Aurora R4, boot from PCIe?

Creating a DOS-bootable USB flashdrive using Rufus

1. Create Bootable drive using Rufus
   1. Download Rufus (here)
   2. Launch Rufus. From there, do the following
   3. Select the Flash drive letter - under Device
   4. Select FreeDOS - under Boot selection
   5. Select Download - under the pulldown menu at the right-side of check mark
   6. 
   7. Click START ; Click OK on the popup - It will ask to confirm to start the reformatting the USB flash drive (warning - this will delete any files on the USB drive!)
   8. Close Rufus once done - meaning progress bar has completed and says READY
2. Using Winrar (latest please), open the archive containing the modded A11 RAR file. It contains two files
   1. AFUDOS.EXE - flasher file
   2. mod_a11modspectrefix.bin - this is the modified A11 firmware file
   3. 
   4. Highlight the two files and press Ctrl+C
3. In Explorer, browse to open the USB flash drive
   1. 
   2. In that Window, press Ctrl+V to paste the copied files
   3. 
4. Now you can use this USB flash drive to BOOT into DOS.
5. To boot into DOS mode using this flash drive, ensure that the Boot Mode is in Legacy.
   1. To Change Boot Mode Setting from UEFI to Legacy, press F12 at the Alienware logo. Otherwise, if the Boot Mode is already in Legacy, skip to 5.4
   2. 
   3. Changing Boot Mode will need a reboot. Press F12 again at the Alienware logo.
   4. You should see the drive-letter representing the USB flash drive.
   5. If done correctly, you should be booting into pure DOS (text-only) mode.
   6. In there, type this as it is

   7. AFUDOS MOD_A1~1.BIN /GAN

   8. Wait for it to complete Verification. (It is SUPER IMPORTANT to never interrupt this process. This can brick your board!) Once it's done, it should go back at the command prompt
   9. 
   10. Once done, remove the flash drive from your computer and press Ctrl+Alt+Del
   11. If done correctly, your computer should reboot normally.
   12. You may change the Boot Mode back to UEFI if that was the previous setting.
   13. You now have an updated BIOS.

To update Intel ME - this can be done under Windows (make sure you're on 64-bit Windows)

1. Download this file
2. Open the RAR file using WinRAR and highlight both files from inside
3. 
4. Press Alt+E, it should open a popup Window that you can specify where to Extract both files, just point it to Extract under Downloads folder (as seen in this image)
5. 
6. Click OK.
7. Run CMD as Adminstrator. Go to the downloads folder and execute the firmware update by following these commands

8. cd %userprofile%\downloads
   FWUpdLcl64.exe -f 8.1.70.1590_1.5MB_PRD_RGN.bin

9. It will start the update of the Intel ME firmware. It is important to NOT INTERRUPT this process.
10. 
11. Once it is done, you should get back at the command prompt.
12. Do a proper Windows Restart (Start > Power > Restart)

All is complete!

Updated my previous post...

Summary of the fixes

For A11 BIOS

• Native NVMe PCIe boot support
• Microcode updates - fixes Spectre, Meltdown, or similar CPU vulnerabilities
• Intel RST updates - allows TRIM on RAID
• NIC firmware update

For Intel ME update

• Security fixes against critical Intel ME bug
• They've not included Aurora R4 with their patch rollout - https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln308237/dell-client-statement-on-intel-me-txe-advisory-intel-sa-00086?lang=en

Ultrafast bootup from power up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlaHc1O31y8

Hi edmoncu,

Thanks for the BIOS. Works great! I installed the Samsung 970 EVO as my only drive and BOOT drive.

With the older Processors, there may be a slight performance hit so if you decide to turn off the protection then you can do it easily with InSpectre- be sure to reboot PC after disabling. This is my image when I had the Xeon E5-2665.

* DELL does more to support older technologies than any other company in the world. At some point they do have to keep up with the flow and I don't fault them at all for how they manage their support. People seem to complain about DELL support simply because their PCs are the only ones still performing well after 8+ years. Yes, they've spoiled me and I've saved a lot of money by sticking to Precisions, OptiPlex and Alienware.

Thanks again for the BIOS! I just noticed that it has newest microcode for my Xeon E5-2689 (CPUID 206D6) 08 MAY 2018,snap

hi guys sorry to dig up an old post does anyone have the modded bios ?

as I can't get any of the links to work any longer

thanks

hi @edmoncu do you still have files for this ?

as tiny upload don't work for me for some reason ?

thanks

Edmon A11 NVME Files were downloaded from page2 when the links were working, I have four original files saved & uploaded them now at DropBox.com (or join) to download. I can not help w/dropbox or the A11 NVME Bios-related files hosted there, good luck & use at your own risk

Modded BIOS V1 NVME

Modded BIOS V2 Spectre

intel me firmware update aurora r4

FWUpdLcl64

Hello,

I followed the procedure and flashed my board with mod_a11modspectrefix.bin (which I think understand also include the MVNE support), I guess it was successful, but I am still not able to see my drive the the boot menu. I put UEFI mode and disabled lecagy support and secure boot.

How can I be sure that the firmeware did update well?

While in legacy mod used samsung tool to copy my source SSD to the MVNE disk, all went well, and 2 partitions have been created (I had only one in my source disque). I guess GPT things but I do not know.

@edmoncu can you help me to diagnose the issue?

Thank you very much,

Mimil

I succeed to make it working, all was okay with the provided firmware. I installed a fresh windows.

The issue was that the disk was not listed into the uefi boot menu because the disk was not properly initialized. I booted on my other drive with legacy boot enabled and eufi enabled, deleted all partitions of my mvne disk and converted it to GPT (right click on disk in the windows disk manager).

I installed the samsung mvme drivers.

I created an usb disk to install windows with windows media creation tool, halt, remove my old disk, boot on the usb disk (as still in legacy mode). Mvne disk is seen and can create a partition on it. Then install.

Then mvne disk can boot (because bios is still in uefi + legacy), reinstalled alienware drivers, graphics driver and nvme drivers.

Reboot and disable the legacy mode. Then now your alienware will boot in just a few seconds.

Thank you for the moded firmware!

Hi edmoncu,

Do you still have link to modded firmware for aurora-r4 A11?

Thanks.

• Link to modded A11 BIOS file - http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=26078208478208490510

Just checked link still good.

Great work and and a fantastic manual but the tynyupload links to the files are no longer working.

Would it be possible to update them?

Many thanks!!!

@Cass-Ole had updated the link At 10-03-2020 03:34 PM