Dumb software rant

I got a Dell Mini 9 netbook on Wednesday, which is a lovely little machine (except the keyboard and the gloss screen, but they are liveable with).

Unfortunately through no fault of my own I managed to "brick" it within a couple of hours of it arriving. Rendered completely useless while doing a BIOS update.

I downloaded the Windows BIOS update tool from the Dell website. I ran the tool and up popped a window.

The window had a couple of text boxes, one for the path to the BIOS to apply and one for the path to backup the old BIOS to. It also had a button to press to start the update and a bunch of text. The text warned you to plug in the PSU and close other apps before running the update.

So I plugged in the PSU and went to alt-tab to close Firefox. I couldn't alt-tab though, the machine had hung.

Bother, I thought. I gave the machine a couple of minutes to see if it would recover. I tried resetting by holding down the power button, no response.

So I pulled the PSU and removed the battery. I plugged it again and turned it on.

Nothing. The power light lit, but nothing else happened.

I then embarked on a troubleshooting journey, removing miniPCIe cards, SSDs and RAM. To no avail, it was dead.

I began to wonder whether I had accidentally pressed "go" on the BIOS update app without realising it.

I reported it to Dell support, answering a few silly questions while pretending to do all the troubleshooting again, I arranged for it to be picked up for repair.

After that I decided to go and search out fellow Mini 9 owners. I found them at the excellent http://mydellmini.com/forum/

Some reading on their forum lead me to a shocking discovery. Despite the BIOS updates text boxes, warning text and start button, it actually starts the update process as soon as you open it. The update process takes 6-7 minutes.

So through no fault of my own I had started the BIOS update and pulled the plug on it part way through ! No wonder it was dead.

I can't understand how they can have decided to do such a stupid thing. I also can't understand why modern PCs can't have a similar failsafe approach to their BIOS updates as the empeg took years ago.

Rant over...

Some more reading suggests that the Phoenix BIOS in the Dell probably has a fallback recovery option, that appears not to be enabled

It failed because you alt-tabbed or because you removed the power whilst it was updating? I've updated the BIOS on several systems from Windows and none of them ever appeared to hang whilst it was updating.

Either way that is a really crap system. It shouldn't totally kill your system if it fails half way and it definitely shouldn't start updating like that!

It failed because it appeared to have locked up (but it seems it was merely starting the update process, at which point it is unresponsive), causing me to pull the plug after a couple of minutes.

If I'm being honest "a couple of minutes" probably translates to just slightly more than a minute. But in my defence I had no reason to expect that the BIOS update had actually started, as far as I knew it was just a "normal" lockup.

I had no way of knowing that pulling the power at that point was in anyway dangerous. And it isn't as if I'm an in-experienced user...

FWIW I would have done exactly the same thing

And been just as pissed!

I had someting very similar happen a couple of weeks ago with my new games shuttle (an SX38P2 Pro), where the bios update program apparently corrupted the flash when it locked up while attempting to make a backup of the current bios.

I ended up having to remove the serial flash chip, build a programmer, and cobble together some software to reflash it with the correct binary file. I was pleasantly surprised when it worked

Bios flashing programs are fairly dangerous.

pca

It's not just you Andy. Once I'd finished installing XP Pro on Amy's Mini 12 (45 second cold boot versus 3 minute bloated Dell Vista) I thought I should probably upgrade the BIOS. With your experience fresh in my mind I downloaded the app and quit everything before I started it. As soon as the program loaded the computer became unresponsive for nearly a minute, afterwards the upgrading process visibly started and thankfully completed successfully. Other than launching the app, I'd not clicked 'anything'.

On a side note, I love the Mini 12. Shame Amy wouldn't let me put Ubuntu on it instead of XP. My work laptop is slowly dying and the powers that be have agreed to let me replace it. I'm thinking one of the cheap Dell 8 core Xeon workstations (approx. £800) and a Mini 9/12 laptop which would still be cheaper than the original laptop cost. I'm just not sure wether I should get the 9 or the 12, shame there aren't any in the shops to look at.

I was looking at the little Acers in Tesco's this afternoon when a lady came up and said I shouldn't buy that model because it had 'links' (sic) and nothing worked with it apparently. I should buy the one with Windows instead. I thanked the lady for her advice and walked off.

apt-get remove links
apt-get install elinks?

Peter

That was exactly what I first thought of, but she looked like the sort of person that probably wouldn't get the joke and her partner looked a little menacing.

PCWorld sell the 9 and the 12, the store I was in the other day had a 9 on display, don't know whether there was a 12.

I would recommend checking, the keyboard on the 9 isn't as good as I expected.

Nothing in this world would cause me to buy anything again from Acer, ordinary laptops and PC's may be fine, unless you have to use the support service: Surly - r - us.

I have a mediacenter Acer aspire idea 510, after eighteen months I've got it near to working: They've finally updated the drivers after many pleas from customers and Freeview now works.

It's been to Plymouth and back five times, once totally needlessly because, despite my detailed information, the pen pusher sent it into the engineers with: Fault - nothing works.

If anybody wants to figure out how you can get the DVI and the TV output working simultaneously (It did it fine after its first recall) but not since and I really can't be bothered to send it back again. It works fine until you open Mediacenter.

Thank god I took out the three year warranty! If you don't believe me check out AV forums!

I have an Acer Aspire (a regular laptop, not Aspire One) and after a year and some 9 months the wired network died. It would work for a little while after being powered up, then just stop working and after some more time just disappear from Device Manager as well. Wireless was still working, so I could still use Internet with it. I made a screendump showing the missing network connection in Connection Manager, and since I didn't wan't to let support be able to snoop around in my files, backed up the machine and installed Ubuntu on it. When I got it back from repairs about a month later, they had changed the wireless card... So I still had the same problem. Now it's probably back from repairs again, but I'm not back from work yet, so I have no idea if they have managed to fix it properly this time...

Stig

Isn't it worth removing the HDD for safe keeping, installing a fresh one and trying a MythTV install?

You may experience many problems but they are usually far more under your control.

I have several spare drives sitting here... and you are welcome to one ... hmmm, that goes for anyone but I have a 200Gb reserved for you boxer ... see this thread

I think they have Mini 9's at Carphone Warehouse and Vodafone stores.

Had a quick look at one in PC World, I definitely prefer it to the other offerings they had. It was priced at £349, it had the WWAN card installed but only an 8GB SSD. For me the WWAN card will be a must. I'm unable to find it as an option on the Dell site.

You can't buy it from Dell with the WWAN card. They are selling "free" it with the WWAN via Vodaphone for £25 a month over 24 months.

You can in theory add WWAN to the non-WWAN one. But only by soldering on the missing miniPCIe slot, SIM holder and antenna.

Hmm, intriguing. The one at PC World had a Vodaphone sticker on the front and I asked the one of the grunts whether I had to sign up for a Vodaphone contract and he said no.

It is nearly £100 more than just buying it from Dell direct and you only get the 8GB SSD. I think if I end up getting one myself then I'll buy the 16GB one and install the PCIe slot myself. If work gets it then I'll get them to purchase it through Vodaphone as they are our mobile supplier. I suppose I could then add the bigger SSD myself later.

There are compatible SSDs available upto 64GB.

I've come across them while googling, they also offer considerably better write speeds and one in particular also offered USB Mass Storage so you could clone them easily.

Thanks for the offer, but it's largely working now - I've just got that one problem with the analog output, but I can live with that: It has been back so often that I have everything backed up on a 1tb USB drive and I've given up re-installing it. Before you spot the obvious flaw in my system, everything permanently needed on the USB drive is backed up on DVD's.