[~$200 bounty]Dell Inspiron 1564 unlocked A10/A13 BIOS

[Aeny]

Bugs fixed between A10 and A13 are:

• Virtualization function doesn't always work even when set to enabled (very annoying for 64bit OS'es in vbox, etc..)
  
• On rare occasions the screen backlighting goes to full brightness and can only be restored by rebooting.
  

Do mind that there are no changelogs with these BIOSes dell releases and that these are finding from the now over 11000hours of usage that I have on this laptop.

PS: Sorry for the late reply, I repasted my cpu and added a 2nd hdd so I can get another 11000hours out of it

~Aeny

I have added a 2nd HDD to my Inspiron 1564. I have a caddy for the hdd that goes in the optical drive bay. Now with the 2nd hdd installed, system BIOS is taking a lot of time to load. I guess its searching for the ODD and not finding it.

My machine is currently running bios version A13. Now should I install the modded A10 to correct this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Sumit

Sorry for my late response , it will be ready in 2 days

BUMP

No, A10 modded will not fix this, I also have the caddy. And indeed the loading times are a tad slower (I can hear the second HDD spinning up while the loading bar is paused).

Perhaps disabling boot from CD might help. In the bios under the boot options press shift+1 to disable an entry.
~Aeny

[sumitgupta]

This your solutions problems
Download Dell Inspiron 1546 Driver for Windows 7 64 bit

Which driver do you suggest as the solution? Plz specify

[lucas]

Hi List

I am using original DELL A13 bios on my 1564. Problem is that when i insert 2nd hdd caddy to ODD slot with disk my dell doesn't boot. It hung just after i press power button on bios initialization. I even cant enter the bios. Do i need to change the bios to "unlocked a10" version to make caddy working? Or in your systems all works ok with original bios.

---

Sorry for my late response , it will be ready in 2 days

Any update on this?
I need this Virtualization function fix.

Your help is appreciated.

[pioneerpk]

any one know how bios to dell inspiron 1564 when there is no display or like a dead condition[/u]

[khing24]

can anyone provide me with the a04 bios? badly need it coz my laptop keeps automatic shutdown in a13 and a10 unlocked bios(with power saver mode it happens rarely but in balanced and high performance) always encounter this problem,, i lost my a04 backup

[Aeny]

Hi List

I am using original DELL A13 bios on my 1564. Problem is that when i insert 2nd hdd caddy to ODD slot with disk my dell doesn't boot. It hung just after i press power button on bios initialization. I even cant enter the bios. Do i need to change the bios to "unlocked a10" version to make caddy working? Or in your systems all works ok with original bios.

Did you ever manage to fix this? I'm now having the same problem. 2nd HDD caddy doesn't work on the AMD HD5450 but works fine on the Intel HD board. I did notice that the drive doesn't even spin up unless I wiggle the cable around (between motherboard and odd daughterboard) after which it slowly dies(spins down). cdrom drive works fine at all times when connected.

any one know how bios to dell inspiron 1564 when there is no display or like a dead condition

Try hooking up a monitor to vga/hdmi or Google on how to blind flash it. in case of a real brick I think there's something called 'Phoenix Crysis recovery'.

can anyone provide me with the a04 bios? badly need it coz my laptop keeps automatic shutdown in a13 and a10 unlocked bios(with power saver mode it happens rarely but in balanced and high performance) always encounter this problem,, i lost my a04 backup

It seems your laptop is overheating then, it may need some cleaning inside, this is usual not the BIOS'es fault.

And to finish this post, a list from Dell with the differences between A10 and A13:

A10 to A11
1. Can't accept PWD in BIOS successful with Numeric keyboard and keypad.
2. Device Manager will show yellow bang of intel turbo technology when resume from S3.

A12 to A13
1. Appears to not exist on their website but I got it installed on my motherboard from factory.

A12 to A13
1. Fix Computrace status report error and update Computrace ROM.

Sorry for my late response , it will be ready in 2 days

Update on this? I think 2 days have been passed by now

PS: Sorry for the slight bump up.

~Aeny

[Aeny]

BUMP!

Added a new download to the first post Recompiled the DSDT with iasl and made sure all errors (5) and all warnings (11) were gone. No other things done in that area. I also extracted the vbios and upped the clocks from 5450 levels to 5470 levels (core & ram). Be sure your laptop can handle the additional heat!
As always flashing this thing is on your own risk.
Oh and sadly, the HDD in ODD bay issue is still not fixed. Bug @DellCares about it on twitter!

~Aeny

[khing24]

BUMP!

Added a new download to the first post Recompiled the DSDT with iasl and made sure all errors (5) and all warnings (11) were gone. No other things done in that area. I also extracted the vbios and upped the clocks from 5450 levels to 5470 levels (core & ram). Be sure your laptop can handle the additional heat!
As always flashing this thing is on your own risk.
Oh and sadly, the HDD in ODD bay issue is still not fixed. Bug @DellCares about it on twitter!

~Aeny

thanks for the reply,, i found the solution,, the vents on my laptop has so many dirt,, and just put some thermal paste on cpu

by the way is there anyway to overclock intelhd? my unit was not the ati radeon type

[Aeny]

BUMP!

Added a new download to the first post Recompiled the DSDT with iasl and made sure all errors (5) and all warnings (11) were gone. No other things done in that area. I also extracted the vbios and upped the clocks from 5450 levels to 5470 levels (core & ram). Be sure your laptop can handle the additional heat!
As always flashing this thing is on your own risk.
Oh and sadly, the HDD in ODD bay issue is still not fixed. Bug @DellCares about it on twitter!

~Aeny

thanks for the reply,, i found the solution,, the vents on my laptop has so many dirt,, and just put some thermal paste on cpu

by the way is there anyway to overclock intelhd? my unit was not the ati radeon type

As you may know I had the motherboard without the ATi/AMD card too. And sadly there's not much we can do here for 'overclocking' the IGP. As you might know the biggest problem the IGP will have is that it has to share RAM with the GPU thus the faster the RAM the faster the IGP will be. But these are so slow I don't really think you'll see the benefit.

There's one other way however, if you have an I5/I7 CPU then you may have noticed that your CPU has a turbo mode that ups the clocks. Your Intel IGP has a turbo mode too, but there's a slight problem with it! The chip is what I'd call TDP starved. As you may know the TDP is how much the complete core I chip can use (CPU+IGP+whatever else is on die). And these are set to give the CPU priority so it will likely turbo and the IGP never will. Normally there's a 35w TDP/TDC on these chips but it seems Dell messed up and set it to 25w in their 1564 BIOSes. BUT! I didn't know how to set TDP/TDC values in the modded bios back then, I do now but I didn't test if this will allow both CPU and IGP to turbo to their max clocks (and I'm too lazy to swap the motherboard in again at the moment). It will only be +100MHz which will not be much anyways and you may not see a difference. What we can do in the modded A10 BIOS is set the TDP/TDC for the whole core I die package to 55w and that will give it the extra headroom it needs. However, this only applies if you have a core I5 and up, core I3's do not have this turbo feature on the CPU+IGP at all.
I could post you which settings (2) you have to change to what number but I'm currently testing my 1564 for stability (as in not rebooting it ever, 7days of stressing the hardware straight and no crash yet). I'll be sure to get you these value when I get to the BIOS again one of these days.

If that doesn't give you the speedup you want then you could always opt to swap out the motherboard to the ATi/AMD GPU type, since you already opened it up to clean it, the swap is not much harder than that. I could post you the part number you will need for that (motherboard & heatsink) if you like. It should be around $150 for the upgrade but I think you're better off buying a new laptop, unless you're attached to 1564's as I am

PS: Still waiting for the unlocked A13 BIOS.

~Aeny

[cslay3r]

I had the 02F0: CPU ID: 55 No Microcode Update Loaded for Alternate Processor error after i upgraded my cpu from an i3 330m to an i5 480 m.
I flashed your modified bios and the error is gone.
Thanks a lot.
Keep up the good work