Dell Inspiron 15 3511 Firmware update

[johnrobert]

Dell Inspiron 15 3511 was completely dead disconnected the battery, and it came back to life.
Client desperate for it back so I gave it back until new battery arrived, now when I boot it wants to do a firmware update but it can't without a battery
I am concerned when I put a new battery in it will install firmware I don't want it to brick on my watch, I don't have pin to log in, if I removed it from updates I don't think it would work since already being in the pipe.
I know it's a slim chance but could be a costly one.

 

[britechguy]

Why would it auto-install a firmware update? I have never once had that happen. You must trigger these, and if you interrupt them prior to their getting started in earnest (where bricking would happen) you must trigger them again from step one.

BTW, I cannot recall the last time I had a catastrophic failure with a modern UEFI/BIOS or other firmware update, that's how long it's been. You should be fine.

 

[sapphirescales]

Why would it auto-install a firmware update? I have never once had that happen.

It happens all the fricking time but only on newer laptops. Dell even has a setting in the BIOS that you can change to block Windows Update from automatically updating the BIOS. Skip to 2:21 in the video below:

 

[sapphirescales]

Dell Inspiron 15 3511 was completely dead disconnected the battery, and it came back to life.
Client desperate for it back so I gave it back until new battery arrived, now when I boot it wants to do a firmware update but it can't without a battery
I am concerned when I put a new battery in it will install firmware I don't want it to brick on my watch, I don't have pin to log in, if I removed it from updates I don't think it would work since already being in the pipe.
I know it's a slim chance but could be a costly one.

Leave the battery out so that the update fails, then when you get back into Windows, open the Device Manager and you'll see a firmware device with a yellow triangle next to it. Simply uninstall that driver and that will cancel the BIOS update. In my experience, Windows Update will never recommend that update again after this, but if there's a new update released in the next couple of months or so, it might update to that unless you disable the capsule updates as show in the video in my post above. You'll obviously need to get the PIN from the client because as an 11th gen, it's almost 100% guaranteed to have Bitlocker enabled.

 

[britechguy]

It happens all the fricking time but only on newer laptops.

a) It happens upon rare occasion, at most.

b) The Dell Inspiron 15 3511 cannot be considered a "newer laptop" in any real sense. It was intel 11th gen, several years back, and is no longer available.

The last thing I'd be worrying about is an automatic firmware update even if it were to be undertaken. Like I said, I haven't had a machine firmware update fail in many, many years now.

 

[sapphirescales]

It happens upon rare occasion, at most.

We only see them in for repair when the updates fail, which as you've said, is rare. The updates happen all the time, just like regular Windows Updates. It's not uncommon for Windows Update to push a BIOS update several times per year. I typically turn those updates off because in my experience, the benefits of updating the BIOS don't outweigh the risks, even though the risks are low, the only exception in recent memory being the Specter/Meltdown fiasco.

The Dell Inspiron 15 3511 cannot be considered a "newer laptop" in any real sense.

A lot of people use their laptops for 7+ years before repairing or replacing them, so yeah, a 3 year old laptop is a newer laptop.

 

[johnrobert]

I uninstalled the update yellow triangle device mgr on reboot it still went ahead with firmware update, must have been too far down the pipe.
Completed successfully. I just had an inclining if anything was going to go wrong, it would be this laptop and this client.

Thanks for the help