Hi, Apologies if this is in the wrong place. I tried to update one of our M3800's to A13 and Windows hung at 21% of whatever the second stage is (finished the blocks and moved on to the bar) laptop is now effectively dead. I've trying resetting the EC and pulling the main and CMOS batteries to no avail. Having found several people posting the same issue (sorry I don't have enough posts to include links) I've been able to get it to boot from USB using ZAU50A13.hdr but after it writes the new boot block, the new data block, the new main block and the new nvram block the screen goes black, fans go off but it doesn't reboot (power light still flashes) and it's still dead - From the linked posts I suspect this is because I need the original ROM version I was upgrading _from_ which is where I hit a snag. I'm 99% sure it was A02 which I have been unable to find on the web, I've found 00, 03, 05, 07, 09 & 10 but none of these will even get to the Aptio recovery. Does anyone have M3800-A02.exe or have any suggestions on what to try next or shall I resign myself to having to buy a new BIOS chip for it? Thanks
il help. will look for A02 in archive.org but likely will need a programmer like ch341a ($4) and a working .bin to flash to chip.
Thanks for the reply I have checked archive.org but was not able to find anything matching the expected filename (m3800a02.exe or m3800-a02.exe)
Thanks, are there any web sites with instructions on how to recover using the programmer you can suggest?
I have for now worked hard and I have found such a drivers for Dell Precision M3800 (laptop) M3800A00.EXE - BIOS but unknown, don't have any info about it M3800A03.EXE M3800A05.EXE M3800A06.EXE M3800-A07.exe M3800-A09.exe M3800-A10.exe M3800-A11.exe M3800-A12.exe M3800-A13.exe As You can see, havent found M3800A02.EXE or M3800-A02.EXE no one even haven't mentioned such a BIOS version in any forum what I read. The oldest what was mentioned was M3800A03.EXE All people said, that You can update to what ever version, but not only to M3800A13.exe, because it is the latest and for newest laptops. This laptop have been built up on base XPS and first official release was in 2013, after that was updated and the next (new) version came in 2015. Some of them came with A08 (currently A08 not available), but some already with A10. So, if You said, Yours is older, then it should work with all drivers before A08. But before 2013 (ie in developer period in 2012 was also used some XPS drivers).