[SOLVED] Downgrading the BIOS on my laptop ?

[Ferizon]

Laptop: Dell Inspiron 15 5570

Because I forgot to turn off BIOS updates in the BIOS after resetting it to defaults, Windows has updated the BIOS to the latest version and now all my games have been crashing. I have already downgraded my BIOS from 1.14 to 1.2.5, but my only issue is that if my laptop brick if I go from 1.2.5 to 1.1.8 since from 1.14 it says that I can't downgrade below 1.2.5.

https://imgur.com/a/yIFPJLV

But there aren't any restrictions to downgrade from 1.2.5 to 1.1.8, will that be safe to do so, since I haven't found any answers to this yet?

Since I can't do the normal downgrade way because Windows is blocking the exe file because of "vulnerabilities" and together it shows "Error: Unable to load the SMBIOS Table", will doing it using the ctrl+esc method be fine?

 

[Lutfij]

If I was in your position, I'd update to the latest BIOS version, manually. That being said, I tend to gradually work my way up to the latest version.

As for your laptop, there's a SKU with an AMD Radeon 530;
https://www.dell.com/support/manual...cdd6ef-a21d-4709-ac60-8082df4acd4e&lang=en-us
and that isn't exactly a gaming GPU, more like a GPU that photographers use while on the go.

windows have updated the bios to the latest version and now all my games have been crashing.
This leads me to ask, what games are we talking about here? Define crashing.

Because I forgot to turn off bios updates in the bios after reseting it to default
You might want to see if CSM is enabled in BIOS. Perhaps see if Secure Boot, Fast Boot and UEFI are all enabled.

Last pointer, downgrading a BIOS for any device can cause it to become an expensive paperweight.

 

[Ferizon]

I had my laptop at the bios version 1.1.8 where everything worked fine until recently when it updated, it could handle games hours on end without any crashes at all, but with the 1.14(happens as well in 1.2.5) update the games would crash around 10 minutes in, sometimes more than 10mins before it decides to crash, demanding or non-demanding games alike. I checked the temps and they're sitting around 70-80c cpu and gpu wise which definitely doesn't look like thats the issue.

The way it crashes is that the screen would freeze up for like a few seconds and the game would hang up, then it would just sit there, sometimes it will have audio but the game application's frozen up and sometimes it will just close entirely.

CSM, Secure Boot and UEFI are all enabled.

 

[Ferizon]

A little update for anyone who has been caught with this issue as well. I have successfully downgraded from 1.14 down to 1.2.5 then downgraded to 1.1.8.

From 1.14 I just used the exe file for the downgrade which you cannot do from 1.2.5 to 1.1.8. So this is the steps I took which worked.

Note: do this when you're at bios 1.2.5 just to make sure.

1.) Get a USB and format it with a FAT32 and download this Bios version 1.1.8.


2.) Rename the file to BIOS_IMG.rcv (make sure you have file extenstion showed) and copy it in the USB.


3.) Shut down the laptop then pull out the charger cord.


4.) Hold ctrl+esc then plug in the charger cord (Do not press the power button while doing this).
5.) Click recover BIOS and wait for the update to complete then thats that.

It definitely was a risky route to take for me since there were no answers anywhere about this. But at least now I know it would be about safe to downgrade this way.