Problem updating the BIOS on T7600

Personally, I don't think that the bios would make a difference.

On the opposite, if you change to one that has the spectre and etc remediation, you would only lose a bit of performance.

Which release of win10 did you install ? Which version ?

Using the task manager, what's using up the cpu ? What about the hdd activity ? Load on the cores ?

Hi,

I am running version 20H2 of windows 10.

The CPU runs pretty much at 100% CPU most of the time. If you leave the machine for a while the load will settle down, but as soon as you open any program (Edge, Chrome, Dell Support Assist, etc; including Task Manager) the CPU load goes up to 100% again. The machine is then basically unresponsive.

Task Manager shows lots of processes using CPU, with the System process typically using around 20-30% and anything else open can use anything from 20-80% of CPU. Task Manager itself typically shows around 20% CPU usage. Since the machine is dual processor (8 cores all up) with 32GB of memory there has to be something else going on that chews up that much power just to run Task Manager (which is why I thought of possible BIOS incompatibilities).

The Disk Drives are basically idle.

Thanks

Brian

Fresh install of windows ?

Update from win 7 ?

Did you install the windows 10 drivers from Dell? That might help the performance.

Support for Precision T7600 | Drivers & Downloads | Dell US

HI,

It was an upgrade from Win 7.

I haven't been brave enough to try a fresh install yet!

Thanks

Brian

Hi,

I think I have!

I managed to install Dell Support Assist and after many hours running it, the only update left is the BIOS update (which doesn't work). The other updates it came up with all indicated they installed correctly.

Thanks 

Brian

Thanks @mazzinia 

I have reinstalled a clean copy of windows 10.

That helped, but did not solve the problem completely, as the machine was still running slowly - for instance starting Chrome caused the COU usage to go to 100% for quite a few minutes. I then re-ran diagnostics and they turned up a memory error. After removing the offending memory module the machine started working correctly. I can only assume that the memory error was causing the system to go haywire.

I still can't update the BIOS, but I am not going to worry about that for now.

Glad to hear that things are better now... and I would not worry about the bios. There's an old saying : "if it's not broken, don't fix it".

Keep the current one unless you read in the fixes notes of each newer one , that something you specifically need has been solved or added (like support for quicker ram - if planning to change it only , or support for a cpu)

@mazzinia is right.  Hold off on BIOS update until you really need it.  If anything goes wrong during a BIOS update, power outage (unless you have UPS), internet interruption, etc., it can easily brick an MB.  Whatever is going wrong with the BIOS updates, I'm glad that didn't happen already.

Before next BIOS update attempt, replace the CMOS battery, especially if it hasn't been done in the last 5 years.  A bad battery will cause all sorts of seemingly unrelated bizarre problems, including download problems.  And of course, with computer off, battery powers BIOS.

Thanks @bradthetechnut ,

I am going to leave it for now. As the slowness was the original reason for updating the BIOS, and that is okay now, there is no particular need to do the update. Best leave as is as @mazzinia and you have suggested.