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

[AHMED HOSSAM]

Hi All ,

Sorry for my long delay ,i was busy for about one month doing some projects and work .
The BIOS has an interesting strings table .... seems like its encrypted ! the normal strings table is like this :-

15 6F 00 00 45 7C 00 00 56 4D 00 00

Where the 15 6F is 6F15 ( little endian ) is the offset of the string ( string like : AHCI ) .
But in the UEFI BIOS its something like this :-
15 49 67 2D 9F 7A 2C .....etc and its not one strings table but there are many tables .

after my long delay i will try to look more into these tables .

[alexnow]

Hi, Dell has already released new bios A11. Can you please update mod to new version? and what about to adjust the fan speed at about 60 degrees above zero...when fan starts to accelerate...can you change this value to 70 degree. Many people need silent computer when browsing internet((((

[jkbuha]

Hi, Dell has already released new bios A11. Can you please update mod to new version? and what about to adjust the fan speed at about 60 degrees above zero...when fan starts to accelerate...can you change this value to 70 degree. Many people need silent computer when browsing internet((((

Ah so we do have a number of 15z users who use my bios! Had refrained from uploading the new mod to see if anyone actually used my work

A10 should have fixed this issue though - especially since my modded bios worked at 0.83V. Is the CPU or GPU tripping the fan?

Ahmed - good to see you back! In which module are the UEFI tables stored?

[AHMED HOSSAM]

Its the setup module ....... the same module that we were disassembling before .

[alexnow]

Hi, Dell has already released new bios A11. Can you please update mod to new version? and what about to adjust the fan speed at about 60 degrees above zero...when fan starts to accelerate...can you change this value to 70 degree. Many people need silent computer when browsing internet((((

Ah so we do have a number of 15z users who use my bios! Had refrained from uploading the new mod to see if anyone actually used my work

A10 should have fixed this issue though - especially since my modded bios worked at 0.83V. Is the CPU or GPU tripping the fan?

Ahmed - good to see you back! In which module are the UEFI tables stored?

I Like your mod but as for bios A10 it's very annoying towards CPU fans above 60 degree(((( I am back to A08....and I miss your 0.83V for video...
You can test this bug using PRIME95...which can overload CPU...and then speed down fan using speedfan utility...60 degree and fans start again and again((((((((

[jkbuha]

Ok alex (and anyone who's ever used my mods) - I've uploaded the latest patched A11 to the site. Works fine and cool with my 15z on Win8 RTM, and even cooler on Mint/Lion.

@Ahmed - any updates on decrypting the strings on the setup module? I'll have time to look into it this week as well so let me know if you've found any offsets worth looking into!

[pierob]

Ok alex (and anyone who's ever used my mods) - I've uploaded the latest patched A11 to the site. Works fine and cool with my 15z on Win8 RTM, and even cooler on Mint/Lion.

Thanks a lot for sharing your work jkbuha, really appreciated.
Using your custom BIOS for months under heavy conditions (my 15z, upgraded to 16GB of RAM, is running an entire vSphere-in-a-box for many hours a day).
All is running smooth like silk.
--
Piero

[kasar]

hi all,I know I has been a little inactive, srry for that.
but I didnt notice about the new posts o.O I was about to post here again to know if someone was still working on this when I saw all the new info :O

I guess the notidication emails didnt worked, but well, I will monitorize manually this topic more often to avoid getting away too much time ^^

I had a read to all the topic and I noticed interesting stuff like "BIOS.cap" filename into a fat32 drive as the recovery method.

I also noticed you found a posible emulation bios tool for UEFI bioses.
(EDK11 UEFI Emulator on Fedora 14)
http://blog.fpmurphy.com/2011/01/edk2-ue...ra-14.html

I'm currently downloading a fedora 14 x64 iso, then I will install it into vmware and I will try to create the environment to emulate the bioses without flashing (that probably will be safer than flashing and will save more time too ^^)
someone had luck with the bios emulation tool?

I still really interested on getting a working recovery method for the l502x and unlock the advanced menus.

I wish to see some CPU overclocking capabilities at this awesome machine, or at least being able to disable hyperthreading option (hyperthreading option option looks mising at xps 15 laptops, and I want to disable it since I read it can greatly improve performance on non muticore apps)

I want to say good job to everyone at this topic, I noticed big progress at this subject

[TimeWalker]

Good day, been following this thread in high hopes of getting the unlocked bios some day.
You sirs are making progress even if it goes in little steps.

I have a Vostro 3450 which I believe has the same Tiano UEFI as the Dell XPS that is discussed here. I was wondering if its possible to somehow alter the part related to EC firmware? My problem is that normally my CPU idles at around 55C, but as soon as it reaches 60C the fan kicks in at a crushing 3700rpm creating a huge noise. It stays at this rpm until temps drop below 55C and then the fan is turned off, not gradually as one would assume, it just drops to 0 right away. Pretty much any action from the user makes cpu heat up to 60C and fans gets stuck in a "jet mode".

I have tried A11 which supposedly lowers the max speed, but it doesn't. Currently I'm staying on A04 as this is the ones that has the least issues for me. The laptop uses DTS to monitor an control temps.

I have deciphered most of the EC registers with RWE but it appears that tachometer register only outputs current rpm reading and cannot be altered, whilst the FLVL can (enabling or disabling the fan). So the value must be hardcoded into EC part of the firmware.

[kasar]

not sure if you guys noticed about this topic

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/641...-hack.html

but it looks like those guys sucesfully unlocked menus on a uefi tianocore based bios with the help of TianoCore UEFI devkit. (the same type our bioses are! ^^ )

I will ask pyro (the creator of that topic) for some info, and I will download the devkit to see if I can do something by myself.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/edk2/fil...p/download


I also noticed the suposed emulator is also avalible for windows (better than spent more than 7 GB on a VM machine I think ^^)

http://uefi.blogspot.com.es/2010/02/how-...-uefi.html