ozdude

Techs got mine apart currently. So will see shortly I guess. Getting new Corsair memory upgrade done while he's got it apart, will save me doing it later. Fingers crossed it all gets sorted, I should know pretty soon. Won't be much down time resulting if so.

On the bright side, for the first time in all the many Dells and Alienwares I've owned over last 10 years, I'm getting onsite repair- prob cause it's the first one that's gone down totally(my fault or otherwise). Not sure exactly when, but still I'm glad to not have to send it anywhere. Just got to make sure whatever local contractor muppet they send out doesn't think he's going to miraculously fix it without a new MB in his 'tool kit'. Also that he's not walking away with my GTX 680 or even upgraded WIFI if the tech is ill-equipped for the onsite repair. That would be more than a tad annoying...

I went too far the with 17x R4 blind flashing. I successfully blind flashed from the locked A09 to A05, as described. However, I was then stuck unable to get my WIN 8 boot drive working under that bios version, prob thanks to no UEFI. I tried to create a temp install just so I could flash back up to unlocked A09. I then ran into the installer complaining about GPT partitions no matter what I tried to do with my spare drive. I got really annoyed after a while of this, instead of thinking to perhaps pull out WIN 7 install disc and going that way, I went to try same method as Otsego did to see if I too could successfully brick the same way. Result was indeed total brick. So if anyone thinks total brick via blind flash of later bios after successful A05 downgrade is just bad luck, nope, it a certainty. First time I've ever seen a laptop or PC brick out totally like this. So back to old M14x R1 while the M17x goes back to Dell... That's what perils of being a hackintosh enthusiast on the side- I was that interested in unlocked bios, just for it's ability to switch discrete graphics.

Looking to try the bios and the drive bay mods. Hopefully I'm through the 'noob block' by now. I'm itching to get going! Again kudos on the great info hear guys!

I just found this site unexpected via mention of the modded bios on another forum. So much cool stuff her for the M14x! Love it!

This looks like a super cool mod. Could the key people who like to run dual OSes like myself would love. Think I'll be investing one and fitting an ssd!

I was pointed to this bios from the a post on the insanely mac site. Hopefully it does the trick.