Dapper corrupts Dell laptop BIOS!

[Francisco Borges]

» On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 06:55PM +0200, Alan Mckinnon wrote:

> On Tue, 2006-08-22 at 16:11 +0200, Francisco Borges wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I just discovered that [1] Dapper corrupts the BIOS of some Dell
> > laptops.
> > Honestly, I fell cheated.
>
> Slow down, cowboy. Leave the !!!s and the ?!?s for the poor souls who
> run a different OS and concentrate on the actual problem and the
> solution.

Ok. Thank you for the patience.

> Now, go back and re-read that bug page and realize the following:
>
> 1. Your machine is not broken
> 2. A corrupted CMOS is very easy to fix
> 3. This kind of problem has been around since the first PC was released
> 25 years ago. So any user who has [clue > 0] sooner or later runs into
> it and learns how to fix it:

1. The machine is broken in the sense that it won't even give me a BIOS
   screen, and therefore, without fixing this, is impossible to do any
   work on it or access its data (without removing the disk). It may not
   be "broken beyond repair" but it's broken.

2. In the forum thread a poster mentions [1] that removing the coin cell
   battery didn't stop the system from presenting the same problem
   again. On the bug repport this guy [2] says not all users had their
   system working after removing the coin cell battery. Another [3]
   reports having to repeat the procedure several times to achieve
   results.

[1]: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=1021844&postcount=10
[2]: https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.15/+bug/43745/comments/17
[3]: http://www.ailis.de/~k/docs/delld820/

> The coin cell is a big fat watch battery about 2.5cm across. It supplies
> power to the CMOS memory and when you take it out and leave it out for
> about a minute the CMOS memory is cleared. You'll find it under a cover
> on the bottom of the machine on modern Dells, it has two wires and a

I managed to find the correct manuals at Dell. My model is a bit
different (got to remove the keyboard) but it should be ok.

> If you still have a problem with the bug not being assigned to someone
> then I recommend you sign yourself up as the responsible person and
> figure out the solution so everyone else can benefit too.

I have a problem with this, yes. In the sense that, as a "Linux
distribution user", I expect the distribution to either

1. be able to address an issue such as this,

or

2. warn users properly about the risks that using the OS poses to the
   specific hardware.

Neither was done.

I will add links to this bug report on the laptop support page. Assuming
that bug myself is literally impossible at this point as I am strugling
to finish my phd, and not having particular expertise on the topic,
dealing with it would take a ridiculous amount of time.

[...]

Again, thanks for the patience and for the explanations.
-- 
Francisco