Slower boot with XPS 8700 BIOS A06

I should note that I have 8GB of RAM, and have a 250GB SSD as my boot drive. I have an i7 4770 CPU.

Yeah, this is really frusturating, but at least I didn't brick my system. 

I've also tried turning Secure Boot off in the BIOS, but that has no noticeable effect on boot speed.

The A06 definitely degraded performance on boot up.  In may case my XPS8700 went from 3 second boot up to 14 second boot up.  The boot up also deleted the one beep on boot up.  There has thus far been no response of answers from Dell in the forum.  In an earlier thread there was discussion of Dell replying after the holidays, but I have seen nothing yet.  See earlier thread here http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/desktop/f/3514/t/19538470.aspx.

Just got off chat with a dell tech support person. They want to run BIOS diagnostics and such and potentially replace my mobo. They say that it's NOT a widespread issue and that the forums aren't authenticated issues.  I find it had to believe that other people would be lying about having these issues. I urge anyone reading this that has A06 with these issues to do a dell tech support session with them. And if you have A03, I would personally reconsider installing A06.

Quotes:

Bob, if the issue has started right after the BIOS update, I can go ahead and replace the system's motherboard for fixing the issue. However, if that is not the case, I can go ahead and check the system as well when it would be available.

Bob, BIOS update contains feature enhancements or changes that helps keeping the system software current and compatible with other system modules (firmware, BIOS, drivers and software).

Once the motherboard is replaced, you can go ahead and update the BIOS in front of the technician as well.
The BIOS update should not be giving this issue.

Bob, as I mentioned earlier, BIOS update contains feature enhancements or changes that helps keeping the system software current and compatible with other system modules (firmware, BIOS, drivers and software).

BIOS is first checked and only then it is posted on our website for our customers.
The only reason I see could be that the BIOS update didn't happen properly.

Do they just send you the new motherboard and replace it yourself or do they come to your house?  

Hello wowsers53,

I don't recommend replacing your mobo. I almost went down that path, and any mobo they replace with you will have the current BIOS version installed on there. I was very close to do doing this with DELL, and even had the appointment scheduled to replace it, but realized it was a waste to get a fresh laptop with A06, and yet they refuse to believe that A06 is faulty/slow. Poor service, if you ask me.

I am not sure what exactly you are typing. My instructions above are exactly what I typed. Are you missing the double quotes? On Windows command line, ti's critical you use double quotes to contain a file that has spaces in it (this is why people shouldn't put spaces in files names of this sort).

Anyways:

1. go to start > run > cmd. Or, just press teh Window key, type 'cmd' and hit enter

2. cd to your directory where you have the file XPS 8700 A03.EXE.

3. Your command prompt should be in the directory of the file

4. Type the following on the command prompt, everything exactly after the colon, including the quotes: "XPS 8700 A03.EXE" /FORCEIT

5. Follow onscreen instructions to install it.

---

If you are still having trouble here, please paste the FULL window text in your cmd window.

A tech comes out and swaps it out, supposedly. This would only work if you're under warranty. As noted above, it's useless because they're just going to give you the same mobo with the same BIOS you have on there now, A06. Trust me, don't waste your time. Roll back your BIOS to A03 in the method I gave you above. I did this and I'm living the dream of ultra fast bootups.

I have tried in many many ways to do the command prompt installation of the XPS A03 bios to no avail. I have tried with spaces in different places, caps on, caps off and it never work. I'm in the same boat as you having upgraded to A06 and now I regret it. I would like to return to A03 or A04 like it was last July when I bought it but every attempt has failed so far. Can you help me with this? Thanks.

My pleasure. Glad it worked out for you. It's also good information to see that others are experiencing this issue, not just myself.

@mfreed

You have just made my day! It worked. I copy/pasted what you wrote here and it worked instantly. Super fast boot like the day I got my XPS8700SE.

Again, thank you very much!

Yes and also I hate when they say that the internet is not a "reliable source" That condition exist and is for real but they just want to deny it saying that the installation must have gone wrong. I have seen many post on the internet like this one where A06 messed up the boot time but it's the only place where I found a solution. Thanks a million time.

Question is. Why would Dell come out with a bios so bad that it doubles or triples the boot up time? Anyway, my XPS is up and running like the day I bought it and I won't return to A07 or whatever the number will be in the future unless I read great reviews about it and that some REAL good changes were done. For now, I will stay with A03.

What's really annoying is their release notes are completely vague and . A performance improvement is NEVER something that should slow you down. On the phone, they said that "some security improvements may have gone in". OK, security updates are not a performance enhancement:
Fixes - Not Applicable
Enhancements - Enhance system usability