(UEFI) Dell XPS 15z L511z modded BIOS - and HOWTO

[jkbuha]

All

Just a quick update that I've had some time over the festive period to open up the 15z as I've managed to find an equivalent capacity replacement battery and also some new DDR3 16GB RAM as well. So with the help of the multimeter I've also managed to find the ALC269 sound chip, which as some of you may recall, contains the key to enabling the write on the descriptor region (if you short pins 1 & 5 on boot).

In the 15z's case it turns out that the ALC269 chipset is on a daughter board, not on the main board, and any shorting of the pins does not result in a descriptor unlock, so we're back to square one. Whoever has a 15 (not 15z) - is the ALC chip on the main board, and if so - has anyone tried to unlock the descriptor using this method?

Happy Holidays!
jkbuha

[ahmed_shiko]

i Forget Bios Password How to reset BIOS password Dell XPS L502x

[kasar]

@ahmed_shiko

we are discussing here some ways to reset the password

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps...ost9508963

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27493

however, they involve some hardware mods.

[nayheyshun]

Hello all!

Awesome/fascinating work you guys are doing!

I've been reading this entire thread for the last 4 hours, and decided to take a dive into the modding realm. I guess it was a tad to soon, and I've been cursed with the bricked black screen 6 beep .

I've tried the emergency tool only to be met with a blinky powerlight, and that familiar black screen...

I've googled every combination of "bad flash x15z" and tried many of "solutions" though nothing has brought my laptop to its former glory. Anyway has there been a solution to the issue?

I've currently got access to my brother 15z, which is the exact same model (We bought it at the same exact time). Would this help develop a cure? I knew the risks, but hey fortune favors the bold! (Clearly not in my case).

[jkbuha]

Happy New Year, and sorry to hear about your problem.

Have you tried creating an emergency boot CD as described by kasar? It has got us out of trouble countless times...

[nayheyshun]

@jkbuha

I have indeed, thats when i get blinking power light, but nothing upon the screen

[jkbuha]

Ah - I thought it was just when you powered on. Unfortunately it would appear that the only two options would be

(i) desolder and flash the BIOS chip as done by kasar in this thread
(ii) order a replacement motherboard (are you still under warranty)

But either way it would be important if you could provide us with any additional info such as board revision etc. The GPU in the BIOS file on the first post was vanilla (i.e.: from Dell's own BIOS update), so it would have worked fine with all 15z mobo revisions. Not sure why yours would have failed - what Nvidia graphics card do you have?

[kasar]

also, in the case you decide reflash the chip externally (like me, and other people did recently on their L502X following the instructions of this topic)

you will need a working dump/backup from a similar machine, in this case a 15z.
if you cant find one on internet (most probably option, you will need someone with a 15z to create one.)

in this case the only arround here with a 15z is jkbuha, and not sure if he is able to obtain full dumps from his flash chips.

[nayheyshun]

I kinda figured as much, I knew there was a very good reason I was terrified to flash any BIOS. Which is pretty hilarious if you take into account i was once the lead tech at Staples for a number of years (then again, I'm sure we all know how awful corporate PC repair is).

Ya it's the same issue a few others have posted here in this thread.'
6 beeps when powered on along with a black screen(Pointing to video card if memory serves). and when trying to flash black screen and blinking powerlight.
One thing that is frustrating is when I END->Power plug insert->release END the laptop does react as it should; well as far as turning on. The laptop does seem to be looking for a .cap within the boot media or something. When I try the CD i can hear it being read. Or if it's a flash drive I can see the access LED. Something interesting is the CD i burned spins for a while, and then the laptop returns to the Post Error beep codes; however the flash drives seem to keep the laptop busy doing whatever it's doing until i unplug it. So maybe i wrote the flash drive incorrectly?
* I used rufus to create the bootable flash drive(s).

Intel Core i7-2620m @ 2.70ghz(4 Cpu's),~2.7ghz
81928 GB of ram
Nvida gt 525m 2gb ( I'm confused by Wikipedia dell xps article says that the 2 gb Australian 15z is equipped with 2 GB video RAM, I certainly did not buy it from DOWN UNDA *Australia).
I was running the a02 bios (told ya i was scared of flashing the bios).

What I'm thinking is
A) Just a typical bios flash failure
B)I've been plagued by overheating issues as most XPS owners are, I did at one point install a new heatsink/fan a year or ago. So maybe the video card was hanging on by a thread and that flash killed it, or i didn't properly mount the heatsink/fan and the newer bios revisions somehow know (Just grasping at straws here).
C) The Bios curse that haunts me ^_^

Eh as far as the changes I made i don't have the dump handy (It was one one of the flash drives I formatted in a panic). I modded the the GPU settings voltage settings based on recommendations made here, and I did mess with the INTEL vbios. Ill see if i can find a sata usb dongle to extract my old files from my HDD. I've currently taken the laptop completely apart, cleaned it and added thermal paste. Ill report back once i resemble it!

Sorry for the long winded post! Dell warranty is long expired, and I can't find a BIOS chip online for this laptop, this laptop is a pain to find anything hardware related coupled with the other versions of the dell xps15 which adds to my confusion...
Thanks guys!!

*a week before the bios flash I did a reformat my laptop, the dell datasafe BS wasn't doing what I wanted (Install the back up on a external HDD to boot off of *Required pro, and the largest flash drive I had was 8gb. So i used an OEM i had, and used my key to activate. C

[kasar]

mmm, you can try the recovery cdrom for the 15z, wich is avalible here and flash the bios from there.

http://www.mediafire.com/?36xadbbn4a8udxd

if that doesnt work, you can try ask jkbuha for a bios dump if he manages to unlock or bypass the descriptor and create a dump with FPTW software.