Precision 7540 and 7740 BIOS Update Version 1.32.0 Discussion

I let the dell support assist app update this firmware plus two other items (one of them being an NVidia update). While rebooting, the system hung on the bios update and never got past the update screen. I let it run for hours and finally pulled the power and let the battery drain. Now the system is stuck in the Bios auto recovery and failing.

@caduser328​ Hi, can you provide me your service tag via direct message?

Also, if you could share an image of your screen that will help us ask the team for a review.

After Windows Update updated the bios to 1.32.0 the laptop no longer boots normally but goes into BIOS auto-recovery. This fails over and over again.

After reading up on how the manual recovery scenario works (have an usb stick with the BIOS_IMG.rcv file on it, hold down ctrl+esc and insert the power adapter) I tried that with the recovery file for 1.32.0. This didnt help, the laptop rebooted quickly.

I also tried clearing the bios settings and retried the bios recovery, same thing, it just rebooted after a short while.

Also found out about how to reset the RTC, which changed nothing. Same thing with disconnecting the batteries (both the main and the cmos battery).

Now I started doing some testing with the different versions of the BIOS to see if any of the older bioses worked to recover with.

What I found out was that there was two different scenarios with the recovery files.

The first scenario was that the "Flash Progress" bar went to 100% during the "Retrieving Corrupted firmware" stage, followed by "BIOS Update blocked due to unsupported downgrade" and then "BIOS On-demand Recovery failed". During this scenario a filed was created on the usb stick; BIOS_BIR.RCV.

The second scenario was that the "Flash Progress" bar came to a few percent and then crashed/rebooted. Nothing else happened, no messages on the screen and no BIOS_BIR.RCV on the usb stick.

The first scenario happened for the following versions:

1.0.0
1.1.3
1.2.3
1.3.3
1.8.2
1.9.0
1.11.2
1.13.1
1.14.0

The second scenario happened for the following versions (the amount of percent is within parentheses. if the value is "x-y" then the crash/reboot happened between the two, as all tests was done multiple times):

1.15.1 (3-10%)
1.17.0 (2-3%)
1.18.1 (2-3%)
1.20.2 (2-3%)
1.21.0 (2-3%)
1.22.0 (2-3%)
1.23.0 (2-3%)
1.24.0 (2-3%)
1.25.0 (0%)
1.26.1 (9-10%)
1.27.0 (8-9%)
1.28.0 (7-8%)
1.29.0 (8%)
1.30.0 (8%)
1.31.0 (7%)
1.32.0 (7-8%)

All tests was done multiple times, with multiple usb sticks.

I even tried swapping the RAM modules, as I started to get a feeling that the ram was corrupt and that caused the recovery to crash/reboot, but that did not change the outcome.

Does anyone have any tips on how to proceed or should I just wait for a new version of the bios to be released and try again?

@farnell​

Hi,

Could you please share some screenshots of these errors? This will help me escalate the issue to the concerned team.

As soon as they respond, I’ll get back to you with the next steps.

Thank you!

@DELL-Nat M​ 

Hi,

I tried do a screen capture but as the video signal isn't output to hdmi during the recovery so I had to record the screen with my phone.

First we have the video of the recovery try for version 1.0.0:

Then we have the video for version 1.32.0:

I have same issue for Dell Precision 7540 mobile workstation BIOS update done via Dell Support Assistant tool stuck at zero percent since 1.5 hours not progressing not powering down..so I pulled the power plug and waiting for battery to  drain and see if I get stuck like others or any different result.