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

[kasar]

well, to be honest I am more happy about the machine still alive than the unlock xD

after desoldering/soldering chips , wires, conectors, and doing a lot of stuff to the motherboard I expected a cute brick as result

someone else up to try the programer stuff?

as I can see it was the only way of get the descriptor settings unlocked

[TimeWalker]

I doubt it will brick .. even if it will, you have your entire dump sitting at hand

Note the ME versioning and the CPU model in the right top corner. This alone proves it's possible to run SNB CPU with v8 ME

I'm not sure which file .. you have the fptx64 utility of the corresponding version so I assumed you had the ME as well. You were trying to flash and it gave you the host access error which in hand started all that unlocking hassle
I have one from Asus Maximus V Extreme .. and that's the one I've integrated into your dump. But i'm not sure it's supposed to be used on mobile platforms. I guess you can since platform (firmware) features are defined in SMBIOS, so it will only use appropriate parts of ME. The size is also a perfect fit ..
http://www.mediafire.com/?lyt1lzl8c1c7ytz

[kasar]

arrgg, desoldering and soldering the chip plus the laptop take appart at that level is a thing I dont want to do more than once.

I miss now my CDrom recovery method, but it seems it got old now


well, I will do it anyway ^^

ME firmware 8.0, here I come!

---

definitly I got access now, I sucesfully backed up the me

now lets flash it

[TimeWalker]

I'm a moron ... uploaded a wrong file.
Here is the proper upload: http://www.mediafire.com/?fzt9vk651nrpvj4
ME v8 along with the update utility of the corresponding version 8.1.0.1248.

FWUpdLcl.exe -f Data.bin -allowsv

[kasar]

hehe, you are just in time, i was about to flash it ^^


thanks for the fast correction ^^

---

well, I will try with the 7.0 flasher version

---

mmm

this is kinda worring



is safe to proceed?

[TimeWalker]

That's what I get when I try to run it.
"Error 8727: Firmware update tool failed to get the firmware parameters"
So it has to do with versions going from 7 to 8. It says you have to be on v8 already to update to v8.1 .. so it's a good practice to look for a firmware 8.0 which supposedly should allow upgrading from 7 to 8.0 .. if it doesn't by windows utility then we can try using WinFlash to update the ME region ..

---

These are the 8Kb I was talking about, the region itself is 8Kb bigger than the actual firmware.
So 8kb of the region remain filled with FFs. I guess you could add 8kb (8192 bytes) of FFs to the firmware file

[kasar]

I got that error when I opened it with the tools 8.1 version

however the tools from 7.0 works fine with the current firmware.

[TimeWalker]

17D000h -> 17F000h (added 2000h bytes of empty data)
http://www.mediafire.com/?cyhe654imrm6tjl
See if this will clear the truncation warning.

[kasar]

oops, it flashed it without any warning :o



should I reboot the machine now? ^^

[TimeWalker]

like you have any other option
open up MEInfoWin and see what it has to say now. If it will correctly identify FW Version as 8.1. then all should be safe and sound.
make note on FW features as well.