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

[Florin9doi]

I updated my vbios from 2098 to 2143 and besides the previous issues, my brightness it's inverted.

[jkbuha]

Which bios did you use Florin? Mine or did you patch yours as per instructions?
You need to insert your device id in the initial block, and replace your connector table in offset 0xbea - 0xd3f

[nebster]

For anyone who's trying to get all the module names, I've made a tool to do it. I've only got it compiled for Mac atm so I'll just distribute it as source code.

It's located at:
http://www.github.com/SerialVelocity/EFIModifier

If you compile and run it on BIOS.WPH, it will only list the "SystemFlashUpdateDriverDxe.efi" but if you extract the BIOS.cap file and run it on that, you will get the large list of modules names and their corresponding GUIDs.

Hope that helps!

[kasar]

woot, no more time spending hours doing this

thanks a lot!

gave u rep nebster ^^

oh, you said you compilated it just for mac, it would be nice to have a win x86 and win x64 version ^^

edit:

@timewalker

not sure if you was talking about the diagnosis tools of the system wich get loaded when you push FN+B at the system start.

I'm using the first vbios you provided with the modifications jkbuha suggested, ran the diagnosis tool and it ran fine, no blue screens or nothing unusual

[nebster]

@kasar

It should compile for every OS. I haven't uploaded a compiled version for Mac anyway. I've just tested it on Mac =)

EDIT: I'll have a quick go at compiling it for windows x64 now. I'm not going to waste my time on 32bit as it's really outdated for EFI technology
It will compile to a 32bit binary easily though.

[TimeWalker]

That's cool @nebster! Especially cool for a tool for OSX

You should look into Tiano compression/decompression algorithms so that it wouldn't require extracting the F33 capsule.
I've explained to someone (@CodeRush specifically) what's needed for our Dells to unlock advanced setup menus as well as patch PowerManagement2.efi for AICPM support. He has created a universal CLI tool for this, which now is able to automatically patch Dell-Phoenix Tiano bioses .. here's his repo: https://github.com/NikolajSchlej/PMPatch
You just feed BIOS1.WPH or even the .exe of the BIOS and it patches necessary bytes in appropriate modules.

Actually there was already a tool for that for windows - MMTOOL, but it creates sort of crippled reports because it has a fixed length for the module's name.

[nebster]

That's cool @nebster! Especially cool for a tool for OSX

You should look into Tiano compression/decompression algorithms so that it wouldn't require extracting the F33 capsule.
I've explained to someone (@CodeRush specifically) what's needed for our Dells to unlock advanced setup menus as well as patch PowerManagement2.efi for AICPM support. He has created a universal CLI tool for this, which now is able to automatically patch Dell-Phoenix Tiano bioses .. here's his repo: https://github.com/NikolajSchlej/PMPatch
You just feed BIOS1.WPH or even the .exe of the BIOS and it patches necessary bytes in appropriate modules.

Actually there was already a tool for that for windows - MMTOOL, but it creates sort of crippled reports because it has a fixed length for the module's name.

@TimeWalker
Thanks for the link! I'm now using those compression/decompression functions instead of pulling in the EFI toolkit!

I already deal with the tiano compression. It's a simple if statement to traverse inside, it is just easier for debugging without it.

Ok, I compiled a windows version. Anyone want to test and see if it works? (and what I have to bundle it with to make it work?)

I've put it in the GitHub downloads.

[kasar]

@nebster

this one right?

https://github.com/downloads/SerialVeloc...bfb198.exe

going to test it right now ^^

edit: it ask me for libgcc_s_sjlj_64-1.dll file

do I missed to install something or should I just try getting that dll from the net?

[Florin9doi]

http://a-dda.googlecode.com/svn-history/...j_64-1.dll

[TimeWalker]

Yeah you are missing GCC (G++) compiler libraries probably, that's why it asks for this dll.
It appears to be throwing some IOException apparently ..

WARNING: Unknown type 2: 00504624-8A59-4EEB-BD0F6B36E96128E0
Enforcement failed (Line: 300)

The output it creates looks something like this:


Actually no, pardon me .. that's my retarded plugin messing up text thinking it's data stream ...

FAB8D0AF-1EF9-4864-B735A7BF54866A21 => O n e T o u c h . e f i
3F7753EF-D36F-45CC-8A1A2EAAFF1038B6 => P l a t f o r m P c i . e f i
5BDDE605-B107-419E-9510AA3C434EBBE4 => P l a t f o r m C s m . e f i