Sony Vaio Z2 (2011) Advanced Menu BIOS Hack

Hi Everyone !

Do you know if there is a version of this BIOS compatible with the new Z (Ivy bridge base) ? Mine has a whining problem that, I think, could be resolved by disabling the C3/C6 mode within the BIOS. Unfortunately (and honestly I do not understand why) Sony disabled the advanced options in the SVZ BIOS too.

 

^ IB Z's BIOS hack is yet to be released.

 

Hi Pyro,

I have a Sony Vaio VPCEB16FG and i want to mod the BIOS. This is the first time i am trying my hands on BIOS modding. I know how to update and take backup of BIOS. The current BIOS has very limited options and i want to enable the advanced options. Also i would like to overclock the CPU and GPU installed in my laptop. I am not able to upload the BIOS as its size is 2MB.

Thanks and Regards,
Brink1984

 

BIOS Update version R1013H5 : Download : Sony Asia Pacific

Hi pyr0 .. are you able to mod R1013H5?

My laptop's in trouble I can't access the RAID configuration menu because I went to zero the ssd MBR. Windows 7 now sees just 1 ssd - 128GB and not the other. Prior to that I deleted the raid array and I was probably suppose to reset the drives as non-raid first. Now there's no way I can access it,... perhaps I need to play around with those various configurations in the advanced menu first.

Please do help Lappie's been down for 2 months already.

 

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I am having a similar problem with biatche. After I deleted my RAID array, 1 of the 2 drives disappeared. I have installed the modded BIOS, which is able to indeed see both drives. Also, booting with an Ubuntu boot CD, I can see the 2 disks. There is no RAID menu displayed on boot any more though, and Windows only sees a single 128GB drive (instead of 2x128GB or 1x256GB). Before all of this, I deleted the RAID array, did an ATA secure erase on my drives and re-created the array. It all worked successfully, allowed me to install Windows, and performance had recovered. The next day, all this started.

Configuration to the BIOS is set to RAID and of course, the option to show the RAID menu is enabled (but like I said before, it doesn't actually show up on boot).

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

 

Guys, I am working on figuring this out. Did you check that after secure erase both drives are in unlocked state again? What does

hdparm -I /dev/sda
hdparm -I /dev/sdb

say?
</pre>

 

Hi Folks,

is it possible to apply this hack on a 2009er FW4/5 Vaio ?

i have an normal EFI Ami-Bios inside ( not the insydeH20 of the Z2 ).

 

hope that helps

 

bu m p : (

 

Biatche try to flash back your original BIOS file as you did here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...vaio-z-advanced-menu-bios-65.html#post8969244

It seems that you screwed your BIOS by applying the VPC-Z1 BIOS hack to your Z2...?

 

I did try to apply Z1 bios hack to this Z2 only to realize it didn't do anything. Even if I flash back to the original bios the problem (windows seeing just 1x 128gb instead of 2x 128gb) is still there.

Is it very hard to hack Z2 bios?

 

Why can't you access the RAID console (enable SHOW in BIOS and press Ctrl+I when prompted) in the original unmodified BIOS and check if both drives are present there, recreate the RAID array etc.? The SHOW/HIDE switch is there even without the BIOS hack described in this thread, so hacking your BIOS won't give you any benefit in your case.

 

I can't access it because of bios bug. We initially deleted the raid array without setting the disks no non-raid. Actually I remember doing both but whatever. After that. I zero'd the SSD drives so that I could install windows on one system drive while use the other as space. Apparently after doing that, something wasn't right or to clarify -- buggy. After deleting the array, we could never see the raid configuration menu (ctrl-i) ever again. Google leads me to see that we must manually set to AHCI/RAID mode first and only then we can recover the raid configuration menu. That's why i need a hacked bios.

This is all in unmodified bios. There's also a bug in which windows can only see one disk rather than two. And occasionally windows bsod's and from experience dealing with desktops that had drives with raid configurations on them previously, we need to somehow erase all "raid data" on the disks to be seen as "really non-raid/single" disk. Otherwise, it will bsod. I've once created a 3tb raid on a desktop drive and after erasing all the data, zeroing even, the disk would sometimes still show as 3TB rather than 1TB. Somehow after erasing and erasing and I'm not sure what I did, it'd be as normal again. So yes, zeroing a raided drive doesn't play nice some how, its buggy. It's even worse when I can't get to raid configuration menu or set to ide/ahci/raid mode.

 

Really hoping this bios hack will come to the SVZ13, I'm running Ubuntu and want to get the VT-D switch enabled so I can do VGA pass through with the PMD. Thanks for your great YouTube video showing all the switches, it clearly shows that even with the Intel Virtualization switch enabled in the basic bios the specifc VT-D switch I need remains disabled. If there is anything I can do to help bring the hacked bios to the SVZ13, like get you a dump, let me know.

 

Actually just did some more checking, VT-D support on the Z2 or Z3 doesn't look like it would work as neither chipset (HM67 and HM77 respectively) support it.

 

^ It seems you are right. Weird, my 2010 Z with a HM57 chipset does support VT-d as per Intel and enabling it in the hacked BIOS setup works (checked in CPU-Z).

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/658052-vpcz2-how-get-into-raid-bios-menu.html

this is the precise problem

really just need a hacked bios

 

Perhaps you have SSD failure (broke your SSD with zeroing, ZoinksS2k did so, too) so RAID menu is not available anymore. I think BIOS hack will not bring you anywhere and I am afraid I don't have time to hack your exact model as I am currently working on another Z and S series bios hack.

 

any suggestion on how to fix it? linux sees 2 drives. if bios lets me access the raid menu i can always recreate the raid. in fact, why bother creating the raid menu at all (show/hide) if its not meant to be used at all.
can i paypal you to make this hack?

this drive is strange, i opened up the notebook to find 1 physical ssd disk instead of two. but yet, its configured as raid. weird beyond weird..

 

As I already pointed out I did not experience this issue on my own, so can only guess.

What I would do:
If both drives are accessible in linux, try to format them as ntfs and fill them with data. If this works it is evidence enough that the SSDs are physically working. Any live CD e.g. ubuntu, parted magic should do the trick.
Then launch windows setup. If it sees only one drive, install windoze on it. After setup, install Intel's rst drivers. In its management console try to recreate an array with both drives. Intel's driver has some kind of low level access on the sata controller, even if windows is too dumb to detect both drives.

If it fails, reset bios settings to default, disable fastboot and stuff and disconnect the ssd ribbon cable. Power it up and check if you can get into the raid console. Also try a fresh secure erase on both drives as described at ata.wiki.kernel.org (this may also reset the corrupted raid markers and make you access the menu again).


Also read the story here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/624273-z2-x-how-break-your-ssd-few-easy-steps.html

I guess you did more or less the same.

Sure I would hack your BIOS but you will be disappointed if it won't solve your SSD problem . Z2 drives are a single SSD board with two seperate controllers and NAND chips populated on each side. That makes two logical independent drives that share a single PCB. A computer does not care how many PCBs it is as long as the controller is talking back to the chipset.

 

Locked BIOS on a VGN-Z790.

Any chance this will work?

 

Hello! Can be hacked H2O BIOS / SONY VPCEF44FX

R0200Z5 - that version of BIOS
R0210Z5 - or that version


Thanks for your job, Pyro!

 

Currently, I have no plans to mod these series.

 

Hi pyr0,

have you already completed your bios hack for the newest sony vaio z2 version R0173H5 ?
Would be great if you could share with us

 

After my sony vpcz2190x successful BIOS update to version R0173H5 got all symptoms of CPU overheating, the fans start running on maximum and laptop shuts down.
I have checked the CPU temperature with Aida64 and there is no actual owerheating, so there must be some bug during my laptop BIOS update, even though the update was successful.

I have just downgraded my bios to the previous version from the first post of this thread (R0172H5). Thanks pyr0

Will see if it helps

Sony Vaio VPCZ2190x
Model - PCG-41313L

 

What about the SVZ13 ?

Is the wbflash tool compatible with that model ?
Is there any version of wbflash which to not update the bios but write out another ROM ?

Great work dude.

Cheers

 

Can anybody tell how make the Advanced Menu BIOS hack on VPE3M1R ?

BIOS - R0200Z9

 

sry for not writting since a year, i also contacted the support from sony about this, but harhar silly answers.... -.-

here is my cpu-z
so i think the problem is that the microcode for aes ni in my cpu is missing in the bios file

and I am not clever enough to include it by my own :/

is there a chance that you will update the bios in the next time or can give a hint which tools are the best to mod this bios files?

regards

 

is the any way to reset bios settings ? iv got black screen after modification of IGD Aperture . Fun is working CPU also.


As i understand only one way to recover BIOS on vaio Z2 laptop is to reflash it.
And i can use BIOS dump file to reflash chip. Is it correct ?

 

After hours of research i've found this tutorial to update the cpu microcode in Bios.
donovan6000's Blog: Insyde BIOS Modding: CPU Microcodes

Now i am able to use AES-NI on my VPC21M9E with i5-2410M, and truecrypt is 5 Times faster. yay!

 

Glad my tutorial worked for you. It also took me forever to discover a way to update microcodes lol. I guess this means it works for all insyde bios

 

yes it worked, thanks a lot!
It was really helpful, i was fustrated before i've found this. The System performance was really at the bottom with FullDiskEncryption enabled... (Boottime around 50 sec and now 25, without Encryption arround 19)

Sony was updating some BIOS features over the time, but the Microcode for my CPU was still from 2011...

 

Hi all.
May be that's kinda silly question, but:
1. Is it safe to flash from Win or I gotta boot in DOS? I flashed my VGN-Z from DOS, but who knows.
2. My VPC-Z22 running R1012H5, sony website have R1013H5, and modded Bios is R0172H5. Can I flash R0172H5 over mine, or I should upgrade to R0172H5 and then make it advanced?

 

Hi all, i have a VPCZ21C5E. is possible to boot from internal sd card?

thanks

 

Hello,
After some manipulations with Bios Settings i bricked my Vaio z21CGX\B. =(

Using MiniPro TL866A programmator i wrote my Bios backup file to Bios chip (winbond 25q32vb)
After i assembled laptop, it seams works well. BUT after 20 - 30 seconds of work fan is starting to work at maximum speed, with a very loud noise.
I checked cpu temperature it is around 40 - 60C.

May be i damaged some chips ? What i should to cheek ? may be i connected some BIOS chip legs not properly ?

UPD

I found that may be ME region reflash will be helpfull, but how to do this from PC, I don't want to use programmator one more time...

 

Go grab the h2o flasher executable for dos (flash it.exe) from the z1 bios hack thread, boot into dos and read the help page for the tool (flash.exe /?). There is a special option to write ME data, try that. You can also use the flasher executable from my backup tool but need to change the ini file.

Other issue might be that you did not properly reassemble the cpu heatsink so the chip heats up too much after some time. I bet this is the case. I dont think you bricked the bios chip because if you did the laptop would not work at all.

Perhaps you dumped the spi flash before reflashing? You might want to compare with your backup to identify what sections have been changed.

Good luck.

 

Ok, i will try to do this. BTW i did't noticed that right now ME version is UNAVAILABLE.

UPD1
ERROR: BIOS did not support this version of flash!
http://sendspace.com/file/aplu0n

UPD2
Ok, finally i found flash it.exe version which is work well for me.
http://download.gigabyte.us/FileList/BIOS/nb-bios-T1125-F11.zip
Now i am need ME dump. i Guess =)

UPD3
Warning: The region do not have R\W Right =(

UPD4
Regarding CPU Heatstick - i did't disassemble heatstick. This is not necessary to reach BIOS chip.

 

I have sadly bricked my Notebook by disabling internal graphic card.

Well my only hope left is that somebody might be able to navigate me blindly into bios, into the graphic settings further to the internal graphic device to reanable the graphic card and also to save and exit bios.

I really hope somebody of you could help me, maybe do a small video etc.

 

Ohh...i did that also.
Luckily I wrote myself the keys down for enabling it blind
I will look for my notes...

 

for loading the default setting, try this:
* start the laptop
* press multiples times F2 (maybe for 30 seconds) for entering bios
* press F9 for loading default settings
* press ENTER for confirm
* press F10 for saving and exit
* press ENTER for confirm

hopefully that helps

 

Thanks for your help. I had a little hope, but it did not work. I'm not really sure if the settings can't be overwritten or if I just don't get into BIOS...

So, sadly it's not working for me, after choosing "Disable internal graphic card".


But one thing is odd. After a while I hear a plop sound and the laptop turns off. I have to press a few times the on/off-button without batterie or flex to turn it on again (I would guess its a wrongly loaded input capacitor)

 

hmm...i had the same problem and i got it working. You have to try it multiple times, because sometimes it does not start the bios configuration!
Turn the computer off, than turn it on and start immediately pressing F2 multiple times like for 30 seconds.

 

how did you disabled the internal gfx card? which menu point?here
here is a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXsMBST8ak0

 

Well, sry that it took me so long to answer but I wanted to figure out some things.


I think this option was at Advanced -> PCI Express Configuration but I'm not sure. sry for the confusion but I'm using a VPCSA not the Z2 and I have an HD 6630M inside but I still hope somebody might help me here


I tried often to reset bios configuration blindly but still without any luck.

After some research I found a site which sells the mainboard for ~100 seems acceptable but the question which bothers me there is if my primary amd graphic card might got broken during the process. If I start the laptop I just have 30 seconds, after the 30 secs I hear a plop-sound (I'd say from the speekers) and the laptop turns it self off.

Is it cause of the misconfiguration or might the graphic card really got damaged through this option?? Maybe I resetted the settings already but the gfx card is broken, what do u think?


btw there is a switch on the mainboard but I have no idea what it is for...

 

Hello,
I recently acquired an SA model VPCSA4MFY and found that the SATAIII is disabled and not available as an option. I found the hacked BIOS thread but the file was pulled due to negligent users not following instructions. Is there an alternate location to download the file? Thanks for the help and apologies for the off-topic remark.

Regards,
Leo

 

Hi guys,

maybe you can help me with a well known "user-ignored-all-warnings-problem". I have to fix a bricked Sony VAIO (VPCSB1Z9E). The VAIO seems to be bricked after upgrading the latest stock bios to "Vaio_VPCSA_R1031H4_AdvMenuUlk_ByCamiloml_SATA 3" and playing around by disabling internal graphic adapter. However, happens - my fault. At an rate, i backuped a bios dump.

As i see, user kruegsch already had a similar problem in the past and got it fixed by an expert. So i searched on google, to find a kind of professional or repair center in germany to reprogram my bricked bios, but every repaircenter i asked for, told me that reprogramming is not possible (also a bios chip swap could not be done).

I won't believe this statements (of selfstyled professionals) and want to ask YOU guys for a recommendation where i can get that bios/notebook fixed.

@ user kruegsch: Who's that guy, fixed your notebook? Is it possible to get in touch with that guy?

The second solution seems, to swap the notebooks mainboard - but first of all i'm looking for a cheaper solution. I'm pretty sure to find some help by asking you guys

Thanks in advance - Jhurtas

 

^Where are you located?

 

Hi pyr0 First - thanks for your reply...

...i'm located in the rhein-main-area

 

Please turn on your private messaging or get in touch with me.

 

<strike>...alright...private messaging seems to be turned on.
</strike>
...i cannot get in touch with you :-( Also enabling PM is not activated until not posting at least 5 quality posts to the board...anyway - feel free to contact me via my temporary email-adress.

Thanks in advance - Jhurtas