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

[kasar]

also, in the case you decide reflash the chip externally (like me, and other people did recently on their L502X following the instructions of this topic)

you will need a working dump/backup from a similar machine, in this case a 15z.
if you cant find one on internet (most probably option, you will need someone with a 15z to create one.)

in this case the only arround here with a 15z is jkbuha, and not sure if he is able to obtain full dumps from his flash chips.

[nayheyshun]

I kinda figured as much, I knew there was a very good reason I was terrified to flash any BIOS. Which is pretty hilarious if you take into account i was once the lead tech at Staples for a number of years (then again, I'm sure we all know how awful corporate PC repair is).

Ya it's the same issue a few others have posted here in this thread.'
6 beeps when powered on along with a black screen(Pointing to video card if memory serves). and when trying to flash black screen and blinking powerlight.
One thing that is frustrating is when I END->Power plug insert->release END the laptop does react as it should; well as far as turning on. The laptop does seem to be looking for a .cap within the boot media or something. When I try the CD i can hear it being read. Or if it's a flash drive I can see the access LED. Something interesting is the CD i burned spins for a while, and then the laptop returns to the Post Error beep codes; however the flash drives seem to keep the laptop busy doing whatever it's doing until i unplug it. So maybe i wrote the flash drive incorrectly?
* I used rufus to create the bootable flash drive(s).

Intel Core i7-2620m @ 2.70ghz(4 Cpu's),~2.7ghz
81928 GB of ram
Nvida gt 525m 2gb ( I'm confused by Wikipedia dell xps article says that the 2 gb Australian 15z is equipped with 2 GB video RAM, I certainly did not buy it from DOWN UNDA *Australia).
I was running the a02 bios (told ya i was scared of flashing the bios).

What I'm thinking is
A) Just a typical bios flash failure
B)I've been plagued by overheating issues as most XPS owners are, I did at one point install a new heatsink/fan a year or ago. So maybe the video card was hanging on by a thread and that flash killed it, or i didn't properly mount the heatsink/fan and the newer bios revisions somehow know (Just grasping at straws here).
C) The Bios curse that haunts me ^_^

Eh as far as the changes I made i don't have the dump handy (It was one one of the flash drives I formatted in a panic). I modded the the GPU settings voltage settings based on recommendations made here, and I did mess with the INTEL vbios. Ill see if i can find a sata usb dongle to extract my old files from my HDD. I've currently taken the laptop completely apart, cleaned it and added thermal paste. Ill report back once i resemble it!

Sorry for the long winded post! Dell warranty is long expired, and I can't find a BIOS chip online for this laptop, this laptop is a pain to find anything hardware related coupled with the other versions of the dell xps15 which adds to my confusion...
Thanks guys!!

*a week before the bios flash I did a reformat my laptop, the dell datasafe BS wasn't doing what I wanted (Install the back up on a external HDD to boot off of *Required pro, and the largest flash drive I had was 8gb. So i used an OEM i had, and used my key to activate. C

[kasar]

mmm, you can try the recovery cdrom for the 15z, wich is avalible here and flash the bios from there.

http://www.mediafire.com/?36xadbbn4a8udxd

if that doesnt work, you can try ask jkbuha for a bios dump if he manages to unlock or bypass the descriptor and create a dump with FPTW software.

[kasar]

ok, here is the instructions kapax7

gave to me in order to customize logos

There's a software called file scanner, get it here.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/filescan...p/download
Open up the logo rom above with this! Then it shows all the JPG images inside the Rom, and shows each one of them and their boundaries in hex!
My mistake was to extract the whole Logo image and then try to make a logo image in that size!
that led to a black logo screen!

The second time I looked at JPG segments carefully and studied a little about JPG file sections!
Then decided to only replace the hex code of some sections of the rom file!!

So I made that logo and then replaced these parts from the Logo with the original logo inside Rom.
Huffman table
quantization table
and finally Scan area

So open your Rom file in filescanner and remember the hex code of the beginning and the end of each section then open your custom logo in filescanner and also remember the start and end of each section.
Then open both the rom file and logo in a hex editor and replace each section with that of the custom logo!
Both huffman and quantization tables of both logos are the same size! the only difference is the scan area of those logos.
So you must make a logo with equal or less size than the Dell logo. making equal is nearly impossible, but try to make a smaller logo in size and fill the end of the file with zeros until they get equal

Also remember that the logo should be gray scale ....

while testing

mmm, I had sucess, however, something definitly went weird




as you can see, my logo is working finally, however, some stuff is definitly weird.

take a look to Kpax7 logo mod



the progress bar and F2 and F12 shortcuts images are there, however in my case, they are gone, that could be comprensible if I did something wrong, but ...... the intel logo is what really annoys me

where the heck it is being loaded? there are not a single intel image at the entire logo module!

what kind of sorcery is this?

[TimeWalker]

Looks like you corrupted the module so every text imprint is gone. The images are there however. The Intel logo may have a different source of appearance.. As I've mentioned at NR forums my new board now has extra logos which neither of them were there with the old board.

Also, it seems like the most important bit of info is missing - which is the logo rom GUID lol.


Edit:

Silly me .. thats the one:
DellSplashLogoDxe.efi 0C7F41A9-0A6F-43F6-A0D9-1E2D01DBD7BE_4_1122.ROM
Sent from my GT-I9070 using Tapatalk

[Kpax7]

A quick tutorial was added to the notebook review topic ...
Take a look.

[t6590]

hello its been a while since i was here. need help. i accidentally flashed my bios back to its default and now cant boot coz hardisk is GPT. how can i fix this or is there a way to flash bios back to the modded version from usb.

[t6590]

never mind solved!

[jakebour]

anyone successful dual booting mavericks (or 10.8) and win7 while running this in eiterh EFI mode or BIOS mode? Everytime I tried it was either one or the other and still needing usb do get OS selection. Any guide out there?

[Brabbelbla]

Hi guys,

Earlier today, I spotted the universal IFR extractor, and I released it on the setup modules, to see if there were any things left that were not yet unlocked. In the IFR extract, there were entries for features already spotted in the text strings in the modules. Among possible others:

PlatformSetupAdvancedDxe:
- Express Charge (some Dell feature, with note that it may not be available for all batteries)
- RPB (no idea what it is)
- Intel AMT (remote control, apparently requires special hardware, doubt it is present)
- RAID!

SystemSetupSecurityDxe:
- Changing the service tag (wut?)
- Some TPM stuff (but if there is no hardware present, yeah...)

The only thing I really liked was RAID.

The RAID suppression part of the extract:

0x35188 Suppress If: {0A 82}
0x3518A Question Ref: 0x0 {40 84 25 27}
0x3518E 64 Bit Unsigned Int: 0x2 {45 0A 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00}
0x35198 Not Equal {30 02}
0x3519A End {29 02}

I went on changing the not equal (30 02) statement to equal (2F 02) to have the RAID entries show up, under HDD Configuration -> Software Feature Mask Configuration. I haven't tested it, don't know if the entries actually DO something, as the machine was in crisis mode and anyway I don't really want to mess with my HDD's, there is important data on them. As far as I could see, all RAID modes can be enabled at the same time, which I think is weird. But I thought I'd share anyway. Unfortunately for me, should I ever buy an SSD, there was no mention of Intel Rapid Start Technology at all.