BIOS update crashes on one PC and does nothing on another

Question

Hi. I bought an old E6440 laptop. First thing I always do is blow away the existing Windows installation and do a fresh one, to ensure nothing nasty is there. Boot the USB stick, blow away drive, install and reboot. When it comes back up, after POST it just says invalid partition and won't proceed.

Googling has advised that the laptop needs a BIOS update. So OK, I go to the Dell driver page and enter my service tag and download the file. This was on my Server 2012 box sitting next to it. I run the E6440A24.exe file and Windows pops up saying the program crashed. Download a new copy, same problem. Run over to my main Win10 rig, download there. No crash, but nothing happens. I see the task pop into task manager, but it disappears in a second and nothing happens.

Anyone have any idea what is going on?

File in question: https://dl.dell.com/FOLDER05674211M/1/E6440A24.exe

Thanks!

DELL-Cares · Answer

Hello, I see you are looking for technical assistance. If you need our help, you can follow @dellcares and start a private/direct message with us and we will be happy to assist you.

nyc10036 · Answer

I don't know why you bother running the EXE on PCs that are not the E6640.

Strahan · Answer

Yea, that was my bad.  I had assumed the executable was an SFX that had the BIOS bin file, like how I update BIOS on my other boards.  I never would have thought the BIOS would read the executable right from the USB stick to do its thing.  Once I found that out, worked like a charm

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BIOS update crashes on one PC and does nothing on another

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