During a bios downgrade on an Alienware m15 r1, the process crash in the middle, the computer has shutted down it self and now it doesn’t start anymore.
It just make a flash light on keyboard and start fan for a second, and then insantly switchoff, no display light flash or other things.
So I suppose the bios was corrupted, and I buy a programmer.
I’m able to read the bios chip with the progammer, and I make a backup, 16 mb corrupt file.
But I don’t have the complete bios file to flash it on.
I have only a backup of the bios recovery file from EFI partition.
For what I understand, as the bios driver from dell website, is not the complete 16 mb bios file.
Anyone have a backup of the full bios to share or a suggestion to fix the computer??
Thank you so much!!
Edit by Fernando: Thread title specified and customized
One of them should have the Dell original data of your system, you’ll only get a dump from another user if they clean their own data or if someone shared one already clean of original data.
Some corrupted dumps can be recovery by exchanging parts/regions from original Dell update/full bios files.
If someone is willing to do so, a shared file of the ch341a read, is needed.
EDIT: I mentioned 2 types… yours from ch341a and the one that a user can possibly share.
A “dump” is an image made from the bios IC(s) chips of the motherboard, it can be a complete image or partial. It can be done by software or by hardware programmer like the one you have.
New users can post a link to a free sharing service, like Google drive, Onedrive, Mega, etc…
I was thinking the same and hope to found someone with same computer able to share the bios file!
Unfortunaly I don’t have the competence for recovery corrupted dump by exchanging parts/regions from original Dell update/full bios files.
I try to see some video but the ammount of knowledge needed is too much!
Can you please explain me what “dump” exatley means?
english is not my first language and still I don’t understand dump.
Anyway I can share the file of the ch341 but new user cannot put attachments, how can I do?
I’m not able to say if is a valid dump or not, every time I tried to read it was same, but I’m not sure because I didn’t compare in UEFIToolNE.
Then I erase everything to put the DELL bios update, for then understand that it wasn’t the complete bios.
Im not expert, and I’m new in this thing…
So now I’m stuck.
Thanks everyone for help!
Bios was the last 2.21.01, and I was trying to flash 1.6.2
I already done this by replace the recovery bios image in the UEFI partition, but after some weeks also if I block windows update and in the bios the updater, windows update anyway again the bios to 2.21.01.
So I was downgrade again, this time with the usb metod instead to replace the bios recovery file in UEFI, and process crash.
What is mean the error regarding the bios region??
Thank you!
This bios region is a mess, it’s unclear what happened to it, this doesn’t seem to be caused by a normal update / downgrade process. There’s normally not wriiten bs-code almost everywhere. Normally you’d find some volumes of the old bios and parts of the version intended to flash.
So, I flash it, and computer start, I can’t belive it thank you so much!!!
bios is working, but windows is corrupt, is not able to start.
I try to reflash bios with dell update from usb with success.
But still windows doesn’t start, it block in a blue windows saying that there are problem and windows is not’able to start.
@lfb6, in this particular bios case, where did you find the block with machine specific data?
In UEFITool, I searched for “service tag” and came up with multiple PE32 image section(s) under Volume GUID: 5C60F367-A505-419A-859E-2A4FF6CA6FE5, but that’s just dart throw guess.
Hi!
I hope you can help me again.
Something happend to the BIOS, and all backup of BIOS I had, for an understandable reason seems like to became the same, also your upload if I look with HxD it’s same of the corrupted one, and the backup I done after the reflashing bios also same.
Can you please check for me or reupload the fixed bios that have you done before?
Thank you so much!!
Mostlikely he wont care with such files and not store them… and as a crediable forum user, lfb6 wouldn’t change the content of the original uploaded files stored on this forum.
What makes you belive that its again a corrupted firmware…you downgraded again? Or maybe now its a real hw failure…
I image it that he couldn’t have the file, but never know so I say myself: why don’t ask and give a try?
I’m not questioning the credibility of lfb6, let’s be clear.
I wasn’t able to access at the rollback bios menu for change version, so I decide to make a bios back up, erase and write again the same working bios file that lfb6 upload, but computer doesn’t start.
So I check all the backup bios files with HxD, and I notice that all files became the same.
For example the one from lfb6 has change, if I look inside it, I see the same things of the corrupted one at the beginning, and still I see the same at the last working backup that I was using.
Before wasn’t like that, every backup was different.
I’m not questioning the credibility of lfb6, let’s be clear.
I cannot understand if it’s me (unconscious? Or stupid ) or somethimg at the files happens.
Hi!
I’m not expert about this.
But I change the bios recovery file in EFI folder and then yes through the bios recovery menu.
Sometimes is tricky get into, but one time done everything goes right!
From switched off pc and power cable removed, press and keep ctrl+ESC, insert power cable and pc should start alone (otherwise switch on) keep pressing for a while, then release and bios recovery menu should appear!
For my very limit experience, you could also downgrade with the programmer, (I done it) but in that case you should have the complete BIOS.bin image that you need.
But I suppose that this way is not really raccomanded, just like as last chance.
Thanks for your reply! Yes, I did the same thing on my old Del 7567, replacing the Recovery BIOS file with the old BIOS version via the console in Windows and running the recovery. But on this Alienware, the problem is that the recovery doesn’t start at all. Or it starts but without the charger and restores version 2.18, even if there was a different one before.
A couple of days ago, I found a way to unlock the voltage on version 2.21.1 using the guide brendangreenley site. The essence is to search the BIOS code (dump) for a line with voltage locking and disable it in the GRAB command line (0x1 to 0x0) in UEFI mode from a flash drive before Windows initialization.
thank you so much!!!
