Dell XPS 15 9550 BIOS .ROM .HDR Extract Reflash Black Screen

Hi mates,

I ran into a trouble as many other countless people have experienced and documented almost on every major tech forum
Dell Black screen - Keyboard flash ON + Fan spins.

Just for you to know I have a good knowledge how to safely operate tech equipment during a disassembly operation, I have done it countless times, yet Back on September of 2017 I decided to took my Dell XPS 15 9550 i5 Motherboard out and upgrade it with i7 Intel motherboard - later when I got a spare housing I took the i5 Motherboard and put it back on deck, loaded with ram, ssd and all the equipment - gave it a power and no matter what I tried motherboard won’t go any inch further than staying Black Screen with keyboard flash on and fan softly spinning. Discharging power, removing CMOS battery countless times didn’t work - I gave up.

I suspect faulty bios and would like to force it to reflash.
I heard of this last resort option that I hoped to try
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/solved-re...land-ihasz

Dell XPS 9550 BIOS .exe file has to be extracted to .ROM and .HDR files and stored into USB flash to proceed a reflash procedure.

Can someone help me?

I tried /writehdrfile /writeromfile on Windows 10 but couldn't get the files - CMD Error: Invalid Command Lline.

Unrecognized command line option </writehdrfile>. The /? option will show command help.

 

Hi,
Maybe you already got help or found another way to solve this but I can help you with the command problem. The correct command is filename.exe -writehdrfile and not /writehdrfile. Same for ROM file. Hope this helps

 

Hi Andrei,
Thank you for your follow up message, no I have not yet found a way to extract .hdr .rom files from a dell executable bios file, unfortunately, your CMD command does not work as well.

 

You can also try to use Universal Extractor or 7zip to simply extract all the contents from the exe, including the HDR.

 

those commands never applied to the 95xx range afaik, they locked down the bios a bit by then.

 

Yes, but you can use PhoenixTool and lordkag's py script for these:
Dell XPS 15 9560 - bios v1.7.1.7z

 

OT - Is there a 9550 version floating around?

 

Sure, no problem:
Dell XPS 15 9550 - bios v1.6.1.7z

 

Hi there I bricked the bios on my 9360 twice. The bios recovery info online is not very clear but I figured it out. extracting the HDR/ROM from the bios was a feature in older dell BIOS updates (built into the exe, thats why windows says invalid command)

The correct procedure to recover your bios is as follows.

Download the desired bios update executable from dell. should be XPS9***.exe or something.

Rename it BIOS_IMG.rcv

format a usb drive as FAT (not fat32 though that may work)

place the .rcv file in the drive, plug the drive into the left port of the laptop.

Make sure power plug is out and its powered off.

Hold ctrl/esc and plug the power cord in. dont release until you see the recovery screen.




This not only allowed me to recover bios but downgrade from 2.5.1 all the way to 2.0.1.
I know this is the method as I had the 2.5.1 exe, the 2.2.1 ROM file, and the 2.0.1 exe renamed correctly to BIOS_IMG.rcv on the drive, the recovery chose the .rcv and ignored the others. (machine was on 2.5.1)


Another trick you can try is power off, unplug battery/rtc battery, hold power button for 30+ seconds. then without replugging batteries, plug in the ac adapter. It should initiate a full flush. I had to do this before I was able to get to the bios recovery mode the second time i bricked it.