New Latitude E5500 BIOS A17

I just had to do the same thing myself. Just thought I'd stoke the fire...

I put the 7800 in anyway, it works. It improves the WEI a little bit. 5.1 to 5.9. Core Temp reports it as running as high as 2.593ghz. 

Problem I have is the Com Port missing. While it would be nice to not have to press F1 every reboot, I really need the bloody Com Port to work. I can't go to A16 with the T7800 in place. There is no logical reason why it shouldn't work, The 7800 has the same Bus, TDW, and 65nm technology, same socket type as the stock 2.0 ghz processor.

The reason I think is they want to force us to buy a hunk of junk with a 16:9 screen. The E5500 is the last latitude with both a Com Port and a 16:10 Screen.

Laptop's with 16:9 screens are just overpriced portable DVD players.

Where is the Dell Moderator? Tech Support Rep?

Just finished grabbing the latest Win Updates for 7, and still no Com Port. Thankfully my GigaWare USB serial adapter still works.    

PLEASE fix this! I had to roll back to A16 as well!

Am I the only one that actually tried using the T7800? I am just trying to make sure the reason the COM Port quit is because of the BIOS and not the processor I am using.

Even via Email, it seems that Dell doesn't want to acknowledge that there is a problem.

I am using a T7800 with BIOS A16 - the COM port is working fine. If I update the BIOS to A17 (I have to temporarily put back the T7250 in order to update the BIOS of course) the COM port doesn't work, even with the original T7250 processor. The two issues; the T7800 compatability and the non-functioning COM port, are unrelated - I only mentioned them in the the same post for convenience.

Thanks for the post I just hit the same problem, come on dell release a fix in a new bios

By the way, E5500 BIOS A16 can be found here: www.dell.com/.../DriverFileFormats

Just experienced the loss of serial port issue on my Latitude E5500 when updated to BIOS A17.  The BIOS seems to take ownership of the serial port and denies it to WIndows.  During and after bootup the serial port spits out HUNDREDS of lines of cryptic text.  Seems to be some sort of system diagnostics.  I can see references to memory, CPU cores, SCSI, etc, etc, etc.  Downgraded back to BIOS A16 and the problem is gone.  Like MikeHamon stated above, c'mon Dell, yer better than this, just fix the problem.

When I called tech support, they told me that there will be update soon that would replace A17.... I think they lied, it's over 4 months and nothing showed up on update page. They also just in case didn't send me email that asks how good their services are, strange, they always did send it. Mayeb I'll return this laptop ,and get newer line of Latitudes :)

This worked for me too

Latitude E5500 WIndows 7 Pro

Dell should officially remove this A17 bios update from site or issue a new update. They know it already,that it's faulty, for a long time

Just got through a troubleshooting session with Dell Tech support on the same issue and they didn't even get as far as downgrading the BIOS.  They wanted me to re-install the operating system and other foolishness that I knew would waste a considerable amount of time.  I kind wish they would acknowledge the issue, pull A17 off the update list, and provide accurate instructions to fix the problem.  I know the serial port is on the way out of the NEW computer world but some of us run mission critical systems that require a serial console connection.  Basically if you need a serial port on your laptop, you REALLY need a serial port on your laptop.  I know there are a number of adapters out there and the such but the simple fact remains for Dell -- There is a problem, there is a solution, and there are no cues for tech support or end-users to resolve the issue other than this end-user thread.