My Alienware Area-51 R2 Specs:
- Intel Core i7-6800K CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz.
64-bit operating system, x64-based processor.
Windows 10 Home.
Intel c610 series/X99 chipset (stock).
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (stock).
Samsung 970 Evo Plus (boot SSD drive w/M.2 to PCIe adapter).
16GB RAM (stock).
BIOS A14.
BIOS Chip: Macronix MX25L12873F.
I am doing this because I am having issues (takes much longer to boot) with my POST, Windows boot time, and Windows updates along with an incorrect system firmware that a normal BIOS update will not fix. I am also going to do a clean Windows installation right after I update my BIOS.
I have been doing a bunch of research on how to use the A14 BIOS BIN file extracted from the Alienware BIOS exe file from the Dell Support site as the file I can update my BIOS with. I am not very confident so I would love to hear someone who has more knowledge on this as well as my particular device.
I have found that I could use Awdflash on the boot USB and it will update my BIOS to A14 using the BIN file so here I am. However, I cannot find much out there on this.
Here are the contents of the exe file someone kindly extracted for me:
- a14.bin
AFUWIN64.exe
amifldrv64.sys
FWUpdLcl_w64.exe
gzip.exe
me.rom
NTIOLib.sys
NTIOLib_X64.sys
Wipeall.exe
1. I am just wondering if I would only need Awdflash and the BIN file along with programming the USB boot drive to Fat32? I saw some other tutorials out there saying I need a bat file but I do not have that. The contents of the exe file do not have it. Would I need any other additional files included in the list above besides the a14.bin file, of course?
2. Is the BIOS Chip: Macronix MX25L12873F compatible with Awdflash?
Thank you in advance for the help or for just taking the time to read this!
