XPS 8940, New BIOS 2.7.0 released

Quick Update.

2 days, PC on about 10 to 12 hours a day. Used about 40% of the time, doing 'normal' things. Screen Saver on, and no changes other than the BIOS made.

NO PROBLEMS or LOCK-UPS in basically 2 days.

Right now, I'd mark this SOLVED the Nvidia problem of Freeze/Lock-up.

Waiting until Monday to declare this FIXED.

I am going to give this a go now - I'm sure some of you know me from the other thread

Ok - Going to dip my toe in the water again.  I'll give 2.7.0 a shot, I've not tried any of the others after hearing that it didn't change anything, other than maybe a little longer between failures!  I've been on 2.3.0 without issue, but it seems as if Dell may be much closer to having this fixed.

Best of luck to everyone and keeping my fingers crossed.

Well, I just had the freeze fail. Was out for a few hours, came back in. Screen was black with an hourglass for the mouse pointer. Couldn't wake up the PC and the mouse didn't move the pointer.

Bummer... not fixed, but it does seem to happen less that with V2.6.0.

Used the power button to turn it off and then on. Normal PC boot and the 'normal' Error code 41 for the PC not being shutdown properly. Can't find anything else.

Use at your own risk or stay on V2.3.0.

Didn't take long for me either to have the complete freeze up again with v2.7.0.  I was in email, clicked a link to go to a website (browser was already open) and then locked up.  Required the usual, press power until computer shuts down, wait ~30 seconds, turn computer back on and all is working just fine again.

Looks like I'll be heading back to v2.3.0.  Dell really needs to figure this out!!  It appears they keep trying with all the BIOS updates, but continue to fail.  So frustrating, never had this many issues with Dell systems.

@bdtnr 

Yeah, only happened once to me though, takes a lot longer to fail than V2.6.0 did. V2.3.0 never did, sigh.

What version of the Motherboard do you have? There are at least 3 different one, and Dell asked me what I had? I have BaseBoard Product 0427JK, BaseBoard Version A00. If you run System Info it will show it to you.

Wondering if the problem is specific to one model of the board?

At least 3 of us have had V2.7.0 fail for them.

So I have BaseBoard Product: 0K3CM7 with BaseBoard Version: A00.  Looks like it effects multiple motherboards. I have gone back and installed BIOS 2.3.0 because I just do not want to take the chance that I'll be working on something important and it will just freeze up on me for no good reason!  I have no lockups or freezes with this version of the BIOS.  Thanks.

Not good, they are going to swap out my Motherboard for 0K3CM7 as well... Don't know if there is a newer version and A00 either?

Good Luck, hopefully a newer version.  I'm back on BIOS 2.3.0 and running without issue (knock on wood!).  Let us know how things go after the board swap.

I don't have high hopes that it will. I did see one report of the new motherboard locking up with 2.7.0 it seems.

I'm staying on 2.7.0 for now though, I've had 2 lock-ups so far and I've not been able to locate any reason to fail. Hoping I can.

I don't want Dell to decide they want to 'capture' my XPS... too much 'pain' storing a new one to my liking. Also needing to round up the install files and even in some cases, licenses, which means I'd need to DELETE those from the XPS and they wanted it 'as-is' and not to change anything (although deleting licensed programs shouldn't matter I'd think?). 

How is the 2.7.0 bios working for you on your 8940?

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@dsxyxler wrote:

How is the 2.7.0 bios working for you on your 8940?

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Well, to be honest, not as good as BIOS V2.3.0.

I've had 3 Lockups since I installed it.

I am keeping it installed as I'm hoping I can catch the real error code, but I suspect it will not happen.

Tried 2.6.0 and had multiple freezes in a week.

Just updated to 2.7.0 yesterday and just had a freeze. 

@wcypierre 

Yes, V2.7.0 has less frequent freezes and V2.6.0, but I doesn't SOLVE the problem. For now, only going back to V2.3.0 will stop the problem from happening.

I've had a problem with 2 freezes... A freeze is about the same as if you powered off your PC as the OS can't 'finish' what it was doing. Open files being written to at the time can be corrupted. Any 'work' you were doing that would have to had been saved by you will be lost.

I've had FireFox corruption that required some work to recover. Another program lost it setting and returned to default. Not worth NOT being on V2.3.0 until the BIOS with the true complete fix is released. I'm not sure we'd know that other than some trying and it not freezing for them.

I'm not too sure on the less frequent freezes part (within a day it freezed twice). iinm, on the thread that is locked now (was wondering why nobody posted any new updates), there are also people who faced freezes even on 2.3.0 (although a lot less often) 

tbh I wonder if this is actually a BIOS issue or some hardware issue because I have a few friends who owns XPS 8940 who doesn't have this issue at all (I guess the people who have this issue is minority otherwise it would have a bigger news coverage)