Accident while updating BIOS

My sister was Updating her Bios on her xps15 And the power cord accidentally pulled out. The laptop suddenly turned it self off and now it wont come on again.

The Lights come on but the screen is blank no startup or dell or nothing comes up.

PLUS the laptop is out of warranty

Help Help

 

Battery was dead I am guessing? This would be why they warn you not to take it off AC power while updating BIOS, since if the battery is dead or not in, you get half a bios flashed. (Note I realize you said it was an accident, not trying to say "told ya so" or something mean like that).

Unfortunately I don't know of any way to recover from only half a flashed BIOS. Hope someone else here does.

Which XPS 15 are we talking about anyway? the l501x?

[siderant]
This is partly why I hope to see all motherboard manufacturers start putting dual bios chips on their boards. The second is used only as a backup if the first one is corrupted or incomplete. Gigabyte does this on their desktop boards and it has saved me a few times!
[/siderant]

 

Yeah you're basically hosed. There have been little murmurs here and there about blind flashing Dells, but I've never head of it working, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Start looking for a new motherboard or a new laptop...

I am, though, surprised that it let you flash the BIOS with a (presumably) dead battery. Is this the older M1530 or an L50Xx?

 

Battery was fully charged, that is what is bugging me.

Her story: I reinstalled windows , and was installing all the drivers and also ( without knowing what it is) started to install BIOS update too. The warning came showed up to plug in charger I pluged the charger and bios started to update.
I suddenly got up and accidentally the plug got pulled out. the laptop shut off i ran and pluged the charger back in.

Laptop never came on ever again .

 

They got to do something about these botched BIOS updates. Why doesn't theses BIOS have a non flash ROM chip that it will will restore to if the BIOS update goes bad. This is why I don't update my BIOS.

 

So basically its dead and unrepairable?

 

New motherboard.

 

Second that. Users need to be careful when updating, especially when upgrading a BIOS. The laptop's now dead as a dinosaur. Depending on how much the replacement costs, it might be more cost effective to buy a new laptop.

 

You should be careful with these things. Contact Dell and see if they can flash your BIOS or if it's even possible...

 

I was curious about this, it's one of those "there but for the grace of god" things I hope I never have to face. There are a number of posts out there on how to recover from bricking. Most involve creating a bootable USB or floppy, inserting it with the power off, then holding the End key down while inserting the power connector. Unfort, none are for an XPS-15. Here's a typical one that actually might be promising. You'll have to scroll down past the translation of a foreign language post.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-xps-studio-xps/452823-help-dell-studio-xps-1640-update-bios-dead-2.html

Some google searches I used:

xps-15 "bios recovery"
dell "bios recovery"
phoenix "bios recovery"


I also found this company that appears to fix bricked PCS. Never heard of them before, but might be worth checking out to see if the repair is cheaper than buying a new MB.

reset fix bios laptop repair HP Acer Dell Lenovo IBM Toshiba Sony - AQSTECH

This appears to be repair status on an L702x (XPS-17) that was sent in for repair:

Client: A.D. / Reset Unbrick Dell XPS 17 L702X Failed BIOS Recover | Repair ? BIOS ? GPU ? DC Jack

Good luck, and please post back and let us know how it works out.

 

Agreed. Phoenix BIOS has a failsafe recovery option. I managed to do this with my partner's Studio XPS 1340.

Don't have the details with me, but will post tonight. It's surprisingly easy...

EDIT: I vaguely remember... look here for more details: http://forums.mydigitallife.info/th...pdate-problems-through-Phoenix-Recovery/page5

You need a flash drive with 3 files:
1. BIOS.WPH
2. MINIDOS.SYS
3. PHLASH16.EXE

Should be able to find 2 & 3 at the above link - make sure you have the latest possible version of PHLASH16 (that's where I went wrong at first)

BIOS.WPH is the bios file from Dell's website, just extract the actual bios file and rename.

Unplug battery, plug in USB drive, hold END, plug in power, release END. If nothing after 10 mins, turn off and try something else. The flash drive (if it has a light) should flash for about 2 mins (reading), then stop (updating BIOS).

Don't give up, it's quite possible to do.