I've spent several weeks off and on searching this and many other forums as well as sifting through piles of cracks and activators that seem to work for others. This originally was a Dell OEM XP Home box. I am coming to the conclusion that it has to have something to do with the BIOS as to why this won't activate after SP1, but not finding a whole lot of info on Dell mods. I think it's a Pheonix BIOS, but not sure how to extract any more info than that. I've tried several versions of Vista as in the Preactivated, 18in1 Activated, first RTM, OEM, etc... Just wondering if someone can point me in the right direction, or perhaps save me some stress and just tell me to give up as it aint never gonna happen... Thanks, Lex
Don't give up yet. Please upload a backup image of your BIOS. I mean the actual backup image of your BIOS from the computer that you want to activate and not a link of a BIOS update from the Dell site. There are several ways to make a backup of your BIOS. If you are not familiar with making a backup of your BIOS, let me know, I will post directions.
Thanks for replying reginakampher, I am not familiar with how to backup this BIOS. I will however try and figure it out while I await your instructions. I don't want to give up as I do like challenges, just unsure if it's a lost cause...
hey friend, i was in just the same problem as you only a couple days ago. my main problem was basically finding a modded bios for my machine (i have the vostro 1310). petar was nice enough to make the modifications for me, and i have tested it to be working 100%. after updating your bios to the new one all you have to do is insert the oem certificates from dell (downloadable on this forum) and insert the oem key for whichever version of vist you want (do it after vista installation tho, just skip the cdkey part when installing the os!)
Your bios seems to be a Phoenix bios. Cuting several bytes from the begining makes it recognizable to PBE, but the size of the bios is the problem. So make a dump using HWDirect. Open HWDirect and go to "Memory Dump". In the Adress box enter FFF00000 In the Size box enter 100000 press Dump. Right click into window, select all, right click again, copy. Paste as new file into winhex. (Open winhex and press Shift + insert key) Make sure ASCII-hex is selected. Save file and upload, please! To get Hwdirect to run under 64 bit, press F8 at startup and disable driver enforcement. This will last for one session only and allows Hwdirect to run.
Played with the file for an hour... The file is recognized by PBE, but its size remains to make problems. Just to confirm is your system Dimension 5100 ?
Interesting thread! I’ll have a look later on at the backup bios file. There is a way to make a manual mod, like ‘the lenovo’ way without to rebuild the bios with PBE.
@reginakampher Is there anything I can do with my Intel BIOS? I would really like to look into it but I don't know where to start!