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

[dede]

hi,

im trying to replace DSDT in L502X bios with phoenixtool unpack/pack method. The thing is, that after trying to flash the new bios, pflash does not appear (blank screen)

Does anyone have clue why this happens? Or does anybody have pflash for DOS that will work with L502X? I've tried the one from Acer, didnt work.

[AHMED HOSSAM]

Hi all,

my acer notebook has broken a week ago ( gpu broken and its soldered in the board ) sothat i will buy a new one and I'm thinking about buying it online from amazon or something like this .
i will buy a DELL with i7 and tiano BIOS and I'm searching for it.
i can't buy xps as it costs at least 1000$ and i can only pay 700$ , i found one with i7 but not sure if it has tiano BIOS (DELL 15R) , or may be i can search for used and good xps for 700$ , BTW i just trying to find any notebook with i7 and tiano BIOS with 700$ sothat i can have an excellent chance for unlocking UEFI
i will report back when i get one and try to unlock it

[jkbuha]

Sorry to hear about your acer mate - must be a pain when you're trying to finish your exams!

Still - best of luck in finding a new laptop - I don't know if the 15R has a UEFI bios, but the 15/15z definitely do. Agreed that they might be a bit too expensive, could you get a refurbished xps15 maybe - quad core and nvidia gpu would be quite good to have

anyways if you need any help in finding the right laptop let me know.

best of luck with laptop (& exams)!

[Florin9doi]

I have a Inspiron 15R N5110 that have ami aptio: http://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-De...ck-request

[ArthurianX]

This most certainly isn't the right place to ask, but given the fact that you all have Dell XPS 15z I'm giving a try .

As I said in a earlier post, I have a second HDD in the DVD-Writer's place and I made the mistake to upate to Windows 8, I was sorely disappointed by the problems it had, I mean it looked and moved ok, but I had numerous problems with my DEV environment, long story short I wanted to return to my previous backup of W7.

To my complete astonishment I saw that the only thing that boots from the USB is a custom install of W7 (or the chameleon bootloader for OSX), which doesn't serve me well, because I have a Acronis True Image Rescue image burned on my USB.
I also tried burning that ISO with a ton of applications using different bootloaders, none of them worked on my laptop, every one of them worked on my PC.

I ended up taking my laptop apart for the n-TH time, connecting my optical drive back and attaching my second HDD through an eSATA port. This problem ate two days of my work time because I saw W8 work flawlessly on my desktop pc.

My question is, what sort of bootloader should I use to make it boot my USB recovery, my spidey sense is telling me that this is the BIOS's fault again.

Thanks for your time, I know I write lengthy posts but I want to get all the info out there.

[jkbuha]

Hey guys - quick update.

I've managed to successfully unlock bit 15 of MSR 0xE2 in order to enable native speedstepping for the XPS 15/15z on certain OSes (just useful for OSX, not Windows or Linux), thanks to a few great guys working on the Dell 15R. Like I said, it doesn't affect any windows or linux users, but if anyone else (i) knows what this is for, and (ii) wants me to upload the fix for the 15z A10 bios let me know

Ahmed - have you purchased the 15R yet?

@ArthurianX - sorry just saw your post now. Sorry to hear about your W8 woes (stay away from it for now, W7 is miles better). I'm not sure that it's the BIOS' fault - even though it is really awful. Suggest you try formatting your USB in MBR not GUID (15z's BIOS doesn't support GUID yet) and force it to boot from USB by pressing F12 at boot. Hope this works!

[AHMED HOSSAM]

Sorry for my late response. i will get new HP, ASUS or Samsung but not DELL.
i found the xps15 expensive sothat i won't buy it. i knew someone in france who will search for a good notebook and send it to me, i will get my new notebook in 19/6 after exams.

for the 0XE2 register, i want to have a look on its mod as i was planing to modify few registers when i get an intel cpu ( i was using AMD ) can you please upload the mod sothat i can look into it after i get my notebook !

Thank you,
Ahmed

[marstone]

Ahmed: sorry to hear that.
jkbuha: my hackintosh can not wakeup after sleep. i use Chameleon's GenerateCState/GeneratePState, is the problem something with the MSR?

[jkbuha]

@Ahmed - here's the URL for the mod: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.p...pic=279576. I can't take any claim for this as it was brilliantly done through meticulous work by the poster. All I did was to find the corresponding module for speedstep on PhoenixDell Bios.

@marstone - that depends on your current DSDT. Mine works fine using this DSDT attached. However note that in Lion 10.7.4 GeneratePStates does not work, and you will need to include DropSSDT=Yes in your boot.plist.

To anyone else - don't worry if the post and attachments don't make sense. They only do if you're using OSX as opposed to Win/Linux.

[marstone]

@jkbuha my laptop model is xps 17(l702x), i use DroopSSDT in my boot.plist and I have a SSDT.aml download form internet(my DSDT.aml are also downloaded without mod). however, i don't know how to see whether my SpeedStep works or not? i use:
sysctl -a | grep feature
and found there are "SS" in the output, is that meaningful?