C840 BIOS changed

Question

I recently had Dell do some work on my C840 latitude. The NIC went bad and they changed out the mother board. Now when the computer boots up I see Insprion 8200 on the start up screen. I spoke to a customer representitive and was assured that it will work as well as the other board. One problem I see now is the cpu constantly runs at 1.8GHz. It does not drop when it is idle. Any ideas?

Rijko · Answer

I think the way to go is to create a bootflop for the bios. Probably using A13 ?

The original autoexec.bat on that bootflop is :

@echo off
cls
a:\upgrade.exe

Replace the a:\upgrade.exe line with : C840_A13.EXE /jabil. That should do the trick.

I have found enough info to not completely agree with Dell on their point of view - with the Inspiron BIOS you are lacking infrared while docked, you can not dock your laptop to a Dockingstation Serie C/Dock 2, no scsi etc. Maybe the customer rep can give a definitive answer to this ?

The boards are identical afaik - that's why this mistake was made at your expense.

They should have checked for that - and have performed the above step.

Come to think of it - if you don't mind calling Dell again : have THEM do it. The way i see it they did not finish the repair correctly and are responsible for doing so.

If you try to change the Inspiron bios back to the Latitude and things go wrong - it's YOUR responsibility.

Hope you get this sorted out.

purple_heart77 · Answer

I undersatnd your points. Unfortunately I was in Houston when I got Dell to repair the laptop. I live in Trinidad and Tobago, this will involve shipping and handling. I will Speak to the local dealership here in Trinidad. That failing I will send an e-mail to Dell. Thanks for your response.

Ed C · Answer

You can update the BIOS yourself. Just download the newest BIOS version for your original model number and copy it to a DOS BOOT floppy disk or download the version that MAKES a boot floppy for you and copies all the files needed to flash the BIOS back to the original model number. No shipping required.

purple_heart77 · Answer

Correct, I did change the BIOS to the correct C840. The performance of the computer 'i ronically' decreased. I used it for a few days and the performance was poor. I had to return to the I8200 BIOS and the computer works far better. Don't understand why, but it works better, applications starts faster, the computer overall works as it was before the mother board was changed.

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C840 BIOS changed

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