Bricked XPS 1645. Help!

Less than a month after receiving my 3rd replacement system from dell, I experienced strange problem... I couldn't adjust the screen brightness anymore, altought the quickset was showing movement, the brightness was constantly at max. So I get into dell tech support chat, explain the problem and the guy send me a link to a program that would grand him access to my machine.

He login and start installing some drivers... chipset and etc. He try to flash my bios but i stop him even before downloading it and told him that he will not do that on my laptop. Then he said that he needs to restart the system and this should fix everything. I said ok.

In the mean time I got a phone call and in the moment I look back at my pc the bios flash program was running, somewhere in the middle of the proccess the dell tech OK all windows and the system went for restart. I coudnt believe my eyes... in a while the screen went solid white and stayed like this for about 3-4 minutes, after that I got bsod.... after restarting the system by disconecting everything out... screen doesnt show anything, all lights are staying solid on and nothing happens. The system fan is not running and if the laptop is on for 5 mins the bottom get extremely hot.

Dell is sending new mobo, but it will take around 3 weeks as I am not in US right now, so in the mean time I read about something called crisis bios recovery tool for phoenix bios.

I am trying to do the so called "blind flash" using flash drive. I have the correct bios image plus I have created a bootable usb flash drive using the wincris.exe program from phoenix.

After booting the laptop with the usb drive pluged in, I have partial success. I can see be the led on the drive that it is being readed for about 35-40 seconds after this the led goes off, but nothing else happens.

Apparently there is some key combination that needs to be pressed before even plugin the ac power in. I read that for some laptop is Fn+B... however this doesnt work with xps 1645.

Does anyone here knows:
1. What is the key combination that triggers boot lock ?
2. What is the correct version of WINCRIS.EXE ?
3. What is the correct version of PHLASH16.EXE ?

Does anyone ever attempted crisis bios recovery(blind flash) on studio xps 1645? Any success?

Thanks! Any help is greatelly appreciated.

 

After exactly three days of reading and messing around with my system, I AM VERY HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE that i have successfully recovered it from dead bios back to working Seven!

I am posting back so if someone else get trapped in this extremely unpleasant situation will be able to revive his/her laptop.

*************
WARNING: This is tested to work on Studio XPS 1645 i7
WARNING: May work on another similar laptop, but... you know.. you never know
*************

What you will need (or at least this is what I had!)
1. One working computer with USB port (Mine Dell Inspiron E1505)
2. One USB flash drive (Mine 1GB micro center)
3. Phoenix Bios Crisis Recovery program
4. The CORRECT phlash16.exe program
5. Bios image for Studio XPS 1645 (I have the A03 version in .WPH format)
7. One Bricked Studio XPS 1645
7. Patience

To make the things easy for you, I will zip all needed files and will try to attach here for download.

Here what you need to do.
1. Download the zip file from here
2. Extract the contents to any location
3. Plug in your USB flash (All information on it will be lost!)
4. Navigate to the folder where you extracted the zip file
5. Run as Administrator WINCRIS.EXE
6. Click START

If everything is ok you will have a bootable flash drive with exactly three files on it
1. BIOS.WPH
2. MINIDOS.SYS
3. PHLASH16.EXE

Take the flash drive out and move to the bricked system
Perform this steps:
1. Open the backcover
2. Disconnect the harddrive (not sure if needed, but mine was out)
3. Remove media from the bluray(not sure if needed, but i removed mine. It was hard btw, the emergency eject button is hard to press)
4. Remove the battery
5. Disconnect the power cable
6. Plug in the usb drive (I used the eSata/usb combo port)
7. Connect the power
8. Press the power button

If everything is OK you will see the usb drive led blinking for about 40 seconds. After about 3 minutes your computer will restart itself. Remove the usb and watch it go back alive!

Remove the power cord and reconnect whatever you disconnected, close the back cover, power up and login to windows.

Few other things.
First credit goes to each and anyone that ever spent sometime to post information regarding blind bios flashing online. I used many tutorials and many people experience in order to compile this guide(Believe me there is no such online at the moment of this writing!)

Interesting Facts:
Many people were posting that the crisis recovery procedure needs to be triggered by some key combination before the ac gets connected(Fn+B, Windows+B, F, Fn+ESC, Holding down the END key...) However this was not my case. I just plug in the AC and then pressed the power button.

The turnkey for me was finding the right PHLASH16.EXE as there are many versions out there. The one that worked for me and seems it is because of the i7 was ver. 1.7.0.18(I will include that one in the zip file)

How and why blind bios recovery is possible
Here is the theory, almost every Phoenix bios chip has a small write protected section in it. This section is hard to be overwritten(not impossible). The idea is that if that section (BOOT BLOCK) is OK, It can stop the bios from being read and handle the control to some basic device(such as usb pen or usb floppy). This properly created device will contain a program(in our case PHLASH16.EXE) and a good copy of the bios(called BIOS.WPH). The sole purpose of this program is to copy whatever is in bios.wph to the system EEPROM chip that is actually the system bios. After the job is done the program simply restart the system.

Note:
It looks like attaching files is not the strongest side of this board, so i put it here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/yykkndxmojj/Crisis BIOS recovery Studio XPS 1645 [by Andrew].zip

Good luck to all

 

my laptop is Dell studio xps 1640 and it has bricked after update bios.
when i press power button, there is nothing after three media buttons flash i my laptop can not boot to win!
plz tell me how to fix it?
and how to extract file from bios.exe to bios.wph?

 

Very nice work...

This kind of bios "invincibility" can be used for any number things, including the addition of profiles for 130W adapters. Writing custom bios software is pretty risky business, but the ability to fix a bricked machine changes that.


Thanks (I won't be using it any time soon though )

 

Good Job Bulforce in fixing the issue and putting it up for us to see (Y). Now I have no fears of bricking my system

 

Well, am not sure what kind of packages dell is providing for the 1640, but if you can find one that is marked DOS you can use dos emulator called dosbox -> http://www.dosbox.com/

execute the bios.exe in the emulator and it will extract its contents for you, then just exit dos box and get the files that you need bios.wph and phlash16.exe then follow the tutorial from my previous post.

If the only bios packages that you can find are for windows then I really dont know how you can extract them SAFELY! I said safely because the problem is that once you execute bios.exe under window it will indeed unpack itself somewhere on your harddrive usually c:\dell
however dell tend to release those bios.exe installers with fully automated procedures in them. And the bios flash starts without asking you anything and in some cases without even checking is this the correct system. And this can result in another bricked computer.

There are some posts on the internet suggesting that bios.exe can be executed followed by switch (something like -writehdr) and this is supposed just to unpack the files, however I haven't tested any of those. The bios files for 1645 that I put in the archive were taken from internet(some guy put them together but there was no info how he extracted them)

Here is the dell ftp server for bioses
http://ftp.dell.com/bios/


Hopefully this helps.

 

I added your recovery kit to my BIOS package over at this thread.

I hope you don't mind. If you do let me know!

 

I don't mind. In fact as looking at your thread I have to thank you as I actually took the bios file from your zip on first place. Sorry for not crediting you directly when putting my stuff together, but it was a big mess and didn't remember what exactly came from where.

 

No problem, I'm glad it helped!

 

Thank you so much for your work on this, it just saved my since A07's windows flash bricked my machine. Now my laptop is alive again, WITH A07

 

winphlash is a deadtrap... I would never use it if there was another option.

How did you manage to get the bad flash? did you click something or it just freeze ?

What I have noticed is that after you double click the biosXX.exe from dell, the program start automatically to flash the bios... however even if you just OK the window that says "please wait" or something like this... the laptop is going for restart.

 

Help! I got a bricked 1645
I flashed the laptop the other day using winphlash (should not trust Dell )
The process stopped at block 2, I removed the power cord to shut down (yeah, I know, I m crazy ) Can not get it powered up any more
I follow user Bulforce, do exact what he said, but mine needs to press and release 'End' key. Download the exact package he created.
I see the USB flash drive blinking, but then nothing else, the laptop shut down by itself after minutes and it's still bricked.
I tried several phlash version, none of them work.
I need help please

 

Ok, I have a bricked 1640 and am having issues. The link here doesn't work and nowhere on the internet can I seem to find this wincris.exe or any of the other files I need. Also what about the bios? From dell you get the whole installer, how do I get just the Bios file? Also, what is so good about A07?

If anyone can help out with this, that would be great. Sounds like a piece of cake, if only I can find the dang files to download.

Thanks!

 

It seems that the file is gone from mediafire.... look in this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5869005#post5869005

The other user has included my package in there... you can also find other bios versions to try out.

Good luck

 

I also bricked my studio xps 1645 yesterday while flashing to A08 BIOS,
the process stopped at block 66. How did you manage to unbrick your system?


edit: I successfully recovered my sxps1645 by following bulforce's instructions thanks alot

 

Folks,

I badly need your help in reviving my Dell Studio 1555 that got bricked while updating the BIOS version A11.

Everything is dead but when I tried the instructions above (worked after I used the END key and plugged in the power supply chord) using the PHLASH16.exe the battery LED light did blink and fans were revving but no restart happened and thats just about it.

Is there something I am missing?

Any help is greatly appreciated!!! otherwise its case of big repair cost as unfortunately my Warranty expired just last month

 

Mine (Studio 1555) also bricked while updating to ver. A11 BIOS due to current trip. anyone can help me step by step n files need to download in order to revive back my system? my warranty just expired on last month

 

Bullforce,
may u help me or someone else to convert Studio 1555 1555_A08.exe to .wph format plz..i need to recover my expired warranty Studio 1555 to alive again..plz..

 

I'll have a try. Do you have a link to the A08 file?

 

Thank u very much Mitchell2.24v,
Here is the dell ftp server for bioses,
ftp.dell.com - /bios/
may u convert this 3 bioses version,
1555_A07.EXE
1555_A08.EXE
1555_A11.EXE

i'm waiting 4 ur reply..thanks again

 

Any update regarding to my request n problem?

 

May I ask you how are you pulling the bios files out? I can use dosbox but it only works for packages marked for dos. Are you using a virtual machine or something?

One more thing, Are you interested in putting a small project together with me, I am thinking of usb flashing utility that we can release and maintain when new bioses are released, the program will run in dos and will provide the user with selection of bioses that he want to flash? Kinda 3rd party bios flasher, but reliable

Thanks

 

Mitchell2.24v,
when u'll upload 1555_A08.wph file?

 

to nhandi and bulforce:
I have a bricked 1640 xps, it happened while updating the bios to a14. I am brand new at this and have read your posts but I'm not quite sure what phlash16.exe to use. Do I have to change the wph file? Thanks for any help

 

For those of you looking to extract the .wph BIOS file from Dell's installer packages, for example Studio XPS 16 - 1645 bios A09 or A10, I suggest the following:

- Download the correct .exe installer from Dell's FTP site or Driver Site (Click on BIOS download->Other versions for older)
- Download Universal Extrator and install
- Run the first part of the Dell BIOS installer. It will extract 1645_AXX.exe, where XX is the bios revision, to a folder of your choice and open that folder.
- Right click on 1645_AXX.exe, and click on UniExtract to SubDir. Click on "Not an Installshield installer"
- It will open up your dos box and extract everything to a sub directory
- Navigate to 1645_AXX/.rsrc/1024/RCDATA/ and find the 5meg file, in the example case of 1645 bios A09, it's named 7000 with no file extension and weighs in at 5182 kb
* If the folder structure is different, then look around until you find any 4-6 meg file, that's the bios file.
- Rename it to BIOS.WPH and put this into your Crisis BIOS Recovery folder to replace the existing BIOS.WPH
- Run the BIOS Recovery tools as mentioned earlier in this thread. Success!

Another thing to note, if the recovery tools don't work for you by just plugging in the A/C and turning it on, take the battery out, stick in the USB to your USB/eSATA dual port, hold the END key, after 3 seconds plug in the A/C and release the END key. It should automatically turn on and use your usb stick to recover the bios. The circles on each side of the laptop will be orange if it's working. When it reboots after 2-3 minutes, take out the USB, let it boot to windows, shutdown, remove A/C, put in your battery, put in A/C, and boot up again and check your BIOS to see if the version is correct.

The only thing I'm not sure of is if this method actually flashes everything that needs to be flashed. I'm in no way a low level hardware guy. Is flashing the system BIOS the only thing Dell's installer does? I noticed the Dell update A09 notes say it updates a few other things, such as updating the SPI ROM EN25F32(BIOS) and the EN25F80(EC), but is that all inclusive in one simple BIOS.wph? I noticed there is a 1 meg file in the RCDATA folder, which is why I ask.

 

bulforce... and everyone helping his progress (Mitchell)
I'm eternally grateful for this thread, and the tools you've provided.
I... got tears of joy, literally. And I'm a guy.

EVERYONE I asked told me that I was now in possession of a 1500$ paperweight. That I COULD try and get a new motherboard installed, but it would be easier to just buy a new computer... etc.
I had literally given up ALL hope when I stumbled upon this thread by chance.

When I plugged the USB into the computer... with the blank screen and dead computer... I never thought anything would happen.
Then after a few minutes it rebooted. And I thanked God.
And now I thank you. You've had such a positive impact on my life.
I love you. <3

Edit: oh, and TLobes. I needed to hold the end button to make it work. So creds to you aswell.

 

Thanks TLobes for adding the vital bit of info about how to extract the BIOS file.

I've tried this process on my DELL Studio XPS 1647 (i5 processor) and unfortunately although it all seemed to work, including geting the circles on each side of the laptop glowing orange after holding down the end key and inserting the power lead, it didn't work for me - I left the thing running for half an hour after the light stoped flickering on my USB stick and nothing more happened. Any suggestions anyone?

 

Try different phlash16.exe version.

 

i done hw you told about the universal extractor it extracted a file out of bios named flashable.rom wat do to next plz reply me immediately i bricked up my dell studio xps 1640 2.4ghz

 

Incase anyone reads this anymore.. this has happened to me today during a BIOS update.

I get 2 beeps with 3 Volume lights when I boot (middle light blinking). I've gone through every page I can find on XPS or other Dell models and they all seem to use the same recovery method. I'm using the Recovery files provided here.

I can get it to the orange/yellow recovery mode using the END button and plugging in the power, but that's it. 2 USB keys formatted using the tool and with the 3 files - and neither shows any life like activity (USB LED lights do not blink and process goes nowhere).

So I'm thinking it's either a case of problematic USB keys (they work and I've used them before for booting) and/or this method (for me) is not engaging the USB, so it doesn't know to read from there.

Is there any chance this isn't progressing due to both of the USB keys not working with this?

 

Just a bump to see if anyone has any ideas?

I've now tried 4 USB keys and none show any reading from there and the lights on the laptop do not change after starting Recovery mode.

I know the USB slots are getting power because my NC2000 starts when plugged in. So the only thing I can think of is that this process is not understanding it should read from the USB keys.

 

Were you able to create the bootable USB drive correctly? I almost bricked mine a few months back, and it took me a while to figure out why this fix wouldn't work. What it ended up being is that the executable that creates the recovery USB only works correctly in 32-bit windows. I tried creating it a few times on my Win7 64bit desktop, but it wouldn't work to fix my 1645. I ran the program later on my spare 32bit Win Vista laptop, and then the recovery USB worked just fine.

Also, don't forget to reset everything first. Unplug your laptop, and remove the battery. Then hold the power button for ~30 seconds before plugging the battery back in. Although it may or may not be necessary, I did hold Fn+B when powering on the laptop with the recovery USB attached when I fixed mine. Also, I used the tools here http://dev.phoenix-consultancy.nl/dell/20100327_Dell_Studio_XPS_Bios_Tools.zip (thanks to Mitchell2.24v).

 

Thanks Seeker, yeap I saw the problems some reported about the tool - I was using XP SP3 (32bit) and the tool ran fine and copied the 3 files. I also copied them manually myself few times.

Dell support asked me to remove RAM (already had tried this) and plug it all back but this didn't help, so I've got a mobo coming. But afterwards I only plugged 1 module back - and it started as normal!

So I changed the RAM module and it kept working, but when I tried the 2nd dimm it was dead again. Weird this died at the same exact time - but at least I've got it running now.. I think it still needs a mobo replacement. I did another BIOS update to make sure it's completely updated and that went through fine.

 

Ok, so I had some time to play with this and it's now happened twice so I know this is what was happening to me - I thought I'd share this incase someone is out of Warranty and thinking they are SOL and the blind BIOS update doesn't work.

If you perform a BIOS update/downgrade and it shows it's been successful, but once it goes to reboot it lights up the 3 Volume lights (Volume Decrease blinking, the other 2 stay on) - turn the laptop off. It won't work anymore from that state.

Open it up and pull the RAM out of DIMM2 and restart - it should be ok. Once you've rebooted in once - turn it off and put the RAM back into DIMM2 and it should be fine. BIOS is as per your update/downgrade.

Note that removing RAM from both and trying to start it showed the same error, and/or putting them both back in shows the same error. This is important because if you pull all RAM out when it's 'working normal', the error code is different (3 volume buttons light up but both decrease and increase volume buttons blink).

I can't find anyone else having this issue before, but bare in mind that my update said it had been successful before it rebooted normally. It's now happened on 2 different mobo's, 2 different set of RAM modules.

This may also have explained why I could not get blind BIOS update working/reading from the USB keys.

 

Even though I have a Dell XPS Studio 1640; I followed bulforce's instructions in the opening post and have restored my computer Thank you sir!


The Dell Control Centre program managed to screw up the new Bios update (A11 to A15), it somehow froze during the flash process, went to a white screen and then was dead as a doornail. Following this, if I tried to power up, the Mute, Volume Up and Volume Down icons would flash, the keyboard would go full lit - then the laptop would turn off (after 15 seconds or so).
Rince repeat

I managed to the find the A11 Crisis Bios here Dell Crisis BIOS Recovery Studio XPS 1640 A11(by NVT) - Free Download from mediafire - Filestube.com.
Following that I made a Flash drive using the WinCris application file (in the download)
unplugged the laptop battery
unplugged the AC
plugged in the Flash drive
held down the End key for 3 seconds and plugged in AC power to the laptop (release End key)
pressed the power button

At this point for about 40-45 seconds the flash drive blinked active and then went idle. DO NOT TURN OFF OR UNPLUG the laptop (I did this first time round and went back to square one )
My laptop then restarted itself - BUT- it took roughly 2-3 minutes.
Bios came up and the laptop started as normal, phew

All in all - a complete pain, but much more useful than the Dell Technical support and a lot quicker too.

Thank you to Bulforce and all those who have spent time and energy on this matter to help folk like me fix things!!

 

hi got the same prob with my xps 1640. updated from a14 to a15 and got stuck at verifying block 5. I followed the steps to recover my bios provided in this topic, but nothing seems to work.
I make the boot disk, plug it in, hold the end key, plug the power, release end key, and the fans start working and the flash drive blinks for bout 10 secs and then just stays on, but the laptop never restarts (10-15min). Unplugging from power seems to be the only way to power it down, but it still wont boot into the system.
Anybody have an idea why the laptop wont read from the usb stick? ive tried 2 different ones so far (1GB and 2GB).
Any help appreciated

----------------------------------------------

UPDATE: ok never mind, managed to finally restore bios. the problem turned out to be the usb sticks. I finally used an old 40MB stick with the newest bios A15 and it all went smoothly. Big thanx to everyone that took the time to find this solution for all of us