m15chief

Ok, what is everyone using to clock?

Using msi afterburner i dont see any difference? I can overclock by +135 & +1000 same as i could before flashing the modified bios.

Am i missing sonething? Do i need to change something in the newly unlocked menus of the bios?

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Woo hoo, up and running :-)

Steps for anyone else preinstalled win8

Prepare the usb key as per prev posts.

Turn off secureboot & turn on legacy (your laptop wont boot back into windows any more)

Do the blind flash of the stock dell os.

Laptop still wont boot because a04 doesnt have a uefi option.

Remove your boot hdd & replace it with an empty one.

Install windows to the replacement drive

Do the modded a10 flash

Replace your existing boot hdd

Turn on uefi

Boot & enjoy.

My experience was slightly different. I pulled an old hard drive out of my drawer expecting to install windows on it. Turns out it had win7 on it from when i upgraded my old laptop to ssd & it booted no problems?? No HAL errors or fatal exceptions?? I didnt complain, just flashed svl's bios and rebooted with my original drives :-)

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Zoltan, were you using UEFI or legacy boot before the downgrade from a10

For some reason im having trouble. Im using UEFI secureboot & windows8

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Svl, could you post a link to the recovery process?

I think half the problem with bricked boxes may be that there are about 8 different versions of this process that ive found via google so far.

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Well, Finally got the mb and battery replaced & repasted with 24ct IC diamond while it was done. All working well & after a lot of complaining and threats to send it back for a refund AW did the right thing and gave me an extra year on my warranty :-)

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Good enough for me :-) Cheers

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Any idea whether the a10 mod is stable enough for general release yet?

Normally happy to act as a tester but ive already had to get my mainboard replaced and its only a month old. Cant be chewed with the hassle of gettibg another one.

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Thanks for the replies gents, appreciate you taking the time. I've now been told that replacement parts are out of stock.. Reaching out to CS to see if they will offer anything at all by way of recompense as a final olive branch and if not I may just have to bite the bullet and send this back. Such a shame, I love it, just wish it was functional.

Beginning to wish id never bothered coming back to alienware..

I had to contact tech support within the first week as my laptop kept shutting down & wouldnt recognise the nvidia gpu.. much ado and eventually after threatening to return it i was given the unreleased a10 bios. Which seemed to work.

Now after the holidays im spending more time with my new laptop & find that the random shutdowns are continuing. Onoy this time on a reboot (which only works on AC) i get the message that the battery has been disabled until the temperature returns to normal??? Sensor logs show nothing going above 50c so im at a complete loss..

Honest opinions here guys as you are all m14 owners too.. should i cut my losses and demand to return for a full refund or should i stick it out? Apparently an engineer appointment is being arranged to replace the mainboard & battery..

:banghead:

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Its not uploaded to the forum, its linked to my dropbox account so you should be ok to use the link in post nr 3

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Never mind.. im an idiot should have checked the uefi boot options in the bios.. was defaulting to lan first & my ssd second.. doh..

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Installed all the latest irst drivers, on boot i still get in the top rt corner "chexking media [fail] then it boits into windows (8)

Any other suggestions? This has only been since bios a10

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Sorry misunderstanding i meant the screenshots showing the benchmarks at the beginning of the thread, not screenshots of the flash process.

I've had my 5 posts published so can see them now. Wasn't sure if it was restricted to vip members only when i first signed up.

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Hey all, brand new to the forum. Found you while troubleshooting my brand new m14x. Hope to be a good contributor and have posted the (as yet) unreleased m14 a10 bios update in another thread which fixes the nvidia issue.

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It was emailed through dell uk support after a threat to request a full refund. Apparently US support still deny its existence.

Worked fine for me with one minor exception. I was using the msata for the OS. After the flash the msata wasnt recognised. I went into the bios and changed raid back to ahci and it booted fine.

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http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69966844/M14R2A10WIN.zip

Attachments still wont go, but I can link to my dropbox account. All seems very stable since the a10 update only thing was the msata wasn't immediately recognised but all seems ok after a few boots.

i've just replaced my mSATA with a 256gb Crucial M4 and my main HD with a 512GB Samsung 840 pro, worked out a LOT cheaper than having the SSD factory installed in my m14x

Initially i used the mSATA for the OS and a 500gb standard HD for storage, but crystal benchmarks showed that the mSATA read/write wasn't as high as the SATA SSD.

Hey, I found this forum through the dell alienware owners lounge. There seem to be a lot of people (myself included) who have had problems with the a09 bios and the gt650 cards. The major problem is when the Nvidia card is unrecognised, but I had probems when playing games the laptop would power off, and refuse to switch back on unless it was plugged in.

I've managed to obtain a copy of the a10 bios which seems to resolve these problems which i'm temporarily hosting on my dropbox account

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/69966844/M14R2A10WIN.zip

I've been using win8 since release on my old laptop & I had my new m14x pre-installed, all I can recommend is that you stick at it for a little while. The new UI and navigation is difficult at first but once you get the hang of it I think its great.

Anyone going for the factory pre-installed version should also think about wiping and re-installing using the disk I've seen a big performance increase and fixed a lot of niggles with the m14 since doing my own install, mostly related to the gt650m & the killer N

Hey guys, great to find another forum dedicated to the M14x, I've just recieved my brand new R2, and had some problems with it out of the box (a09 nvidia issue) which i've managed to resolve through forums like these quicker than I could get them fixed through dell support.

My first Alienware system for about 10 years (Since Dell bought them) Anyone else have trouble with customer/tech support?

i have the official (not yet released) a10 bios to fix the nvidia problem on the m14x r2, happy to post it but limited by the crazy restrictions on here for new members. Can one of the mods PM me and i'll email a copy for general distribution

are there any external links to the screenshots. as a newly registered member i apparently dont have sufficient permissions to view them, rendering this a little redundant, as without seeing the results I'm unlikely to mess with my bios