the efforts removing these sides are focused mainly on separating the adhesive bond.
4. I pulled upward on the plastic and it came right off, there seems to be no adhesive or lock-in points on the bottom side.
5. Using the center of the screen as a test area, I tested several cutting utilities and decided on the utility knife. To my surprise, the plastic was about 1mm thick.
6. I clamped the screen down to the table, with a straight edge positioned 1mm inward of the black line, to give headroom for errors.
7. I cut along these lines, and repeated step 6 for each side, and pushed out the center to reveal the border piece that now resembled a common laptop screen enclosure border.
8. I used a medium grit sand paper to bring the cut lines to meet the black lines, and finished it off with a fine grit sand paper.
9. I applied some electrical tape to the area between the edge of the screen itself, and the edge of the laptop on the right and left sides because there was light leakage, and then popped the border back on and screwed it down.
Found the charger! Here's the high res shots. They do *some* justice to the screen quality.
I went insane and cut along the black-to-clear border of the m1340 screen thing. The thing they call "edge to edge glass" which is really just plastic above an ordinary screen.
The thing is, that the screen under that edge to edge plastic is a nice anti-glare screen, no kidding! You can see this if you take your laptop in sunlight and tilt it the right way.
So what's happening is you're getting the worst part of an anti-glare screen (reduced contrast ratio) plus the worst part of a glossy screen (unless you have a really pretty face).
I took the plastic thing off, cut along the black/clear border, pulled out the middle, and stuck the centerless border back on the laptop.
Dell released a new BIOS for the Studio 1558 bringing it to A03.
http://support.dell.com/support/down...&fileid=373367
The fixes say enhance system stability and video quality, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Just got a new Studio 1537 laptop. Everything works great.
The bios on my laptop says its A07 when the lastest bios on the Dell website is A05.
I'm considering buying a studio 15 with P8400 which definitely supports intel VT.
Question,
is there an option in the bios to enable it? Can anyone with a studio 15 and a VT supported processor confirm or deny this option exists?
So the story is, the HD3650 is underclocked on the 1735's from 600mhz to 450mhz.
I'm having no luck saving the original BIOS from the GPU so I can use RBE to overclock.
I'd be up for a copy of a successfully oc'd BIOS file also, 600mhz core.
Tried Vista and XP, atiflash, winflash, gpu-z, none of them can save the BIOS for some reason...
Before minute I just checked Dell's Web site and I found New BIOS Available:...
View 9 Replies View RelatedI hope I am using the right part of this forum to ask this... Heres my problem: I bought new Dell studio XPS 1340 (CPU: I Core2Duo T9300, GPU: GeForce 9500M (GF 9400MG + GF 9200MGS, HDD: 320GB, 7.2k, RAM: 4GB)
and I had some troubles configuring my graphic cards in SLI mode. I read somewhere, that BIOS upgrade from A07, which I have, to A11 will help with this problem.
I downloaded A11 BIOS update, but the setup wont recognize my current BIOS. When I load into the BIOS I see, that its really rev. A07, also it has header from Dell inc.
I just got the SXPS1640 and have been playing a game that is getting a bit warm after a few hours of play then the game started loading slower.
I was doing some reading and found that you can update the bios to A07? I found the download, but wanted to make sure that the computer doesn't already have this and how to install and it too.
can someone with the Intel 4500MHD graphics test this?
Reason why I need a quick reply by 3pm PST tomorrow is that after that time I'm going to send my Laptop to Dell for them to investigate the fan issue.
THE PROBLEM:
fan turns on too often. tried undervolting, using arctic silver 5, switched from t9550 to p8400 already
THE FAVOR:
if any of you 1555 owners can boot into the BIOS and stay in there for 5 minutes, can you just observe if teh fan goes off or not? Mine does, even after a cold boot (when i haven't used the laptop within the last hour).
JUST GO TO DELL DOWNLOADS
View 10 Replies View RelatedDoes anyone know how to reset the bios on the XPS Studio 1640?
I can't seem to find the required jumpers. I've tried to only remove the CMOS battery for a while but that didn't work
Studio 1555 dead after trying to update bios from A8 to A9
So today I found that Dell had an update for the current A8 BIOS on the Studio 1555 that I bought in May of 2009. Just a quick comment, I have had nothing but problems with this laptop. I got it with VISTA 64bit, which you all know sucks balls!!!! So once Win7 came out I bought a 500gb HD and Win7 Ult. 64bit, but as I said, it doesn't seem to be just one thing, its the blue tooth, or the network card, or explorer keeps crashing and restarting by itself constantly, especially yesterday. Plus I've been trying to use this laptop as a dual boot with Ubuntu and Win 7.
So I found the BIOS update today, DL it and closed everything and then started the update. Says its going trough sectors and there are 39 of them, when it got to #20 the thing just stops, everything then freezes after trying to open a new window, ctrl-alt-delete doesn't work, nothing works. So I take the battery out and then of course I go to turn it back on and its dead or bricked or what ever you want to call a $1300 piece of on my coffee table.
So after that I found that a few other people have had the same problem and some people haven't, but I have yet to find someone who has fixed it. So I brought up the ol' Dell Chat support and of course they tell me"oh my supervisor says that your hard drive and mother board are dead now".....!!!!!! I asked how that can be with something they post and let the end user install, now my computers dead, I'm supposed to wait a few days for a tech to call me a schedule an appt. to come to my home and replace the "motherboard and hard drive" according to the chat support.
First of all I am about to smash this thing with a freaking hammer, I have been with PCs forever and when I was looking to buy a laptop, my wife said, don't buy another PC, all you do is spend days and days at your desktop when something goes wrong with windows, she of course is a MAC person and has always used them, but I said "oh no hun, this new Win7 is going to be great and Dell have great laptops" Holy on a shingle I was totally wrong and I will never buy another PC, it will be Macs from now on once I get a chance to buy a new laptop or desktop. But anyway, since Dell has about the test customer service I have ever experienced, I decided to post my conversation with the person from dell....enjoy, and by the way..... DO NOT INSTALL DELL STUDIO BIOS UPDATE A8 TO A9, YOUR COMPUTER WILL DIE.....I'm only kind of lucky since the computer is less than a year old and I have 2 years of onsite service if I need it. So anyway, here is my conversatation, take it as you will, but I would be very wary with this whole thing and Dell laptops in general, Dell, your company used to be all over the news and mags. because you were made by a smart guy who liked computers and wanted to give people what they really wanted when they needed to buy a new computer. Well I can tell you that ever since Dell came about as a company, all of that flash and glitter about their company, computers and people has faded so badly, these things might as well be sold in a vending machine, you think that when you spend $1300 you will get something really good. What a crock of crap...forget you dell, this thing is being sold ASAP after it is fixed......oh yeah heres my conversation for all you other dell studio 1555 people who need help or ammo in case their crappy customer service doesn't help you.
please for the sake of all of us, if you can and are willing, please read the doc I attached to this post which is the chat log between me and the Dell support person....we are all going to need help with this at some point if a simple BIOS update that is made to run in windows kills are computers!
i've set a HDD password in the bios just to see how exactly would it work, but now when i enter the BIOS, i have to option to clear the password.. it says HDD password frozen.
i can change the admin and user password, but i cant remove the HDD password... so now everytime i turn on my laptop, i have to enter my HDD password... in order not to get my thread closed for security reasons, ----------- THE PASSWORD IS KNOWN -------------
today I bricked my new 1645 when I was examing the BIOS for the 1647. The BIOS release 1647_A00.exe released this month automatically begins flashing on an 1645
and does not seem to check compatibility or confirm with the user before it updates.
The BIOS is completely incompatible with the 1645 to say the least, so be very careful if you download it on to a non-1647 system.
Dell is building a new system due to this really sad event. Rip XPS 1645 - December 5th 2009.
I just updated my laptop to bios A09 and it froze part the way through the update, needless to say the worst happened and the laptop no longer powers up ,
after some googling i have found others who have had this problem and have also bricked there laptops.
Please beware when or if you use this update as it could happen to you.
The good news is Dell are picking it up tomorrow and are replacing the motherboard under warranty
My laptop is Dell studio xps 16. i try to update bios from A11 to A12 and my laptop was crash during this update. and now my laptop can't boot to win. how to recovery bios of this laptop?
View 10 Replies View Relatedthe multimedia key in F array can be changed the priority in Bios. In default bios, the multimedia key is the main key,
while F arrray like f1, f2.... have to be pressed simultaneously with Function key. And I changed the default bios because I use F arrray usually.
But everytime I change laptop power from battery to adapter or adapter to battery and restart the laptop, the Bios is reset to the default.
Iupdated the lastest bios A08 and driver of the devices.
i have dell studio 1558 laptop. i want to update BIOS software.
so need steps in detail about updating BIOS software.
Yet again it seems that this problem apears in this forum.I have a Dell Studio 1535 with A0 Bios.I am desperate to unlock it as I have not input any password and it just appeared out of nowhere.
View -1 Replies View Related
