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

[speeed]

Hi guys, any chance to hack bios for fujitsu ah531 for option to overclock processor? am not expert not even close

[TimeWalker]

Hi guys, any chance to hack bios for fujitsu ah531 for option to overclock processor? am not expert not even close

We haven't really done it ourselves here, so I guess no..

Hey everyone, good to know you guys are still around. My laptop had been shipped to Del to fix the cooling system, but it really didn't change much. Regarding fan control, the last thing I did before the laptop shipped, I've deciphered most of EC registers on my Vostro and I can pretty much override the fan by using RWE to disable auto mode and set any speed I desire (this part is super finicky), not only two presets at 3200 and 4100rpm that Dell have coded in.
https://github.com/Dolnor/V3450_commenta...i_dsdt.dsl

There are comments there describing what register has to be set what values under some circumstances to achieve this effect. I believe same registers are valid for xps machines. Though I'm not sure how one can code this in at uefi level.

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[jkbuha]

Hey TW good to see you back as well!

Nice work on the fan - did you ever manage to reincorporate the DSDT back into the BIOS? I'll see if the same RWE procedures also work on my XPS and keep you posted.

With regards to the UEFI insertion, in theory it's possible to insert or modify a menu item using the same IFR logic, but to do this properly we'd most probably need to look closely at the register procedures for an existing BIOS IFR entry we already know of (eg: disable HT) and see what the IFR template uses in that example. I'll bet that the register reads/writes are done in the same setup module.

I would also expect this to be done similarly for the UEFI shell on boot. This may be a good time to decipher one of the more recent Dell BIOSes that enable UEFI natively (does the 3rd gen XPS 15 or Alienware have that?) and hopefully get some more insight into what's left in our BIOSes to unlock.

Separately I'd like to see what we need to do to add a new module such as kasar's XTU proposal - is it just a case of dropping it into the folder and rebuilding the WPH or do we need to make a provision for it in a table of contents module elsewhere in the WPH?

Seems like we're back to work...

[TimeWalker]

Hey TW good to see you back as well!

Nice work on the fan - did you ever manage to reincorporate the DSDT back into the BIOS? I'll see if the same RWE procedures also work on my XPS and keep you posted.

With regards to the UEFI insertion, in theory it's possible to insert or modify a menu item using the same IFR logic, but to do this properly we'd most probably need to look closely at the register procedures for an existing BIOS IFR entry we already know of (eg: disable HT) and see what the IFR template uses in that example. I'll bet that the register reads/writes are done in the same setup module.

I would also expect this to be done similarly for the UEFI shell on boot. This may be a good time to decipher one of the more recent Dell BIOSes that enable UEFI natively (does the 3rd gen XPS 15 or Alienware have that?) and hopefully get some more insight into what's left in our BIOSes to unlock.

Separately I'd like to see what we need to do to add a new module such as kasar's XTU proposal - is it just a case of dropping it into the folder and rebuilding the WPH or do we need to make a provision for it in a table of contents module elsewhere in the WPH?

Seems like we're back to work...

You can take a look at v3450 thread where me and HairyCube done some DSDT modding. With latest version of Phoenix tool it reintegrates flawlessly. AFAIK only xps17 got that uefi-enabled BIOS. My Vostro is still stuck at A13 which is completely locked down from the factory.

The case with XTU seems to be the harsh road, as I read that simply dropping the module won't do any good.

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[kasar]

hey, welcome back TW

nice to see you made more progress, I have to read more in order to understand exactly what you did , but fan control it would be nice also to be implemented in our xps machines

also I am very interested on unlocking OC menus from the bios, I can try check some more of the ME firmware settings, I may find something else to change in order to enable more features.

edit: do you have a link of that v3450 topic?

[TimeWalker]

Sure: www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-Dell-Vostro-3450-Advanced-Options-unlocking-in-progress?page=17
(Hope tapatalk posts this correctly.)

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[Brabbelbla]

@TimeWalker
You mentioned it quite some times before, but what do you mean with the UEFI-enabled BIOS of the XPS 17 and where did you get that information? With me (L702X), every time CMOS gets reset, UEFI boot is disabled. BTW: I sent you a PM, about modifying the VBIOS with Intel BMP. Received it?

@jkbuha:
So, some noobish questions. Can you point me to how exactly you concluded that the EFI_IFR_SUPPRESS(_IF?) code-piece was a 64-bit unsigned integer and exactly what hex-values it was? And what do the register operations mean that you're pointing at? What information gets stored where?

Shouldn't all OEM-installed Windows 8 systems have enabled UEFI booting? I once came across the Inspiron 15R SE 7520, which supports UEFI boot, but isn't Phoenix SCT. The Lenovo W520 is. And supports UEFI booting. And RAID.

Which brings me to Fn+F2 (wireless toggle) and stuffs. TimeWalker once mentioned the culprit was the FOWM call. The Inspiron uses the same call and codes, and although I cannot verify it myself, i'd say it works if UEFI boot is supported.

[TimeWalker]

@TimeWalker
You mentioned it quite some times before, but what do you mean with the UEFI-enabled BIOS of the XPS 17 and where did you get that information? With me (L702X), every time CMOS gets reset, UEFI boot is disabled. BTW: I sent you a PM, about modifying the VBIOS with Intel BMP. Received it?

@jkbuha:
So, some noobish questions. Can you point me to how exactly you concluded that the EFI_IFR_SUPPRESS(_IF?) code-piece was a 64-bit unsigned integer? And what do the register operations mean that you're pointing at? What information gets stored where?

Shouldn't all OEM-installed Windows 8 systems have enabled UEFI booting? I once came across the Inspiron 15R SE 7520, which supports UEFI boot, but isn't Phoenix SCT. The Lenovo W520 is. And supports UEFI booting. And RAID.

Which brings me to Fn+F2 (wireless toggle) and stuffs. TimeWalker once mentioned the culprit was the FOWM call. The Inspiron uses the same call and codes, and although I cannot verify it myself, i'd say it works if UEFI boot is supported.

Some people over at IM claimed that A19 for XPS17 was capable of booting UEFI without any mods. I've indeed received your pm, but I don't currently have access to my archive of stuff related to modding, hence I remained silent.

Inspiron 7720 is SCT Tiano 2.31 and is capable ok f UEFI bot, Secure Boot and I believe has shell access. Oleh over at IXBT (btw he promised to explain the process in detail as his work was also based on Michail's discoveries, but hasn't done so to this day) has managed to unlock advanced menus for these units, but the BIOS is different (the version is obviously higher) and Dell also made sure to make these machines compete and utter Ship full of bugs.

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[kasar]

spent some time reading again the intel ME documentation.

and I noticed something weird on OCKEN (Output Clock Enable) on FITC while editing my firmware

default/recomended value by intel is 0x1FFF_0F8F

but my firmware options come with 0x167E0680

wich I think it lock some stuff, I think in past I tweaked that option to intel recomended and results were wose by having everything locked on "cctWin.exe gl" command.

I'm thinking on testing different combinations now.

also noticed two more interesting things

one is tweaking an option wich let enable or disable output buffers before or after BIOS POST let to "disable DMI clock disable."

the other interesting option is that I also noticed I can also tweak a option to add "Wimax Friendly Clocking support"
checked intel doc and it says HM67 chipset support it.

I think I will doing again some more Intel ME firmware tweaks.

it may let me unlock more stuff or even unlock the Overclocking menus from the bios setup

[TimeWalker]

Here is the thread I've mentioned previously: http://forum.ixbt.com/topic.cgi?id=17:46983
Sadly, there's zero explanation on how this was done, but the person who has done it (Olehkh) has contacted me a couple of times to get info bout unlocking and crisis recovery. I've pointed him to a post over at official Dell community forums related to Inspiron 5520 (I believe ?) where Michail has described the IFR SUPPRESS operator from Tiano and described the way he pinpointed that Dell's SetupAdvanced was missing numerous entries so he has edited some other original Tiano module unlocking all the advanced menus... and I saw jkbuha posting in this forum thread as well, si I'm thinking this was the original hint to unlocking our BIOS.

This comes from 7720 unlocked SCT Tiano thread posted at page 87 and following pages discuss the unlock (in Russian, unfortunately for many of you here):
http://forum.ixbt.com/post.cgi?id=attach...4334:1.jpg
http://forum.ixbt.com/post.cgi?id=attach...4358:1.jpg
hope it even comes up for those who are not logged in.

Basically what happened with this mod was that nearly all of the units that had been flashed with the mod bricked after the battery has died. So it worked only up until the laptop was either plugged in or charged, after the battery drained machines refused to work for some unknown reason and the guy seems to have pulled all the download links and guides and appears to have vanished (I may be wrong about this last part, but rghost does keep the files for ages and all of the files associated with the mod seem to be gone at this point).

UPD:
Yeah, sorry - disregard this last part. There are still some links that are up and the guy seems to have patched the latest BIOS there is. Here are patched BIOSes for reference, not that they're really useful, but may be handy some day:
http://rghost.net/45161441 - A13
http://rghost.net/45813557 - A14
Also, his theory about bricks is rather funny: currently it is thought that only machines that came with Windows 8 SLIC (and thus SecureBoot enabled for it) result in a brick after the power is lost to the machine, machines that came with Linux appear to continue working fine with a modded BIOS. Man, Dell is turning tables like crazy ..