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

[thorbsd]

Alright, so the BIOS updated without issue.

1. My idle and max CPU temperatures have increased by 2 °C. Not sure why this went up.

2. GPU-Z shows the nVidia GPU at 0.98v (drops to 0.83 every once and a while when the clocks drop automatically from 600 to 50, but 99% of the time, it's at 0.98v and clocked @ 600MHz). Is this normal, or is there something I need to do manually to keep the voltage and clocks down?

3. I noticed the Intel GPU BIOS is now v2130, but the description on the first page says you guys reverted back to the stock v2104. Are there no concerns with 2130? Last I saw was a post by TimeWalker saying he was having some trouble with it.

Lots of new options to play with. Gonna see what I can tweak. Thanks guys!

[thorbsd]

Stupid computers and all the interesting stuff that comes with them!

I'm in med school and I've got exams on Monday, and I've spent the whole day "tweaking", reading up on updating microcode, patching DSDT tables, and reading through page after page of documentation of random pointless crap to figure out some way to enable some perceived ideal state of existence for this bloody laptop that in all likelihood will provide no tangible benefit to me or anyone else in any way whatsoever. Seriously, who the heck tries to flash a modded BIOS on a laptop that is 100% needed to work over the next 2 days?

I swear med school would be painlessly easy if I spent even half as much time studying as I do learning new crap about computers! Looks like it's gonna be another long night trying to catch up...

D@MN YOU NERDS! Quit enabling me!

[Brabbelbla]

@thorbsd
I believe the NVIDIA GPU is either 'off' or at the lowest power state when not being used, with corresponding voltage. When checking this with GPU-Z, however, the NVIDIA GPU is continuously turned on when sensors are being read and off when done, and so forth. Everytime the GPU is turned on it starts at its default, maximum clocks and voltage. So GPU-Z will think the NVIDIA GPU is running constantly at maximum clocks, but that's because of GPU-Z. You can run another program at the same time on the NVIDIA GPU, and have it do nothing to see the clocks and voltage reported by GPU-Z drop. And last thing I read about the Intel VBIOS was that TimeWalker without any noticeable issue managed to update his VBIOS to v2130, using Intel BMP.

[kasar]

hey all, I has been a little inactive at this topic, but I am planing to return to the bios modding stuff at least a little more, however I feel now a little lost again

I am interested on unlocking the overclocking menus at the L502X.


well, also on a p370em laptop my brother just bought.

the bios is very limited on the laptop.

however, i checked the advanced module, and it have a lot of stuff relating to overclocking, hyperthreading and other posible locked options, it reminded a similar situation I found with my L502X

this is a picture of the original bios advanced menu




I also attached the original advanced setup module.

I searched for the 0A 82 45 8A hex on it.

but just saw two 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 45 0A wich were already 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 45 0A

tried change it to 00 but had no effect at all when flashing the modified bios, the same menus were there with aparently no differences.

If posible, I would like to know more about the whole proccess of dissasembly the module.

wich IDA version and wich steps exactly to get a proper disasembled file and get in the propper way to find what is needed to be changed ^^

[Brabbelbla]

Interested as well. Also like to know how exactly the hexadecimal bytes to change in the modules was established, and what source was used. EFI_IFR seems to have many possibilities, and I haven't found a good source to clarify things.

In our (at least my L702X, probably also your) BIOS'es there are still some text strings in PlatformSetupAdvancedDxe that are not visible when in that screen, most notably strings related to RAID. Of course that might be because RAID was disabled or whatever (L702X does have two identical HDD's), but there is also a string called 'Boot priority' to switch between UEFI first and legacy first. This entry also is invisible in the actual advanced screen (nor to find under boot settings, where it should be), and can't depend on some hardware feature. So there might be more to unlock, but I don't really have an idea where to start.

So, any thoughts?

[kasar]

@Brabbelbla

we unlocked many options at the l702x
here you can DL it and watch the unlocked menus if you didnt tested it already.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps...os-18.html

about the raid features, maybe other modules would be needed to be modded.

I remember I tried something relating raid for l702x users, but didnt had luck on it.

[Brabbelbla]

I know you have , and that's awesome. But when you go back in this thread you may find some posts of me, as I followed the instructions myself for editing the modules and succesfully flashed my own modified BIOS. My point is that even with those unlocked modules there still are quite some text strings in PlatformSetupAdvancedDxe that are not visible in the advanced menu, or their relevant submenus, or even whole submenus not being displayed. Many strings related to RAID, but also as an example of something most probably not hardware-dependent way: a string for an option to switch the boot priority (4D6D), a whole menu on wireless settings (284E) and a whole bunch of other things.

So I don't know what these text string would be. Text strings with no further use in the module? Seems strange to me. I'm not really familiar with EFI or IFR structures, but IFR seems to have many more options than plain suppress. There also are many conditional statements possible with IFR, if I read correctly from for instance the PhoenixWiki. Decompiling the module would be interesting. If possible. I used to have some copy of IDA, but I deleted it. Grr.

By the way, I'm not sure if this is the right place for it, but anyway: the Lenovo W520 supports RAID, and booting from it in both Legacy and UEFI mode and uses SecureCore Tiano as well. Not sure if it's the same version.

[kasar]

well, me and my bad memory

yeah, the same thing goes for the L502X, I noticed a lot of strings related to overclocking at the PlatformSetupAdvancedDxe, however jkbuha said they are not unlockeable by hex editing the file I think.
not sure if we have to mess with ME firmware, EC or idk, I managed to unlock BCLK overclocking by modding the ME firmware. now it can be overclocked using apps like intel XTU, but nothing at the bios sadly.

yeah, looking for aditional conditional statements would be interesting, however I am a bit lost while dissasembling the modules.

my main task here was kinda a lot of blind tricks, some hardware tweaks and a lot of testing, but the main brains here were jkbuha and timewalker

[jkbuha]

Hey guys - good to see everyone back here (most of us after finishing our exams =D)

First things first - we have *all* been main brains here. Looking back through all the pages in this topic you can easily where each one of us became a hero and helped the rest of us to continue working on our project. I think this should really serve as a reminder of all the hard work we have achieved together as a team - that it wouldn't have been possible without the contribution of everyone in this topic.

As things stand there are a few secrets that are left to unlock on our 1st & 2nd gen Dell SB machines, and this is all the more important given some of us may be upgrading to more recent kit in the near future, that we need to make sure we learn all that is possible from this current setup and take the lessons we've learnt to other hardware as well.

Amongst these 'hard to get' secrets we still have the following:

1) Overclocking - limited success with BCLK (kasar) and FSB (jkbuha), there clearly should be more options available to us.
2) Undervolting - so far not possible, most likely restricted to the lack of ME firmware accessibility
3) ME modding - possibly the most important of the lot, so far only done via hardware and exclusive to kasar

What else? C'mon let's give us a great project to work on whilst we're not at the beach

cheers
jkbuha

[kasar]

hey jkbuha, nice to see you again

thanks for your comments ^^


well relating the pending projects, I would like to focus on unlocking the other menus from the advanced settings module in bios setup

you said something about they cant be unlocked via hex editing in that module. but it can may be unlocked with ME firmware editing.

since I am equiped with chip sockets, 4 aditional chips for faster testing, and a LPT homemade programmer, I can do the more risky tests, however, I dont have sockets on the EC chip, so I cant test so much in there, have no backup or hardware way to access that yet.

well, things it would be interesting to do:

* unlocking other menus
* enable the integrated uefi shell hotkey while turning on the machine, I heard it was something like F10
* getting your overclock working without the need of clover and make it through ME or bios, or at least mod something to be able to OC from software from windows
* get fan control, I noticed prema made a FN + 9 hotkey on their bios mod wich make the fan spin at 100%, if you hit the key combination again, it comes back to normal speed, that will be interesting to OC or keep the machine cool.
* enable Raid support for machines like L702X wich can have two internal hdds without need to use hdd caddys for the optical drive.
* include a bios module to get more XTU software functionalities working, many of the advanced gamming laptops have that module by default, and since our lappys have the HM67 chipset, wich support overclocking, it would be interesting to unlock its posibilities
* check if there is a way to make a hybrid me7 and me8 firmware and add support for ivy proccesors on our sandy lappys