Aurora R11, SupportAssist, fails to install BIOS update

Question

Hi thanks in advance,

I have had my Alienware Aurora R11 for about a month now. When I ran it for the first time it highlighted that I needed 6 updates, 1 urgent and 5 recommended.

It all seemed to go along okay and downloaded and said that it had installed the 5 recommended but, when it came to the urgent one, Alienware Aurora R11 System BIOS to 1.03, it seemed it was stuck as installing for over two hours. Came back to it later and it was at the home screen. Now though every time I check it says they are all still in the updates to be done and the history is showing nothing updated. So, when I try to update again it says the following, Some of the updates could not be installed. See the Status column for details.

Any admins with some help on this please and to be honest I am little fed up after only having this for a month and the SupportAssist seems broken!

Many thanks,

Clive

MeatRocket · Accepted Answer

You'll find your frustration repeated throughout this board. The general rule on the BIOS update is to download the binary & run it yourself. There are several people on here who have completely bricked their motherboards trying to update the BIOS through SupportAssist. They literally had to have Dell replace their motherboards.

phudmak · Answer

Cheers for the reply bud.

I have indeed downloaded it manually and installed it.

I will now find it hard to trust anything on this Support Assist and will most likely go to the site and download all drivers etc manually from now on.

Thank you.

donl456 · Answer

i'm stuck over 4 hours, will it eventually kick out and stop trying to update so i can restart my computuer and try to install manually?

Romain LU · Answer

It seems I am stuck too ...

Rythmicone · Answer

After many bugs with the Dell installed software, I simply went vanilla windows, manually installed the bios, and let Windows do updates.  They are spot on gathering the Dell drivers.  If there are any missing, I can always go to Dell support and cherry pick what I need.  I hate bloatware.

MeePond · Answer

@MeatRocket Please help!

Can you tell me what to do if this update is stuck at about 75% for hours?

My son got his Alienware aurora for Christmas and we (unfortunately) tried to install the updates through support assist (which we will NOT do again!)

MeatRocket · Answer

@MeePond @Anything is risky while it's in progress. If it were me, I'd probably pull the power cord, wait 30 seconds & power it back up (that's what I did). At the point it's at, if it's going to fail it will do so no matter what you do. If it comes back up, update the BIOS through the update package. If it doesn't, call Dell for RMA/return.

Tesla1856 · Answer

I have indeed downloaded it manually and installed it. I will now find it hard to trust anything on this Support Assist and will most likely go to the site and download all drivers etc manually from now on. ======================= Yes, install your BIOS updates manually (but only if there is a reason to do so in the first place). Only other thing you really need from Dell is AW-CC. Maybe a low-level firmware update for some OEM hardware device that Dell managed to post online for us (like maybe a SSD firmware update for example) but that would be a rare occurrence. Microsoft's Windows-Update should toss you anything else you really need. Get your (enhanced/full-featured) video drivers from nvidia.com or amd.com .

Vaayu Reddy · Answer

what binory do you mean because I am having the same problem so like is it a driver or what?

Davve · Answer

Same problem... I wanted to update the BIOS and after 75% the update stuck for hours. No solution until now

FlaviusBelisarius · Answer

So am I having the same reported issue here? Should I wait, pull the plug, or is it too late to save this one? Did not know Alienware Updater was not to be trusted! This is an R11, stuck at 3% for an hour.

FlaviusBelisarius · Answer

Interesting, it was right after a BIOS update (with the BIOS screen telling me not to turn off). After it got stuck I turned it off, restarted it, and it went back to to the same screen but now at 2% progress and also appearing to be stuck. I did notice when booting that it briefly gave me the option to skip this process. Should I? What's it trying to do? Thanks!

I wonder if installing Crucial's Acronis disk imaging software has something to do with this. I used it to copy my M2 boot drive to another internal SSD for purposes of a swap but tried to complete this update before physically swapping the drives but after completing the copy.

Vanadiel · Answer

That looks like a drive repair, not a BIOS issue.

FlaviusBelisarius · Answer

Thank you for your responses. I disconnected the extra SSDs and it booted correctly. When Acronis cloned a new boot drive (internally) and I rebooted after the BIOS update it must have confused the system to have two boot drives.

Vanadiel · Answer

You can skip it, but if the file system is corrupt it will not boot.

If you used Acronis incorrectly, you can get a situation like this. Hopefully you have a good working backup, in case you need to restore your data.

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Aurora R11, SupportAssist, fails to install BIOS update

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