13 Posts
0
4990
XPS 13 9370, Ubuntu, TB16 dock firmware
Hi there! I have a dell XPS 13 9370 ubuntu edition (no windows): it works fine with TB16 but there is no way to update TB16 firmware. The TB16 firmware is Windows only. I have a HP Zbook win7 from my work: works fine with TB16 when I'm in home office: but Dell firmware updater does not work ( "unable to get system information" popup when I launch the updated exe) My wife has a MSI P65 creator Windows 10 with one thunderbolt 3 port: it only display video (with display port, didn't tried other video ports) but USB or ethernet are kind of net detected: they does not appear in device manager. Any idea how I can solve this for my wife MSI laptop (considering Dell provide me no way to update my firmware...)
Best regards,
jphughan
9 Legend
9 Legend
•
14K Posts
0
March 3rd, 2019 13:00
The TB16 drivers page only shows Windows operating systems 7/8.1/10, so logically the firmware can only be installed in Windows operating systems.
If you don't have access to any other Dell systems that have a Thunderbolt port and are already running Windows, then you'll probably have to get Windows at least temporarily installed on your PC. I personally would recommend capturing an image of your entire disk to make this (somewhat) less painful. You'll need a place to park the image backup (an external hard drive is typical), a flash drive to boot from in order to capture and later restore the image, and then a separate flash drive to create Windows installation media. You can download Windows 10 directly from Microsoft, and you won't need it long enough to have to worry about needing a license to activate it. Here's the general idea:
- Select your desired image backup solution for Linux.
- Create a bootable flash drive that contains that tool and boot your system from it.
- Create an image backup of your entire internal disk and store it on an external hard drive.
- Boot your system from your Windows 10 installation media (it's easiest to create this from any Windows PC). When you get to the step asking where to install Windows, click "Drive options (advanced)" and delete all partitions on your internal disk until it shows up as totally unallocated, then select that.
- After Windows is installed, download and install Dell Update to get the necessary drivers installed (Intel chipset, Thunderbolt, etc.), then install your TB16 firmware update. If there's also a firmware update for your system's own Thunderbolt 3 controller (which is NOT part of the regular BIOS/firmware update), you may want to update that at this point as well.
- When you're finished, boot your system from that Linux image tool flash drive and restore the image onto your internal disk.