[HELP] Bricked Dell XPS One A2010 After Failed Flash

[pswiifanwmi]

Hello All, I had originally posted this on BIOSMods, MyDigitalLife, and Dell Community a few weeks ago, but I haven’t gotten any further in fixing this, I hope someone here knows something!

I’ve bricked my Dell XPS One A2010 as a result of a BSOD during a BIOS update. When I power it on, first the Play/Pause, Eject, and LCD Backlight buttons turn on and the system beeps. Then all fans start spinning and the system steadily beeps. It runs an AMI BIOS so I tried booting into FreeDOS with a flash drive to use AFUDOS ("afudos /im-010008 /jm-020006 /pb") to flash the two bios files, but I don’t think the system is booting it on account of the beeping. I also attempted this with a FAT32 240GB SSD and I still got nowhere. Additionally, in one of the threads it appeared that the second file was the one causing me grief so I tried naming that AMIBOOT.rom but it appeared that the system wasn’t even reading USB or the SSD.

I can tell no power is going to any USB ports because my USB keyboard remains dark when I power on the system. As such I cannot press the home key. Additionally, I have no idea if the wireless keyboard the computer came with can be trusted as I can’t tell if it is still synced. It doesn’t seem to wake up when I power on the system, so that’s a nogo.

As I type this, I’ve just found a ROM Recovery Jumper, and when I remove it and turn on the system, the fans spin for a few moments and it shuts off, the system turns itself back on, rinse and repeat. Nothing USB related turns on so it definitely isn’t finding an AMIBOOT.rom on the flash drive. It also definitely isn’t reading it from the SSD. If the USB ports don’t work and the SATA ports don’t work, there still has to be a way to recover this thing given that there is a labeled jumper for it. This is an AIO computer so it MUST be intentional. The two methods of entry I haven’t tried yet are the SD card slot and the CD Drive. There is no floppy drive, and no PS/2 port. There is a LPC Debug thing, but I have no idea how useful it would be.

I have a feeling that the name might be wrong or I might be using the wrong file. The BIOS is flashed using two files, and I don’t know which one is relevant. Additionally, I have tried and failed to use the usual tools to find the correct filename, but I think it might be beyond me.

The BIOS is on Dell’s website, and I can’t post it.

If you can help, that would be magnificent! Thanks!

My post on Dell is worded a bit differently:

Hello. I’ll try to keep this short as I have posted on other tech forums and gotten next to no responses, so now I’m trying here. I have an old Dell XPS ONE A2010 All-in-one that I was trying to replace the GPU of. Long story short, I attempted to update the BIOS, but Windows BSODed during the update leaving me with a corrupt BIOS. The computer steadily beeps when I turn it on. The system has an AMI BIOS and the various recovery methods I’ve found for that mention the use of a Floppy Disk containing an AMIBOOT.ROM file and pressing the CTRL + HOME buttons.

There are three problems here.

1) The system does not have a floppy drive

2) I don’t believe the wireless keyboard is connecting to it in this state.

3) The BIOS comes in two extensionless files, M-010008 and M-020006 and I don’t know which one I should use as the AMIBOOT file.

I have tried using a CD-ROM as a boot disk (not with the AMIBOOT file though), but I have no indication the computer is reading from it as the screen never turns on and the machine constantly beeps, so I don’t want to go burning discs willy-nilly. I have seen that sometimes a different file name other than AMIBOOT.ROM is required for some system, so that is a possibility, but I don’t have any leads on what that name could be.

Additionally, I have found that there are seven Rom Recovery pins on the board with a jumper on the first row, removing the jumper causes the system to turn on, then off after a few seconds. The power button turns orange in this configuration. I have found no documentation on this either because the service manual on the systems support page links to the 24 inch model while I have the 20 inch model. I suppose if there are any Dell engineers who could explain how to use these pins, they would be here.

Thanks for any assistance!

[LittleSnail]

Buy an SPI bios programmer,such as a CH341A .Find the bios chip on the motherboard,if its a sop8 you can remove it using a hot air station, or with a soldering iron.Backup the bios and post it here on the forum,it can be repaired.

[pswiifanwmi]

Hello,

This post isn’t dead, I’ve just been busy… for a year!

I have the programmer, and I have a clip to attach to my mainboard, but I’m struggling to get consistent data off of the chip. The chip is an ATMEL AT26DF081A. When I use ASProgrammer with Windows 10, I get different values every time I read the chip without even moving the clip. With Flashrom on an Ubuntu VM, it detects the chip as a Generic Flash Chip with which READ is not working properly. Any one have a good idea of how to progress from here? Did I screw up my flasher or my chip somehow?