Need help understanding a BIOS/hardware bug

Question

A BIOS upgrade to a Dell laptop has caused instability in the laptop's wireless adapter. I would like to understand what this implies a the hardware level, and what (if any) hardware changes might fix the problem. (Dell doesn't seem interested in fixing the BIOS.) My lack of understanding of computer architecture is getting in the way.

Details:

In early 2021 my wife's laptop was dying. We got a Dell Inspiron 17 - 3793 as a replacement. All was well for many months.
In Nov 2021 (I think) a BIOS upgrade was included in Windows maintenance.
(I shortly thereafter disabled getting BIOS maintenance that way ... but I don't remember how.)
In Jan 2022 I noticed that all weekly Macrium Reflect image backups in December had failed. Daily file & folder backups succeeded. Reflect logs showed that all image backups had died with a network failure. By manually running some I discovered that the wireless adapter would go disabled sometime during the backups - sometimes immediately; sometimes after many minutes.
I tried the newest driver plus a couple old ones. That did not work.
I eventually went back to the old BIOS and everything worked again.
There have been 10 BIOS upgrades since the one that came with the laptop. I tested 9 of them and all had the problem.
External (USB-attached) wireless adapters have no problem, regardless of the BIOS level.

I eventually found a couple other things that would kill the wireless adapter. Copying a large VeraCrypt container or a large encrypted .vhd to a NAS (or to a shared file on another Windows computer) will cause the adapter to die. I think the problem is provoked by sending any large stream of unblocked data. It could be that the adapter overheats, but for the life of me, I can't think of how a BIOS change would cause or prevent that overheating.

And throw in a complication, there was a firmware upgrade to the Intel Management Engine (whatever that is) that went along with at least some of the BIOS upgrades so I suppose this could be a problem with the IME instead of BIOS.

I obviously could stay with the working BIOS, but Dell has been cranking out BIOS upgrades about every 2 months. I assume some of the upgrades might be important so I'd rather not stay that far back-level.

So now to my actual questions. I don't understand how a BIOS change effect the behavior of a wireless adapter in this way. Is it possible this is really a change to PCIe behavior? (The adapter plugs into an M.2 slot.) If so, the change doesn't seem to effect NVMe "disk".

The adapter could be bad; I could try replacing it.
The adapter is a Qualcomm QCA9377 but the doc claims it has an Intel 9560NGW; I could try the Intel card.
But if the problem is with the PCIe interface neither of those solutions will work.
I just don't know enough of how this works to come up with a solution. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

BTW, I've been working with (or perhaps against) Dell support for months but have gotten nowhere.

BTW #2, somewhere in this history there was an upgrade from Win10 Pro to Win11 Pro. That had no effect.

Pokeefe0001 · Answer

The 'Dell Cares' team seems to think this question needs a response via private message rather than a response in a public forum.  I'm not convinced - especially since the private conversions with the team for the past 9 months have gotten me no closer to a solution.  So I am no longer asking for a solution from Dell.   I'm asking for information from knowledgeable members Dell user's community - people more knowledgeable than I am about the interactions between BIOS and motherboard hardware. If a BIOS upgrade causes a wireless adapter (plugged into a PCIe M.2 socket) to have intermittent but reproducible problems, is there any hope that different wireless adapter - same or different make and model - plugged into the same PCIe socket might fix the problem?  Or would the BIOS upgrade effect things only at the PCIe interface level?

confuseduser43 · Answer

Hello, That bios updates seem to fix security vulnerabilities you certainly want to keep those you can read that here .Regarding the unstable wifi issue does this video help ?

DELL-Cares · Answer

Thank you for reaching out to us. I’d be glad to look into this for you right away. As our interaction would involve sharing personally identifiable information, I would recommend that you private message us so that we can start working toward a resolution.

Pokeefe0001 · Answer

@DELL-Cares wrote:

Thank you for reaching out to us. I’d be glad to look into this for you right away. As our interaction would involve sharing personally identifiable information, I would recommend that you private message us so that we can start working toward a resolution.

I have been exchanging private messages about this problem with the "Dell Cares" since last January. (Most of exchanges have been in my "Optane reporting SMART errors" thread. I've asked to have the conversion moved to the "Large WiFi writes disable WiFi adapter" several times.) As near as I can tell, I've disclosed no personally identifying information. And Dell has disclosed no helpful information.

Pokeefe0001 · Answer

@confuseduser43: Thanks for your suggestion.  I looked at the video and tried the supposed solution but it didn't fix anything.  I think my problem is different from the one being fixed there.

confuseduser43 · Answer

Hello,

Run the hardware diagnostics with the laptop powered off hold down fn and press the power button this will boot directly to ePSA these tests can take a while and some tests require user interaction.

confuseduser43 · Answer

Hello,

Yes i understand that however something to keep in mind as well is the network adapter power management .

press the windows key +r and type devmgmt.msc expand networkadapters => Qualcomm QCA9377 in the dialog that opens click power management tab which boxes are checked / unchecked there ?.

Pokeefe0001 · Answer

@confuseduser43  That was one of the first things I did many months ago.  I have not tried it lately though.  I don't have access to the laptop at the moment.  (It's my wife's laptop, and she occasionally has to use it for more than just running diagnostics. )

Pokeefe0001 · Answer

The 'Allow computer to turn off this device ...' is selected, but it is also selected for the external wireless adapter.  Anyway, during tests (although not when running the backup) I'm actively doing stuff so there is no reason the laptop should decide to power things down. The Wake on LAN settings are not selected.

Pokeefe0001 · Answer

I may have solved the problem with my wireless adapter (although I'm no closer to understanding how a BIOS upgrade could provoke the problem). Today I noticed the the laptop had a program SmartByte. Not knowing what it was, I Googled it and found all sorts of complaints. This is some Dell bloatware that supposedly prioritizes data on streaming connections over that for other uses. Most of the complaints were about WiFi performance, but I figured that anything throttling data could cause timing problems. So I uninstalled it and the problem seems to have gone away.

Many of the reports I saw on the web were in Dell forum posts going back to 2019, and Dell support monitor's the forums; there's no way that Dell support should have missed that. Even if my problem did not match the reported performance problems, uninstalling Smartbyte should have been suggested before requesting a clean reinstall of Windows.

I'm not yet convinced that this is really the solution - I should know in a few days - but I'm very frustrated that this wasn't at least suggested as a possibility by Dell support. Dealing with Dell support for the past 10 months has really soured me on Dell. Even though the laptop is still under warranty I'm looking for a non-Dell replacement for my wife's laptop.

Inspiron

Need help understanding a BIOS/hardware bug

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