Hello everyone,
New member here. I have been browsing the forums and I must say that this is the most informative out of all of them. I am wondering if someone can please help me with my BIOS modification. I have a Dell XPS One A2420 and I am trying to put Windows 8.1 x64 into it. Installation works fine, but as soon as the display drivers auto update via Windows, I get a black screen. The computer still works, I am able to see the BIOS, but the screen goes blank when the display drivers are loaded.
At first I assumed it was a problem with the drivers so I rolled back to Windows Vista x32 (via clean format), installed the display drivers that came with the system and all is well. Now I looked into the issue deeply and have found that if I update the driver past Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver Revision: 15.16.5.2021, I get a black screen whether the OS is Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1. I looked at the Dell forums, and found that the issue may be a BIOS limitation. (Thread: Here). I looked further and have found that other systems have had similar issues and they have since been fixed via a BIOS update.
I browsed the Dell support site for the latest BIOS and found that I had the most recent BIOS. Since, this machine was released in late 2008, this machine is no longer supported by Dell. In order to fix, I’d have to mod the BIOS myself. The BIOS is a AFI non-UEFI system. After editing in MMTool, I updated the latest Intel CPU Microcodes, and the latest vBIOS intel provided in their drivers. Through this forum I was able to obtain the BMP tool to match the settings from the old vBios (Intel Eaglelake PCI Accelerated SVGA BIOS Build Number: 1607) to the new one (Intel Eaglelake PCI Accelerated SVGA BIOS Build Number: 2085) in PCI modules VEN_8086 DEV_2E02, VEN_8086 DEV_2E22, VEN_8086 DEV_29C3 and managed to successfully flash the BIOS. However, when I update the drivers with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver Revision: 15.17.18.2555, I still get the Black Screen!!!
I’ve spent over a week looking for solutions, running diagnostics, taking the PC apart, and everything is fine. There are no issues with this PC and it is very frustrating that one cannot update to the latest drivers! I found a workaround to the issue (Thread: Here) but it does not work for my system. Can someone please help me solve this issue? I am attaching the Original BIOS file and my modded one below. Also can someone help me update to the latest AHCI/RAID firmware (VEN_8086 DEV_2822), as well as the latest Boot Agent (VEN_8086 DEV_10CE), and IME firmware as well? I would GREATLY appreciate any help!
System Specifications TXT and BIOS files attached. Thank you!!!
DELL_XPS_A2420_Specs_BIOS.zip (3.27 MB)