ratinox

In my experience, that option doesn't work properly if you have any third-party mouse drivers installed. Try removing all third party mouse drivers other than the touchpad driver.

[deleted] Ah, NVM. I see that you already have the SSD on the mSATA port. If it is already configured as cache then that's going to offer your best overall performance. Large data reads like game loads bypass cache so you won't see any benefit swapping the 500G disk for the Momentus XT. I have a Momentus XT in another notebook and I've resisted swapping it specifically because the gain isn't there and I don't need the extra capacity that much. If the mSATA SSD is 60G or bigger then you could configure it as a system drive. Windows 7 fits quite comfortably on a 60G volume. You could then swap in the Momentus XT as a data drive. This is something I've considered but the cost of the mSATA cards is still higher than I want to pay for the capacity.

Interesting. You have access to a larger pool of known bricks so I will defer to your experience with them.

In principle, yes it should. In practice, I don't know since I've never done it and I don't have the signing tools to make it happen. I have done the blind flash with stock A04 with the instructions repeatedly posted. These aren't svl7's instructions; they're Dell's instructions. Ask Google about "dell blind flash" or "alienware blind flash". Add "techinferno" if you want to limit searches to this forum. svl7 has been considerate enough to list the correct file names for different notebook models. The instructions are identical other than that: extract the firmware file to a flash drive, rename it, plug it into the correct port, do the magic startup key sequence, and block your ears for a couple of minutes. It worked fine. I then installed stock A03, modified A03, modified A04/A05 over that then A09 and now A10. This all on a unit that originally shipped with A08. It appears that blind flashing a modified firmware results in a brick. I don't know why. Something about the process doesn't like firmware files that have been tapered with. So, for future reference: don't do that.

Did you flash the stock Dell A03 file or svl7's modified A03? The suspicion is that blind flashing a modified firmware results in a brick. This is a UEFI requirement for secure boot. The firmware must be properly signed by a signing key in the Secure Boot keystore. This security check is made by the EFI itself starting with A08. It is possible for end users to install their own keys in the Secure Boot keystore and use these keys to sign EFI binaries which means it should be possible for individual users to sign their own copies of svl7's modified firmware files.

Four months is moderately quick for a big company like Dell.

It's not at all surprising. Dell is a big company with lots of disparate divisions. It takes time for instructions and changes to migrate through a big company. Never mind that the web services guys probably don't work nights, weekends or holidays while the support side is a 24-hour shop.

There are no screen shots. It's called a "blind flash" with good reason: the screen is completely blank for the entire process. The only feedback is a few minutes of very loud beeping from the speaker. Follow the directions precisely. Failure to do so will permanently brick your notebook's mobo. If you are concerned about this possibility then don't blind flash your notebook. Which is probably good advice in general. If you're not familiar with performance tuning and overclocking then learn about that first. The 'R2 CPUs and GPUs have a lot of safe overclock capabilities. Experiment with these, learn what they do, and learn what the effects of voltage changes are.

I've not heard about A09 "breaking" the nVidia GPU but since the system is otherwise working, as opposed to being bricked, it should be easy to flash either A08 or A09 again using the provided tools. Going back to A03/A04 is possible, and I've done it as a test, but given the reports of bricks I reiterate the caution about trying it until svl has a better solution than the hardware restore.

I followed the instructions provided by svl, the same instructions that bricked yours. Either you did something you shouldn't have (say, pulling the flash drive before the process is finished) or the last resort firmware loading mechanism isn't 100% reliable.

Currently the safe thing to do is install A09 which is the current EFI firmware. Reverting to A04 has caused several bricked notebooks. Look at the bad flashing threads for details.

Debian Testing is not a rolling release. Debian Testing gets frozen shortly before it becomes the next Debian Stable. That's not rolling; it's cyclical.

Debian Testing is not a rolling release. Testing is the stage between stable release and Unstable where development occurs. According to Debian's own writeup for Wheezy (current Testing): "That means that things should not break as badly as in unstable or experimental distributions, [...]." Debian Testing also, "does not get security updates in a timely manner." Or, to put it briefly, Testing = beta. To the OP, overclocking on Linux isn't worth the effort. The tools for it aren't there outside of whatever you get in the system BIOS. This isn't going to be much on M14xR2. The third generation Core i series CPUs already do a pretty good job of automatically overclocking themselves for single-threaded processes. Running the Windows tools under Wine won't work. Wine does not provide the direct access to the underlying hardware that these tools need.

Is BD-PROCHOT triggering a GPU throttle? Is it safe (enough) to disable BD-PROCHOT on the M14xR2? Does it even use BD-PROCHOT?

Four to six isn't necessarily "minimal". If you were getting 25-30 frames per second without overclocking then that's a 20% improvement. That's significant.

You'll rarely see the full 3gb/s in normal use and then only from the fastest (read: most expensive) SSDs. You definitely won't get that from the Agility 3 outside of benchmarks. The real performance killer is mechanical latency. Swap in a SSD and latency mostly goes away. In practice it won't matter much which SATA port you use unless you go with the high-end Crucial models that will use the full 3gb/s bandwidth.

Yeah, but that's a ThinkPad and ThinkPads, as a rule, use higher quality components than typical consumer grade kit.

I'm willing to give it a go.

The problem is not that Dell's panels are awful. It's that the 1366x768 panels are awful -- but you'll find that across the board. They're made to be inexpensive with high production volumes which means lower grade materials and less stringent quality controls.

Not touching (hah-hah, see what I did?) Windows 8 any time soon.

You can't do this on the M14x series. The VBIOS (video BIOS) is part of the system BIOS/EFI and cannot be updated independently.

Like i wrote before: you don't own OS X. You have a licence from Apple to use it.

Ah. Yes. I see your point.

M14xR2 does not have eSATA. The two USB ports on the right side are USB 3.0. The single USB port on the left side is USB 2.0 with Powershare (USB charging when the unit is shut off but plugged into mains power). The flash drive MUST be plugged into the left side (USB 2.0) port for the recovery to work.

It is possible to use the firmware recovery procedure to load a firmware prior to the new versions with signature checks. This procedure bypasses the signature checks that the InsydeFlash tool performs against the UEFI. I am now running stock A04 on my M14xR2 that shipped with A08 (signed). In principle, then, it should be possible to load any unsigned, unlocked versions of these newer firmware releases using this procedure. Whether or not OEM editions of Windows 8 will still boot after doing so remains to be seen. Windows 7 and other operating systems shouldn't care.