Dell Laptops & SP2 KABOOM

From NTBUGTRAQ....


be *sure you have Dell BIOS rev A12 or better or you may suffer the same pain we did today. I then discovered this little gem in my inbox...


GRRRRRRRRRR
:mad:

From: Windows NTBugtraq Mailing List on behalf of Matt Tisdel
Sent: Mon 8/23/2004 11:18 AM
To: [email protected]
Cc:
Subject: Dell Laptops with SP2 Warning


We installed SP2 on 4 different Dell D600 laptops. One of the laptops
experienced a crash that may or may not be related to the service pack.
Upon reloading the laptop with Windows XP, adding SP2 and all drivers;
and adding all necessary applications, it blue screened. We called Dell
and they said that if you don't have BIOS version A12 or later, then you
can experience hard drive corruption.



Dell documentation says to have the latest BIOS installed before
installing any service packs. XP SP2 documentation says we should check
with the manufacturer before installing the service pack to ensure that
your BIOS level is compatible. So, I am guilty for not checking the BIOS
compatibility first, but I thought that I would spread the warning and
maybe save someone from going through the same pain.

Oh, crap!!

I should have checked AO before I started the install. That and I should have read the release notes. Oh well. I wanted to reinstall WinBlows anyway.

Thanks for the heads up TH13 - do you know if this only affects the D600 notebooks? That's in the Lattitude line of notebooks if I am remembering correctly, and my company has a few of those. I assume this to be with all Dell notebooks, or at least the Lattitude line.

Again, thanks for the heads up..

I will know more for sure by the end of the day. For now, I am willing to bet that since it is tied to a BIOS rev, it would be any unit that runs this particular BIOS.

Anothing thing to make my day interesting....

Well guys, I checked out the Dell website, and I could not find a reference to any known BIOS issues. There is a reference to an issue with Inpirion 9100 or XPS with ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 video card; using Dell Security Center by McAfee; using Symantec Norton Internet Security; and Internal Bluetooth cards, but no bios specific references.

http://support.dell.com/support/topi...l=en&s=gen&cs=

Let's hope this turns out to be a hoax.

This isn't a hoax. I have a pile of dead Dell laptops sitting in my lab. Dell confirmed the issue. Call their support line and they will tell you the same thing.

Inspiron 2650, Bios rev A7.

No problems my end, so far?

Service pack 2 installed over a week ago. Also rc2 installed over a month ago.

Is it an issue with Dells oem crap? which would not suprise me.

You know what it probably is? SP2 probably installs some new driver or something which causes the problem. I had a similar problem with a Latitude X200 not long after a client got it. She was having problems with the video card and thought new drivers would fix it. She didn't read the info for the new driver though (which said that she needed to update the BIOS before installing the new drivers) and crashed her whole system. Had to go and reformat the whole thing for her, making sure that I installed the BIOS immediately after installing Windows to insure that any drivers that were installed would not cause similiar problems again. I assume it's probably something along those lines.

AJ

PS: Hey, thehorse13... wanna hook me up with some of those downed systems? I'll pay for shipping. :-P

Something i have just remembered sp2, has fuxored dells solution centre. Have not had cause to use it for a very long time, so missed it during my first post.

Well my old Dell Inspiron 2600 Laptop not a problem....
Used RC2 for a month till the final came out....
RC1 was the SOB.... I uninstalled that.....

Quote:

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Well my old Dell Inspiron 2600 Laptop not a problem....
Used RC2 for a month till the final came out....

---

Either way, sounds like it's specific to a certain model (or range of models). I ran SP2 (from the start of the Beta program) on an Latitude X300 without any problem. Since RC2, I've also run it on a Dell XPS, also without a problem. It sounds like a problem with the Latitude 'D' models (I've only heard of the problem on D600 and the D400 models). I haven't seen or heard of any problems with any of the Inspiron models.

AJ

Hey Hey,

After hearing this I'm starting to think that MS sent out SP2 a little prematurely... I'm glad to know this thought as many students that come through our helpdesk have Dell laptops, this will at least cut down on the diagnosis portion fo the problem.

I've also heard from our hardware people that there's been problems with SP2 and AMD. I've yet to encounter this on my system, but I know they've had problems with a few.... I think that SP2 still has a few too many bugs to be viable in anything other than a test environment.

Thanks for the heads up TH13.

Peace,
HT

Quote:

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I've also heard from our hardware people that there's been problems with SP2 and AMD.

---

From what I've heard, that actually has to do with the new NX technology that's implemented by AMD and executed through Microsoft's SP2. And it's only on certain processors (not sure which) with specific chipsets. Disabling the NX temporary will fix the problem. For a long-term resolution, supposedly it's a problem with how AMD implemented it for specific systems so it's their responsibility to fix it.

AJ

Dell Inspiron 5150 here ....

SP2 installed last week - nothing out of the ordinary to report - everything seems to be behaving itself.

horse,

We have about 250 D600s in out enviroment along with 500+ C610s and 500+ c600s

You may very well have saved me, and my company a **** load of time. I've confirmed that SP2 DOES infact screw up a D600 in our lab. I have no idea yet on if it will cause issues with the older c6xx's - will update thread when I know.

Ok..

ALL D600 machines with a BIOS version lower then A12 will die as soon as a reboot is done.

“Operating System Not Found”

It seems the SP makes a lot of changes in regards to you network card settings —It is trying to boot from your NIC instead of the hard drive. To resolve the issue go to BIOS (F2) and restore Factory Default Settings, save, exit, reboot.

Thanks,
Jeremy

Yes, Dynag and I were going back and forth with this in PMs. When the laptop begins to post, you will notice that it tries to boot from the NIC and that's when the show begins. We have 200 D600 machines and each and every one was fitted with the A12 BIOS. All is well in Oz.

my inspiron 9100 crashed while downloading sp2, i got the blue screen and everything. first my pgp.sdk got errors, then it gave me errors with mem addresses. and finally it wouldn't boot past lilo ('cause i run linux too)! it took me ~ 3 hours to reinstall everything! it was a mess. but now after downloading it again, it seems to be fine.

-=[the]Punisher=-

A really fun problem I ran in to was I have an AMD 64 2800 on a MSI K8T FIS2R board, 2 200GB Sata drives in stripe and 2gig memory, WIndows XP. For 3 days I was having trouble with the computer taking 4 minutes to boot. Found that we had to disable legacy USB support. Anyway after all that fighting we got it to work. I was doing all the updates and installed XP SP2. After the reboot got the BSOD. Had to reinstall. Found that AMD 64's have troubles with SP2.