Louis Giraud Posted December 14, 2012 Share Posted December 14, 2012 Hi everyone,four days ago I made the huge mistake of "upgrading" the BIOS of my M14xR2 from A04 to A08.Since then, I got numerous hard shutdown ( can't power on without being on AC ) while gaming on battery, which never happened before. I also got my very first BSOD since I got the machine.I read on this forum that it is possible to go back from A08 to A04 using a methode called "Blind flashing" or something like that; involving extracting the firmware onto a USB Key and booting with a certain key pressed. Could someone give me the step by step procedure as I can't seem to find it again ?Thank you very much in advance ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ratinox Posted December 15, 2012 Share Posted December 15, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Louis Giraud Posted December 16, 2012 Author Share Posted December 16, 2012 Well, I would like to avoid flashing to A09 as I've seen a lot of people encountering serious issues with it. Their nVidia GPU stopped working with no solution at all.Plus, Dell sent out replacements to most of them with the exact same issue. I like my Alienware and I need it for school so I can't afford a deadly problem with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vladichimescu Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 I sold my M14x R2 but I had no problem going back and forward with the Bios using the hardware restore - remove battery, have the M14XR2.hdr on the fat32 and while pressing END, plug in the power cord - I do recommend A09 because of the Windows 8 full support - update the bios to a09, set the bios to UEFI and legacy to off, boot windows 8 dvd, full erase the hdd and create a new partition (it will automatically create the GPT, so no more MBR) - faster and better looking Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Louis Giraud Posted December 17, 2012 Author Share Posted December 17, 2012 Thank you very much !I will give A09 a chance during holidays, hoping it solves my problem AND it doesn't screw my Alien up. In case it does not solve my problem, I'll revert to A04.I will post back the results here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ratinox Posted December 17, 2012 Share Posted December 17, 2012 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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