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

[nebster]

Hehe, I know it may be stupid but...
How do you extract the Lenovo BIOS? I extracted all the files from the EXE but how do I extract files from the FL1 and FL2 images?

[jkbuha]

Andy's PhoenixDell tool

[TimeWalker]

My FL1009 usb 3.0 works out of the box in 10.8. You cant do anything in bios to make it work in osx.

The rest has been answered already.

Windows 7 fails to install because you have osx partition, not because you have a custom bios. Thats a known issue, i even have this happened on my desktop machine.

Sent from my LG-P500 using Tapatalk 2

[marstone]

hi, @jkbuha, i'v some problems about intel hd graphics 3k connectors, could u give me some help? i sent u a private message, coz there is little relation to the current topic. thanks!

[jkbuha]

Hey marstone - my pm's aren't working well. Re: Intel connectors I had published a long (and painful) series of posts on insanelymac and tonymac on the issues with the connector table. Eventually my problem was resolved with an EDID override for my laptop screen. But bcc9 did an even better job than I did on patching the connector tables for OSX and wrote a whole topic on insanely mac. Just have a look and let me know if you need any help

---

Do we have any updates on unlocking the firmware descriptor region for ME? Having seen where all the developments are going this seems to be the lead with most potential. There definitely is a way of doing so (Dell does it, apparently so does Winflash) - so what should we be looking out for?

[TimeWalker]

every attempt at reintegrating dsdt into the bios has failed for me ..
even thought all the checksums are corrected by iasl and phoenix tool all I can see is a completely black screen.

i suspect that InitialProgramLoadDxe.efi has something to do with it. also .. when you change dsdt then rsrd/xsdt fails at locating it presumably and since IPL driver is sort of a layer between PEI and DXE, which is designed to do this 'locating' job (as per some description I was able to read on a chinese page.. which I can't find any longer).. it seems to fail at doing it's job ;\ And since it fails at this, then DXE core can't be started (only pre initialization modules seem to start).. those laptop remains sitting with a black screen...

[kasar]

I was wondering how different the descriptor file is different for all our machines.

I included my descriptor file and the tool to dump the descriptor file at this post as attachment, if posible let me know about if there are differences or if it is similar in all or most part of the content.

[TimeWalker]

-dumplock

Platform: Intel® HM67 Express Chipset
Reading HSFSTS register... Flash Descriptor: Valid

--- Flash Devices Found ---
W25Q32BV ID:0xEF4016 Size: 4096KB (32768Kb)


Lock Settings.
=======================
Host CPU master: 00 00 0B 0A
ME region master: 00 00 0D 0C
GBE region master: 18 01 08 08
FPT Operation Passed

1 byte differs for me in comparison to your L502:

Code:

0000000:  XPS       Vostro
0000103:  08     |    48

[jkbuha]

Here's the difference between XPS 15x and XPS 15z:

Code:

diff L502X.HEX L511Z.HEX
< 0000100: 82d6 2008 0f01 0000 0000 5600 0000 0000  .. .......V.....
> 0000100: 82d6 2008 0f01 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000  .. .............

< 0000130: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 3e03 0000  ............>...
> 0000130: 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 3e83 0000  ............>...

< 0000df0: 1f47 0000 1520 1520 ef40 1700 0520 0520  .G... . .@... .
> 0000df0: c220 1600 0520 0520 ef30 1600 0520 0520  . ... . .0... .

< 0000e00: ef40 1600 0520 0520 ef30 1600 0520 0520  .@... . .0... .
> 0000e00: ef40 1600 0520 0520 1c31 1600 0520 0520  .@... . .1... .

< 0000e10: c220 1600 0520 0520 1c31 1600 0520 0520  . ... . .1... .
> 0000e10: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff  ................

< 0000ef0: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff df0c 0000  ................
> 0000ef0: ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff df08 0000  ................

So quite a bit it seems..

[kasar]

oh, I forgot to attach my dumplock too

Intel ® Flash Programming Tool. Version: 8.1.10.1286
Copyright © 2007 - 2012, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.

Platform: Intel® HM67 Express Chipset
Reading HSFSTS register... Flash Descriptor: Valid

--- Flash Devices Found ---
W25Q32BV ID:0xEF4016 Size: 4096KB (32768Kb)


Lock Settings.
=======================
Host CPU master: 00 00 0B 0A
ME region master: 00 00 0D 0C
GBE region master: 18 01 08 08
FPT Operation Passed

the lock settings seems the same for all of us.

even it seems the flash device is the same (W25Q32BV)

it shouldnt be hard to modify the descripor, not sure if timewalker posted something about how to modify the file before , not sure.

the hard part is to flash the modified descriptor.

mmm, any chance this 4 kb file contents into the bios file to flash?

in that case it could be altered from there, but not sure.