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The Dell Exx1x SGN ACPI Problem

Chares

Hi Members of the forum,

im writing down in here since i didnt find any more information related to the problem.

Im talking about the necesity to press Shift+Fx to toggle ACPI support for example, in SGN (SafeGuard Enterprise), to boot on to the machine, in the Dell Models.

i know of the existance of:

http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/111562.html

and, as its says "a probable bug on Dell BIOS",

and some of the community posts, that changing the motherboard has caused the issue to appear in a machine that didnt had the problem,

the thing is that we did tell our client (we are a sophos partner) that the problem was on the Dell BIOS.

Of course he contacted Dell and they told him that this wasnt reported by the software manufacturer (Sophos), that this is not a Dell Problem, and that is an incopatibility with the Software.

So im asking you, the community and the support guys that roam around here, if you got references to the case numbers, or any other communication ID if you had it with Dell About the problem.

This is because i still havent found a relevant answer if its is the BIOS or the software, and if there were any communication with Dell and Sophos.

Anything you need ill be happy to help!

Cheers,

Ares, Cristian.

Edit: Just so you know, we're working with 5.50.0, not .1 or .8, and the update wont be done unless it does actually fix the problem.

Also the Machines that we tested were 5 variants of the Exx1x Latitude Series.

:6443


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  • 0

    HI Guys,

    do you have any info on this?

    ive seen Daniel and Sandy probably have read the post, i would like to know if sophos has an offical answer on how do you know it is a BIOS problem,and if that you actually reported it to Dell.

    also, any one has a technical explanation on why does this happen?

    thanks!

    :6483
  • 0

    Charles,

    Here's some forum posts about the Dell issue:

    SafeGuard Enterprise 5.50.1 Release Announcement

    Hope this helps.

    :6561
  • 0

    Dear Charles,

    the mentioned issue occurred due to an internal SafeGuard Enterprise function that relied on a BIOS specific call named "TimerTick" (a BIOS call that can be used to i.e. measure a certain timeframe). This BIOS call did not report back as expected on some machines (i.e. DELL xx1x series)/BIOS versions which caused the initial problem.

    Due to the non-reliable working BIOS call, we changed the general process of applying Power-on-Authentication configurations via hotkeys, so we do not have to rely on the "TimerTick" call anymore.

    Details about the changed hotkey procedure has already been posted and can be found in "Advisory: SafeGuard - changes to POA hotkey usage with version 5.50.1" (http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/111562.html).”

    Regards

    Dan

    :6567
  • 0

    Hi Daniel,

    Thanks for the technical response,

    so that means in the following versions, the users will still have to maintain the "shift" key pressed on the POST, until Dell releases a new BIOS fix?

    also, did sophos communicated the problem to Dell? is there a reference number to give it to Dell?

    Thanks!

    PS: thanks for the response ssij!, yet i already seen the posts, and i was looking for a more "official" response rather than a post or a KB.

    PS2: its Christian, not Charles =P, Chares is just my first two initials and surname.

    :6569
  • 0

    Hi Christian,

    thank you very much for getting back with this one (and the clarification of your name ;)

    With regards to your question I can tell you that the answer is NO - User do not have to press hot keys in the latest version of SafeGuard Enterprise (5.50.8) any more. The reason for this is that we do not rely on the BIOS call any more but we fixed the issue internally in our POA load.


    So using the latest version should work out of the box (some machines still required a hot key but not because of this particular issue).

    We have addressed this issue with DELL but since we where able to fix the issue in our product there is for SGN no need to have a new BIOS version applied until things will work again.

    If you want we can provide you with the ticket number if required - please open a new support call and the number will then be given to you. However, from a technical point of view you can simply use the latest version of SGN which does fix the issue as well not requiring anything from DELL.

    Regards

    Dan

    :6581
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