Well, that’s guessing… Even Lost_N_BIOS wrote “probably”. Did check the dumps you mentioned- have a look into the yourself with HxD, doesn’t look like firmware to me and most EC firmware is inside the controller, not in a separate spi. And since EC/Multi-IO is the first thing to do something whe power button is pressed there’s an EC firmware since the machine starts and beeps. Either it’s bios related or a different reason. The beep sequence is sometimes linked to video problems/ dead screen/cable. That would fit togehther that the first padding in the bios region seems to be kinda log which is filled with errors regarding not finding LCD info/eeprom:
Maybe this machine never had a bios problem but a bad screen/ bad screen connection that was wrongly taken as a bios problem and a little flashing odyssey began....
Attached file is same FD/ME as last file and stock bios region 1.11 with the machine specific data. As written- that should work as a bios firmware! Service Tag is the same as in first padding in bios region so this part seems to be OK, thanks for the feedback.
Regarding the other chip- it might be that these settings posted earlier are needed, but there's 'alienware 17 r4' in it, probably different to yours. I couldn't find another valid dump of this chip for the 15R3, only for 17R4, and there are several versions of the 15 R3, too, it seems.
17 R4 has 4 1 MB chips, 2 video bios, 2 'settings'(?), one similar in structure to the one you dumped, one similar to the one posted earlier. So you'd have to check the other 1 MB SPIs, too. The links was found here (registration necessary). In case you find another 1 MB chip which has a similar content that the dump posted in the thread earlier, I'd simply leave those SPIs alone and go searching for another reason than firmware!
Thanks for the feedback. Just to clarify, I didn’t say that is has to be video output, the error might now be in several other places but cable and lcd! This error log just says that at some time the machine was trying to read the LCD eeprom and that wasn’t possible… There are other errors, several times ‘harddrive not connected’, which could come from power-ups during a repair process, too!
Therefor I was interested in getting a new dump to see if this ‘log’ was filled up again. Is the board a LA-D751P, LA-D752P or a LA-D753P (or a fourth type?)
The screen assembly was quite cheap on eBay so was worth just getting to cross that off the list, but I see your point about checking a fresh dump to verify if the errors are still logged.
Sadly I won’t be able to do that until the new SOP8 clip arrives, hope it’s soonish.
And yes, several times I tried to start the machine without the SSD during testing.
I think it’s really cool that there is an error log in the bios, something new to me. Can you share the name of the tool you use to view the log?
Sorry this took such a long time to update, turns out a replacement screen has helped!
Now with the new screen, the machine turns on to what looks like a bios recovery screen. I’ll try the USB method first and otherwise I can try my new sop8 clip.
I see the thread is still kicking so if someone can help me that would be great. I have an Alienware 15 R3, i7-7700HQ, GTX 1070, and it boots and works, except the sleep/shutdown/hibernate/etc. I’ve tracked it down to being the Intel ME firmware, and i have an SPI flasher coming in the next day or so. I just need some guidance on what I need to do next when I get the flasher and what I need to obtain to fix the firmware issue.
I eventually figured it out, hacking together a bunch of Intel ME firmware stuff I found (thanks to the people who made very helpful guides on this forum), with a dump of my bios somehow worked and everything seems to be fine. Sleep, hibernate, and shutdown all function properly, and even my boot times are way better than before. I wanted to leave an update here and to thank all the people here and for anyone in a similar situation as me, try dumping your bios chip and then cleaning the Intel ME firmware with plutomaniac’s guides.
@dadddy_sleepy
Sorry to bring to life what seems a dead thread now, but i have same system and system shutdown whilst doing bios update, everything works except screen remains black.
would it be possible to take a dump of your bios please to see if i can get this working again, thank you.
No worries! I no longer have that BIOS or even the laptop anymore, but it would be completely useless without the external flasher, since the built in BIOS update feature seems to not function properly with the Intel ME systems still functional. Do you have an SPI flasher? Dumping your own BIOS and then patching out the Intel ME features and repairing anything that was corrupted then re flashing with the SPI was the only thing that got the laptop functional.
Amazon UK sells the CH341A based programmers for about £7, some are cheaper and some are more expensive but they’re handy to keep around. make sure you get one that comes with the clip to attach it to the BIOS chip.
sorry for the delay, my ch341a programmer was faulty and i needed to buy another, well ends up all 3 of the chips are blank and i do mean blank, so i need files from all 3 chips to fix this board which i doubt i will be able to get, so its junk
