from the "bricks"-is-absolutely-accurate-this-time dept.
The Register (aka El Reg) reports:
Many [who installed the latest Dell BIOS update] now cannot boot up their machines. One typical explanation posted was: "Add me to the list Dell Inspiron 20 model 3052, updated on the weekend, woke up to a solid amber/orange light and a dead computer. Contacted Dell on facebook and this is what I was told "The updates Dell releases don't affect the system. But it would enhance the performance of the system" ummmm no....if they broke they need to fix it."
[...] Some users complained screens cycled through red, green, blue and white while others saw nothing but an amber or red power light and a dead screen.
The main model affected by the allegedly dodgy update is the Inspiron 20 3052, although a few users reported similar problems with Inspiron 3252s.
[...] Dell's initial reaction was to tell customers they needed to buy new motherboards.
[...] Although complaints in the forum date back to May 12, Dell took four days to offer up a possible solution... which users subsequently said didn't work. Dell has yet to send [El Reg] a statement.
Have we saved anyone from a big headache?
The relevant Dell forum thread can be found here.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:07AM (6 children)
LOLOLOLOL
LOLOL
LOLOLOL
LOLOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:12AM (5 children)
Its "business-grade" stuff... what did you expect?
(Score: 3, Informative) by drussell on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:38AM (4 children)
Its "business-grade" stuff... what did you expect?
As much as I dislike most Dell stuff, I have always thought the Latitude models were the business-class machines and actually pretty decent most of the time. The Inspiron line is usually pretty much junk.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by arcz on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:50AM (3 children)
When you want a decent screen resolution at a particular price point that inspiron starts to look pretty good in comparison.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Immerman on Saturday May 20 2017, @04:35PM (2 children)
So you want a more expensive screen in a laptop with the same price tag? You've got to know you're not getting it for free - it's costing you lower quality components elsewhere.
Of course if that fits your priorities better, then by all means go for it.
(Score: 1) by arcz on Wednesday May 24 2017, @10:20PM (1 child)
Sometimes a better screen is more important than a better processor. If you want a large screen to watch videos with, then inspiron is the better deal. I don't have a TV, so I'm glad I was able to get a decent resolution on my laptop for a decent price.
My desktop is now 5 years old and it still does everything I need it to just fine.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:08AM
I agree - very little beyond video games has demanded high performance consumer products in many years. In fact my list of laptop-purchase considerations, for both myself and when giving advice, puts screen, speakers, and keyboard near the top, along with considerations like port and ventilation positions as I find being able to set a laptop on-edge on a bookshelf or in any vertical gap such as beside the couch is wonderfully convenient, but it requires that a "normal loadout" of cables and USB dongles leave one vent-free side unobstructed. (Well, I suppose vent-free is only required it you want to leave it running sometimes)
But having owned a Latitude for many years, I have to say it was far more durable and dependable than anything else I've encountered. And frankly, build quality seems to be one of the first things to go when manufacturers start looking to hit a price point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:30AM (15 children)
This is actually a really good idea. I have a suggestion though: make sure you do not buy your new motherboard from Dell.
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:16AM (14 children)
Ok... I will compare a "hobbyist grade" Arduino with a "business-grade" Dell.
I have a six-pin hardware SPI-type port on the Arduino with which to burn any bootloader/BIOS code. This is done by plugging the six-pin port into either a programmer or another Arduino running some code to download a copy of the boot code. Personally, I am partial to Bill Westfield's "OptiLoader" boot code.
Every Arduino-type system I have runs Westfield's code, whether it originally came that way or not. I am making enough of these devices that I dedicated several of my Arduino modules to transfer Westfield's OptiLoader boot code to whatever I plug into its SPI port. It makes no difference whatsoever what boot code the target ATMEL had in it, or even if it has any at all. What was there is a "don't care". It is overwritten by the incoming stream. The hardware takes care of it. I wiggle the correct pins of the SPI port and the correct sequence and it shifts the BIOS/Bootloader code right in.
With the "hobbyist grade" architecture, I made numerous screwups while learning how to make my bootloader transfer modules, yet I have not bricked not ONE ATMEL chip. The most critical part of the startup code botched many times. 100% recovery from all screwups.
Yes, I know the ATMEL is far simpler than a DELL. What I am trying to get at though, is transferring startup code is NOT rocket science. I see no reason really that even an Arduino could not be programmed to transfer startup code into a DELL if the DELL only had methods for getting the code into the BIOS flash chip.
( It goes without saying that the startup code for a DELL is substantially longer than that of an Arduino... therefore I might have to use a big flash eeprom on the Arduino to store the code necessary to boot a DELL, but the SPI hardware would be completely usable for this kind of thing. The ATMEL would just read it and poke it into the DELL the same way it would have poked it into another ATMEL. )
One six-pin SPI connector directly driving the BIOS flash like the hobbyist-grade Arduino does it would make recovery from any failed flash download attempt recoverable by anyone who had a hardware programming interface - as by this time the DELL has already "lost its mind", is completely comatose, and unable to assist anymore.
Once the Arduino has reloaded the DELL's flash with correct boot code, the expensive motherboard is now rescued.
Hobbyist-grade systems have these recovery methods, but business-grade systems do not.
If "business-grade" systems could only be made as resilient as "hobbyist-grade" systems concerning loss/corruption of boot code ( which I consider highly likely in this world of networked machines on the public internet - and the amount of malware targeting this area of a machine ), a binary file of the proper boot code could be reintroduced into the machine either by computer techs, or even a hobbyist with an Arduino with enough external flash eeprom to store the business-grade system's boot file.
Seems the moneyed crowd looks beyond things like recovering from things like this. While hobbyists like me would find the hardware too finicky to use if stuff like this was not implemented.
Business people buy this stuff. Purchasing a business-grade system usually includes a handshake with a man wearing a suit, whereas the hobbyist-grade system comes in a bag. But when the Business-system gets sick this way, its gotta be replaced, while hobbyists like me reconnect the programmer and reset the code.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Chromium_One on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:30AM (12 children)
This would add cost to the unit, therefore it is a complete non-starter.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:57AM (10 children)
The loss of a motherboard for the lack of one 6-pin SPI connector for manually loading in BIOS code.
With malware being what it is, I believe it would behoove ( Hopefully, I used the word correctly this time ) the manufacturers to make recovery from malware or failed bios upgrade attempts possible without having to change out the whole motherboard. This kind of "business thinking" is going to be quite a pain in the ass if the malware or botched bios update hits after the board is out of production, and another motherboard, with different architectures and drivers, has to be shoehorned into the business system to replace it.
I GLADLY paid for this connector on the Arduino, and it was a significant factor in how much I trusted this Arduino-compatible ATMEL design for the control processor in my van.
When I go where I am going to go with this thing, I simply can't have it fail. Good chance if it fails, I die. "Business-grade" stuff is not good enough for this design, as I am staking too much on it. Its not just another bullet-point brought up at a meeting and delegated out to someone else. I do not want to be stranded in the middle of the desert. These guys all sitting around conference tables, wearing business suits, have completely different needs than I do, I suppose.
My grandpa used to always warn me about being "penny-wise and pound-foolish". I believe this is a good example of that.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:30AM (4 children)
If you can remove the BIOS chip (aka SPI flash), you can use one of these [ebay.com.au] to rewrite the chip. I believe there should also be models which have the clamp/clip that you can snap on to the flash chip if it's soldered in place, but I haven't got a handy link.
I had to acquire one of these BIOS flashers earlier this year to upgrade the BIOS on a motherboard I'd purchased as the old version it shipped with didn't support my CPUs, and the three documented ways of upgrading the BIOS all needed a running system (which is really hard when the BIOS refuses to recognise the installed CPUs). Getting that gadget off eBay was easier than wiring up any of the various microcontrollers I have access to.
Oh, and thumbs-up on "behoove" use this time! :)
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:54AM (3 children)
It behooves me to at least use the word properly.... lest I come off sounding like even more of a raving idjit than I am ;)
Anyway.. I started off with several thingies like this [aliexpress.com] that plug into the 6-pin connector on Arduino and the Arduino-compatibles I make.
The raw ATMEL 328's I buy have no bootloader in them at all. I was installing the bootloader this way at first, but now that I have gotten a bit more familiar of how this is done, I have other modules where I use their SPI port to generate the bootloader download stream. All I have to do is plug the two modules' SPI ports together then apply power. The way the connector is configured, one of those lines is a RESET line, and my bootloader "MASTER" asserts this to the slave, which now goes to sleep, and lets the master download the bootloader into the slave's EEPROM.
On my version of the Arduino compatibles, I move a jumper on my board to convert it to be a "student" board. This converts the board's SPI port to an ISP ( InCircuit Serial Programming ) port, then I plug the SPI port of my master to the ISP port of my "student", apply power, then the master shows he's done the deed and wrote his code to the student, which happens in a blink of an eye.
I then move the jumper of the student board back so the port is now configured as SPI, the board is now no longer a student, and I now have another board compatible with Arduino system download protocols.
I was thinking of how easy it would be to do this for business-grade systems, so that fear of rogue code overwriting the BIOS eeprom would not be any more of a show-stopper for a business than it is for me. Security? To do what I do requires I have physical access to that connector. Once I have physical access, I can clean up any mess that a malware author or failed upgrade-over-the-internet may have left behind.
All I need is the binary blob of code that's supposed to go into the boot eeprom.
An even cheaper way would be to design the motherboard so a clip-in programmer like this [aliexpress.com] could be used. But I really hate messing with those. By its very nature, the chip package was not designed to be connected to this way, and the connection so obtained is tenuous at best. Maybe tolerable for business use but a hobbyist would scoff at it.
I guess I come off a bit jaded as I used to work in corporate, and when I would bitch at things like this, I came off like a geologist claiming the universe is billions of years old - to a creationist preacher with a microphone and several kilowatts of audio amp behind him. I may know about the code, but the suit-guys knew how to play off the investors. Who am I to stand up to a MBA degree in an Armani suit?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Saturday May 20 2017, @10:32AM (2 children)
Meanwhile I'm simply missing the days of having to move a jumper on the motherboard to be able to write to the BIOS in the first place. ;)
(Note that I am typically not missing the days of having to manually assign IRQs and I/O ranges via jumpers however)
Thanks for the link to the clip-in programmer, that was exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Saturday May 20 2017, @11:14AM (1 child)
Yeh, I sure felt a lot more comfortable when I had the security of knowing exactly what my machine was doing. I knew better than to feed it rogue .exe or .com files off the bulletin board systems, and knew full good and well I could read anything safely as long as I did not use an ANSI editor. Plain old ascii was safe as could be. Worst they could do is fill my screen full of crap, which disappeared almost immediately with a few hits of the enter key.
Even if they did infect the old systems... it wasn't all that much problem to clean it back out. Kinda like someone ringing your bell, tossing a bag of crap in your house when you open the door, and running. Yeh, a mess. But it wasn't a show-stopper. Just an annoyance. Gotta go clean up the mess.
Those days where my computer was about as trustworthy as my old mechanical typewriter are gone.
I thought you might like that clip in link... that's the reason I looked it back up for ya. You were hinting around with it in your link. I have done it that way but I do not like doing it that way, as sometimes the clip does not make good contact and I get a bad load. And sometimes some design idjit hooks the write enable pin up in such a way I have to force override some other totem-pole output of some gate, possibly damaging it in the process. I'd much rather have that nice standardized programming pin layout used by all those off-the-shelf SPI programmers. If I had my druthers, I much rather have a nice SPI access to the EEROM, with the jumper I have to physically install or remove to enable WRITE. I flat do not like things like rewriting my machine's BIOS done behind my back.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @09:09PM
You are saying you feared that ansi graphics on bulletin boards would harm your computer?
Do you visit this website in Lynx, as well?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:14PM (2 children)
You and I might gladly pay the cost difference to have this kind of feature available, but you are seriously underestimating what kind of cheap-assed short-sighted shitheads are in control of most PC manufacturing companies. A one penny per unit cost difference will be fought tooth and nail no matter what the benefit is.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Saturday May 20 2017, @07:44PM (1 child)
I had this discussion when I was working in Canonical's OEM group. While I don't disagree with your assessment, this is the line of thinking that went into it:
Let's say that adding a socketed flash adds 5 cents per unit costs (using round numbers for simplicity):
This is a feature that only a very small number of users will ever use (let's say .1%)
Your per-unit cost (for the logic board) is 100 dollars.
You intend to ship 100,000 units.
Your 5 cent change has a total cost of $5,000 now.
As long as you don't brick 500 boards, or have 500 users that could replace a flash chip (and are willing to repair vs. replace), you're ahead.
That's how they see it. It's not necessarily a "wrong" point of view, but it's not one I like.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by Chromium_One on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:06PM
The metric of cost-per-user-serviced-this-quarter is not meaningful for this type of feature, but instead over the lifetime of the product. Having a reputation for products that can be repaired when everyone else consistently makes disposable junk may result in more sales later, though your fuckhead MBA types will claim that anything easily field repairable is a lost new unit sale right then.
When you live in a sick society, everything you do is wrong.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday May 20 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
But how would that improve sales for Dell?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday May 20 2017, @05:01PM
Well, it would have lessened the impact of this mistake. So less bad publicity, and possibly even some good publicity. ("My Dell was easy to recover after...")
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:45PM
Business class usually imply cost insensitivity. And that total ownership cost is more important.
Obviously someone did at least two dick choices here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by kaszz on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:42PM
There are ways to program a BIOS EEPROM despite computer hardware lockout [github.io]. Preferably one might as well install a switch on the "write enable circuit wire".
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:13AM (2 children)
This is why you don't do BIOS this way. You put it on ROM, so you can at least roll back. Cheap bastards!
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:20AM (1 child)
Yeh, problem is I can't retrofit soldered-in ROM nearly as easy as I could replace a socketed UV-PROM.
I believe the FLASH EEPROM is an improvement, as things could be corrected when oversights/improvements of the BIOS code evolve, but my main gripe is that the FLASH EEPROM needs to be programmable by local means. Especially if the hardware is configured to let the processor update its own BIOS code.
It is risky business indeed to have to rely on a malfunctioning or compromised processor to help me reload code!
I want the compromised processor completely out of the loop, and let me put in known-good trusted code by an external trusted known-good device. Now with known-good boot code in control, the processor should at least start off clean.
This paradigm of having a processor update its own BIOS code is ripe for abuse by rogue programming spoofing the legit upgrading code.
Whether it be remote-access snooping, or downright denial-of-service crash-the-corporate-system to force them to replace the motherboard.... for shits and giggles.
I have fussed about this ever since they took the UV-PROMS away. To no avail. They gave me a superior method, then crippled my ability to recover when it was fully within their power to provide a robust recoverable system. Its not like SPI programmers are rocket science. AliExpress and the hobbyist market are full of them.
Those penny-pinching business types drive me nuts. Yet they get paid the big bucks for this kind of thing. While people like me are seen as whiners.
When it comes to their employer, they pinch pennies and we end up with this kind of thing. They get paid a helluva lot of money for their "executive leadership and organizational skills" and spend their money on luxury cruises and the like, while their company is stuck with sub-par crap. And they still have the gall to extend their hand for a shake to those who think that a handshake with a suit-man is more important than a 6-pin SPI connector on the machine that runs the company's infrastructure.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday May 20 2017, @12:40PM
Having the processor upgrade it's own boot code works if there is a backup memory to boot from. And only pre-tested code is allowed to be programmed usually through signing the code.
What has failed here is that the code obviously weren't tested. And customers should be vary of "upgrading" anything that works. Let others be unwilling beta testers without compensation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:21AM (2 children)
Shouldn't it be white then red? Stupid woman telepath and her white wolf migraine! Wait, that's a failed spiritual upgrade!
(Score: 3, Funny) by MostCynical on Saturday May 20 2017, @06:52AM (1 child)
Were the lights flashing a particular sequence?
Can we find a medium to organise a seance to get these computers back?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @09:45AM
the green door is evil, too.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @02:46PM (1 child)
Gigabyte has backup second BIOS chip for situations like this.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:21AM
I've seen some of those - I think they're only on their high-end "enthusiast" line though, specifically targetting the sort of individuals who are inclined to install every update, possibly including some aftermarket mods, in a perpetual search for an extra 1% performance boost.
As much as I'd like them to be more common, it really probably doesn't make sense for most people to pay for something so unlikely to benefit them.
But heck, it doesn't even really need a whole second BIOS - all it really needs is a "pre-BIOS" - something capable of nothing more than rewriting the BIOS with a known-good copy, say the original factory-installed version, when a motherboard button/jumper is set during boot.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 20 2017, @08:48PM
On many dell laptops if the power supply id becomes unreadable (or is a bad clone) the bios will disable speedstep. People then wonder why their computer is so slow... probably too old?!? Yeah get a new one. Well done Dell! Mr Burns is proud of you.