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I recently noticed at a clients that their Dell laptops appear to have SMART disabled in bios by default. I noticed this while swapping out a disk on a desktop which had failed without any warning.. wonder why we didn't get anything. :-)

Anyone know how to script bios changes on Dell machines? Is it even possible?
This particular client has loads of laptops and maybe 50-75% of the company will be out of the office on any given day - making updating this difficult and expensive - unless I can script it.

The dell site mentions an openmanage package which they offer/sell, but that looks like overkill for such a simple need.

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What Dell has for this is the Dell Client Configuration Utility, which gives you the option to configure bios changes (either for a single model or multiple models, and whatever doesn't apply to that bios is skipped), and then package it in an msi for silent/unattended deployment to the workstation, a reboot is still required though.

http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/os-applications/w/wiki/2545.aspx

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  • That sounds perfect. haven't tried it out yet but I'll mark that as the answer. Msi rollout + reboot isn't a problem.
    – Ian Murphy
    Mar 27, 2013 at 16:51
  • @lan, it is quite nice, however I haven't gotten it to work with SCCM operating system deployment, so I can configure the BIOS as the machine is being imaged.
    – MDMoore313
    Mar 27, 2013 at 17:39

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