DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Thanks a lot for the valuable info and effort!
I'm gonna do the job tomorrow if I find the programmer on the market.
I hope a master password generator gets invented for this model sooon!! ^_^

[Squirrel61]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Instead of using the programmer, you can also use the "ghetto" programmer from CapitanKasar, which he describes in the notebookreview forum thread that already has been linked a few times in this thread.

[Squirrel61]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

BTW. the ghetto programmer should also work for the EC chip (Sorry for double posting. Doesn't this forum have an edit button for your own posts?)

Does anybody know what information exactly is stored in the EC chip and what information is stored in the BIOS chip, besides the BIOS itself?

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

I don't know how to make sure that it work!
Because I couldn't find that EZ programmer on my local market
I'd be happy to know more about the ghetto programmer.
And can you please provide the link to that CapitanKasar link about ghetto I can't find that.
No this forum doesn't have edit links :P

Is it possible to do the reprogramming with this:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Ghet...ith-AVR-micro/

Also as far as I know the 4Mb flash stores the protected info related to Boot-up password...

[Squirrel61]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

The ghetto programmer you're linking to is similar, but not identical, to the one I mean. You can find the right one in the first post of the Notebookreview thread, which you can find here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell...ages-more.html

The description of the programmer is near the end of the first post. You can also find the necessary programming software there, it's just a small pack. You need to create a DOS bootable USB stick, which you have to boot on a computer with a parallel port.

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Thank you so much Squirrel61!
I got it!
I'm gonna contact Captainkasar to obtain more info about the chips. I'll add info here if I found something.
tnx

[Squirrel61]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

You're welcome. I'm just passing the knowledge that was shared to me by others.

If your only problem is the BIOS password, then you don't need to bother about the EC chip afaik (can someone deny or confirm this?).

Take the dumps from guriji from this post, they should work although I haven't verified them personally: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...31&postcount=6

The best would be to obtain some spare chips, they're really cheap on eBay. And backup your own chip before overwriting it, you never know if you're making things worse! It's your only hope of recovering to your current state.

[capitankasar]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

subscribed

oh, thank you also guys for the bios dumps

I just replied your post into the nbr forums, let my know if you need help while building the external programmer ^_^

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Thank you man, I'm gonna try it out!

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

@Squirrel61
I found this: (regarding your question about the two chips)

Laptops use Embedded Controller (EC) to control the battery charging operation and perform other tasks associated with starting and stopping the laptop. EC stores the current state of devices (should WiFi be on?), current information about the system (temperature, fan speed), control battery state (should the battery be charging?) and so on. ACPI directly communicates with EC and writes changes depending on the event that took place. For example, you press a hotkey to increase brightness and ACPI reacts to that hotkey. It increases the brightness, by doing calculations and writing changes to EC. After writing to EC, the brightness changes either on hardware level or via device drivers, that themselves read the values from EC and talk to other hardware to change the brightness level.
Typically, what is referred to Embedded Controller is a micro-controller that has 256 (0x00-0xFF in hexadecimal) user-accessible bytes. Most of those bytes have a meaning and are responsible for controlling the hardware or providing information. For example, on 3820TG the byte at [0x93] stores the state of the CPU fan and byte at [0x94] stores the fan speed.
In nutshell, Embedded Controller stores 256 numbers, and by reading and writing to EC, we can get information about the system and make changes to the state of computer hardware (such as fan control).

The 4MB chip stores the bios and the security passwords and etc...a

[Squirrel61]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Hi Kpax7, did you already succeed in building a flasher? I made one yesterday and I can confirm it works like a charm! I can just advise you to use wires that are not too thin (I used magnet wire first, but got no stable reads until I changed to kynar wire). Take the wire gauge from CapitanKasar's pictures as a reference. And use a battery for power. When using a power supply instead of a battery, you must install a capacitor, otherwise you will not get stable reads.

[capitankasar]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

those are nice news Squirrel61

do you have pics of yours?

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

I killed myself today!
Finally successful with the new and untested chip EN25F32 !!
I'm gonna put the instructions and my experience in both forums soon...
Now taking a break after hours of hardwork haha

[capitankasar]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

wow, so it was definitly another chip at all.

good job mate, take your well deserved break

waiting for your input ^_^

[Kpax7]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Read the mod story here ...

[alihomee]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

any one have 4mb file . iam also looking for that

[capitankasar]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

@alihomee

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...31&postcount=6

happy flashing ^_^

[gajee]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Read the mod story here ...

Kpax7, I am a noob as far as modding bios is concerned. I have this situation where my BIOS supervisor password has been set and I don't remember setting it.

So here is my noob question, Do I just download the package from CaptainKasar and execute "FLASH_the_original_bios.bat" on my machine?

I have a working machine (my only one,) albeit the BIOS password set. So will executing the batch file overwrite the BIOS password?

Kindly help.

p.s., I do know that there is a fair amount of risk involved. But I am faced with a possibility of spending 350 $ for a new motherboard from DELL support. I can just continue working with my system as is, but I am going in for an upgrade of the HDD (to SSD) and adding extra RAM (16 GB). So I am a little apprehensive about going in for these upgrades without having access to the BIOS.

Kindly advice.

My system: L502x

[Squirrel61]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Flashing the BIOS doesn't reset the password. The password is stored in a separate chip. See post #8 for instructions how to reset the password, although this method may not work. If it doesn't, you need to reprogram the chip that has the password stored. This is pretty simple to do if you can solder and have access to a second computer with a real parallel port (not a USB to parallel converter) but at the same time it is extremely risky because you can also overwrite some computer specific data that are stored in the same chip. If you overwrite these data, your computer may never boot again. So I advise to try the paperclip method.

However, if you only want to replace the HDD and RAM, you should be able to do it without password. At boot time, the computer may ask for confirmation but as far as I know you don't need the password for this.

[gajee]

Re: DELL XPS L502X Core I7 Master Bios Password

Thank you for the reply.

I wish there was a way we could program it using the same machine. Am wondering why we have to un-solder and program it. I know this is a dumb thought, coming from a computer science background guy, but I wish there was a way we could program it.

Well, I know I wouldn't be needing the BIOS if everything goes alright and the BIOS recognizes the new hardware. Just that in case something goes wrong then having the BIOS would have been handy.

Thanks