04-21-2017, 02:10 PM
[Yet another 'blind leading the blind' story, so grateful for help]
a friend bricked his Dell XPS 13 L322x Laptop computer. No reaction of any kind from the machine.
I read and read and it seems that WinCris is the right way to recover in this situation. One essential step is to get the relevant .wph from the manufacturer's website, to rename it BOOT.WPH, and then to add this file to the WINCRIS collection.
My problem is that no matter what i do, the only file I seem to be able to squeeze out of the Dell .exe that updates the bios is a file named
BIOS.CAP
Now I saw in an acer forum something that suggested that the .CAP file just adds a 2048-byte header to the 'older' .ROM, so that I could do
dd bs=2048 skip=1 if=BIOS.CAP of=BIOS.BIN
and that i could just rename BIOS.BIN to BIOS.WPH, and use that for WinCRIS.
1.Can anyone confirm that? Is there a chance that using WinCris with such a BIOS.WPH file will actually fix my bad bios?
2. Wincris talks about using key combos such as Fn+B or Win+B, but i see that 'ordinary' flash with Dell seems to be about pressing <end>.
Can anyone tell me if either a. pressing <end> is the way to enter recovery mode on some Dell models; or if b. no no , pressing <end> might be ordinary flashing, but you need to do Fn+B (or one of the other similar codes) to do a **recovery** flash that will restore a bricked machine.
EDIT: I have attached to this post the file BIOS-6.CAP and the file BIOS-10.CAP. Each file was extracted directly from the stock Dell Bios updater for my XPS 13 L322x laptop; the BIOS-6 file is from the A06 .exe (which is the version A06 that my system had when it left the factory) and the BIOS-10 file is from the most current bios .exe for my machine on Dell's support page (version A10). I obtained these files just by running the Dell .exe on a separate PC; each executable extracts the files to the directory %appdata%\local\temp\ExtractTemp\, and then throws an error and dies (I presume because it checks that it's going to flash to a different-model machine). Just to be clear -- the Dell program in both cases extracts to that directory a file it calls BIOS.CAP According to some posts, if i add the option /WriteRomFile when i do the extraction, i should get the .exe to write the true .ROM file. But this must be an old option, as adding that switch has no efect whatsoever with these .exe files.
It would be amazing if someone could tell me that i can turn these .cap files into .WPH files just by removing he frst 2048 bytes.
I tried to attach the actual Dell .exe bios updaters here, but this site won't allow .exe attachments. They are very easy to get - L322xA06.exe and L322Xa10.EXE on the Dell Support website. PM me and I will send you a copy immediately.
(2ND EDIT: When i went to upload the .CAP files, I realized that they are 13MB each!! even though the original updater .exes are about 4MB each. So I only uploaded on .CAP file. Neither the .writeromfile nor the /writehdrfile seemed to do anything. I would have renamed the actual .exe files, to enable me to post them, but since .exe files are not allowed as attachments, I didn't want to anger the moderators by circumventing their policy on my first post
. But by all means, pm me and i'll send you a copy, or just get them from Dell, if you want to verify my claims about the two options no working).
THANKS very much!
scott
a friend bricked his Dell XPS 13 L322x Laptop computer. No reaction of any kind from the machine.
I read and read and it seems that WinCris is the right way to recover in this situation. One essential step is to get the relevant .wph from the manufacturer's website, to rename it BOOT.WPH, and then to add this file to the WINCRIS collection.
My problem is that no matter what i do, the only file I seem to be able to squeeze out of the Dell .exe that updates the bios is a file named
BIOS.CAP
Now I saw in an acer forum something that suggested that the .CAP file just adds a 2048-byte header to the 'older' .ROM, so that I could do
dd bs=2048 skip=1 if=BIOS.CAP of=BIOS.BIN
and that i could just rename BIOS.BIN to BIOS.WPH, and use that for WinCRIS.
1.Can anyone confirm that? Is there a chance that using WinCris with such a BIOS.WPH file will actually fix my bad bios?
2. Wincris talks about using key combos such as Fn+B or Win+B, but i see that 'ordinary' flash with Dell seems to be about pressing <end>.
Can anyone tell me if either a. pressing <end> is the way to enter recovery mode on some Dell models; or if b. no no , pressing <end> might be ordinary flashing, but you need to do Fn+B (or one of the other similar codes) to do a **recovery** flash that will restore a bricked machine.
EDIT: I have attached to this post the file BIOS-6.CAP and the file BIOS-10.CAP. Each file was extracted directly from the stock Dell Bios updater for my XPS 13 L322x laptop; the BIOS-6 file is from the A06 .exe (which is the version A06 that my system had when it left the factory) and the BIOS-10 file is from the most current bios .exe for my machine on Dell's support page (version A10). I obtained these files just by running the Dell .exe on a separate PC; each executable extracts the files to the directory %appdata%\local\temp\ExtractTemp\, and then throws an error and dies (I presume because it checks that it's going to flash to a different-model machine). Just to be clear -- the Dell program in both cases extracts to that directory a file it calls BIOS.CAP According to some posts, if i add the option /WriteRomFile when i do the extraction, i should get the .exe to write the true .ROM file. But this must be an old option, as adding that switch has no efect whatsoever with these .exe files.
It would be amazing if someone could tell me that i can turn these .cap files into .WPH files just by removing he frst 2048 bytes.
I tried to attach the actual Dell .exe bios updaters here, but this site won't allow .exe attachments. They are very easy to get - L322xA06.exe and L322Xa10.EXE on the Dell Support website. PM me and I will send you a copy immediately.
(2ND EDIT: When i went to upload the .CAP files, I realized that they are 13MB each!! even though the original updater .exes are about 4MB each. So I only uploaded on .CAP file. Neither the .writeromfile nor the /writehdrfile seemed to do anything. I would have renamed the actual .exe files, to enable me to post them, but since .exe files are not allowed as attachments, I didn't want to anger the moderators by circumventing their policy on my first post
. But by all means, pm me and i'll send you a copy, or just get them from Dell, if you want to verify my claims about the two options no working).THANKS very much!
scott