Updating BIOS A03 to A05 on Aurora R4 gets 'Error: Problem allocating memory'

[arandlas]

Hi all,

I recently bought a new GPU which requires me to update my BIOS as it turns out my Aurora R4 is on an ancient BIOS even though I only bought it 6 or so years ago... Over the last few days I've learnt more than I ever wanted to about this process, but am stuck at near the final stage.

I've learnt I need to format a small USB flash drive to be FAT32 (I kept recommended cluster size and used Rufus after the Dell utility formatter didn't seem to work), add the Aurora R4 BIOS A05 update .exe file to it, load in Legacy mode and then boot from the .exe BIOS file. It seems to like it, ME systems are the same, it notes I am on A03 and the file on the stick is A05 then I hit this roadblock:

"start to update new bios... - Error: problem allocating memory

remove temporary files... OK?

reboot system or not. 👍 yes. 👎 no."

Any ideas what I may have done wrong would be really appreciated

 

[Calvin7]

Alienware Aurora R4

Recommended BIOS Version I see listed is A11.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/alienware-aurora-r4/drivers

 

[arandlas]

Alienware Aurora R4

Recommended BIOS Version I see listed is A11.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/alienware-aurora-r4/drivers

Yes, that's the dream! I believe you are meant to slow update from A03 to A05 first, then to A07, etc. as you can't jump all the way to A11 all in one go.

 

[william p]

I was going to suggest steps also. THere may be some needed suport for the next step that isn't there. I've jumped versions before but in this case step by step. Does that allow loading the BIOS from Windows? That's how mine are delivered, Download,/Extract/ Run

 

[arandlas]

I was going to suggest steps also. THere may be some needed suport for the next step that isn't there. I've jumped versions before but in this case step by step. Does that allow loading the BIOS from Windows? That's how mine are delivered, Download,/Extract/ Run

No, annoyingly there's only a .exe file which when loaded in Windows (you can't extract it) just says 'failed to load driver' in a pop up before really doing much. Pretty sure it has to flash in OS but this error is stopping that ...

 

[ragnatok]

I had this same problem when upgrading A03 to A05 using a FreeDOS bootable USB drive created by Rufus.

To get it working, I needed to add extra files to the FreeDOS installation that came with Rufus. In particular, the FDCONFIG.SYS file includes a few settings related to memory management. I listed the steps below. I'm going to assume that creating a FreeDOS USB boot drive using the USB image from FreeDOS would have been easier and would have worked just as well, but I didn't try that.

1. Use Rufus version 2.18 (latest a time of writing) to create a FAT32 bootable FreeDOS USB drive.
2. Download FreeDOS's USB "Full" Installer from http://www.freedos.org/download/. (FD12FULL.zip)
3. Unzip FreeDOS
4. Use 7-zip to extract all files from FD12FULL.img.
5. You may need to edit your "file explorer options" and un-check "Hide protected operating system files" to see the files mentioned in the next steps.
6. Copy the following extracted items to the root of the USB drive:

• 
  FDCONFIG.SYS
  COMMAND.COM
  HIGHMEMX.EXE (located in FDSETUP\BIN\)

7. Use notepad or a similar text editor to edit FDCONFIG.SYS on the USB drive (don't accidentally update the original copy) so that the paths correctly point to the files we copied to the root of the drive. I didn't update the "COUNTRY=" line, but it worked anyway. I've copy-pasted my version below.


!COUNTRY=001,858:\FDSetup\BIN\COUNTRY.SYS
!LASTDRIVE=Z
!BUFFERS=20
!FILES=40

DOS=HIGH
DOS=UMB
DOSDATA=UMB

DEVICE=HIMEMX.EXE

SHELLHIGH=COMMAND.COM \ /E:2048 /P=\AUTOEXEC.BAT


8. Place your BIOS updates in the root of the USB drive
9. I shortened the names of the BIOS updates on the USB drive to A5.exe and A11.exe to make things easier on the command line. DOS might display a different name for the files if the names are too long.
10. Boot up the USB drive and run A5.exe. Reboot when finished.
11. I booted into windows to make sure everything was okay. Windows crashed at the loading screen once, then the 2nd boot successfully loaded Windows. I think this was caused by a driver problem since it was the first boot with a new GPU installed.
12. I rebooted back into the USB drive and ran A11.exe. This is a scary update because your computer will need to reboot 3 times and the fans will go crazy on the first boot. Another person experienced this as seen on the last post here:
https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General/Bios-update-help/td-p/5504888
As for my experience, when I ran the A11 update, I rebooted as prompted after the install. On the first bootup, the fans spun up and I waited at least 30 seconds before holding down the power button to reboot. If I remember correctly, the 2nd reboot occurred automatically a few seconds after booting up. On the 3rd boot, the display took a long time to load, but eventually came up fine.

 

[jamessargent1979]

Just like to say thanks for the above worked fantastic for myself, I used this method to downgrade my bios from A11 > A05 as I had missed a few bios updates between and for peace of mind installed each one and checked at each update was working.

The only issue I came across when going back to A05 was my Nvidia GTX980 G1 did not work thankfully I had an old PCI-E Nvidia 7300GT card in an old PC that got me out of trouble, once back to A11 the GTX980 G1 was put back in and worked fine.

 

[rayop]

This is what I did to get the bios update to work.

I partitioned my ssd and install Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Then I downloaded the BIOS A05 from the dell website. Ran it and it installed properly. Rebooted the PC then did the same with the A011. Everything work fine. I did have a little scare about updating to the A011 my PC rebooted but it was a blank screen for 10 minutes. I ended up powering off the PC then powered it back on and everything was working properly. So yes the BIOS.exe was meant for Windows 7 so if you're trying to do this on Windows 8.1 or 10 it will not work.

I hope this works for you