I really appreciate this. I have been working on this all day and night. My last effort has been comparing the original 02_2.rom and the modified one from the tool. I don't know much about hex code, but I can pick out differences and trial by error switching things back one peace at a time to see if it fixed it. This is infinity complicated by the fact that switching some options in the tool will still break Speed Step, but will also no longer validate W7. And I'm not sure which those are yet. And I haven't even taken a look at your custom mod yet... not that I would really understand it. But I am in a very tired state and that is an endeavor to be done while awake. I can confirm that it is not the SLIC table insertion that is causing the issue... but changing the table ID(s)... but I'm guessing you already knew that. --- One thing I did notice...just now, that may be of help. In the RWeverything when speed step is enabled there are multiple SSDT tables in the ACPI menu. But, when it is disabled, there is only one. So, I made for you two RW reports with the unmoded bios. One with speed step enabled and another with speed step disabled. And as you requested here is also the RW report following your mod. It is with speed step disabled, as that is the only way the machine will boot. --- Thank you again, for taking the time to look into this. View attachment 15591
I'm pretty sure its the missing SSDT tables that are causing the issue. Edit: Puzzled as to why when speedstep off the SSDT aren't there. The mod did what I wanted - replace the MCFG table with SLIC. I will upload some test BIOSes tonight to see if we can pin down the issue. Thanks Andy
I don't think the table is the issue. I think it is changing of table IDs. I noticed some changes in the binary of 02_2.rom that were after the 13 character bios tables OEM IDs. I do not know if this is normal operation. If it is, I wonder if this gets into coded areas.
Also, I have noticed that if you select "no slic" the program does not make any changes (such as changing table OEM/Table IDs to match selected slic. This would be useful if you had to manual add the slic with the manual module option selected). It seems to just puts the bios back together. I do not know if this is intentional behavior.
After "much" trial and error I have found the issue. In the 02_2.rom at address 0x00004B3F There is a character. In the stock bios it is an @ (hex value 40.) Changing the OEM/Table ID the tool changes this to D (hex value 44). This change enables activation... but breaks speed step. EDIT: After further investigation it seems the RSDT table ID changes when speed step is enabled. And is either RSDT@ with no speed step or RSDTd (with an additional section of the table appearing) with speed step... It seems windows requires it to be RSDTD to activate. Also, after using a totally different SLIC and only changing the RSDT OEM ID (and manually hex editing it back to RSDT@ I enabled speed step. In RW it reports the table as beginning with RSDTd with the totally new OEM ID. So I think it is actually patching the table in memory somehow. Now to just figure out where... I've really no idea how to do that and only very basic hex editing skills... This may require more skills than I have.
Andy, Please upload v2.05 to another site. SendSpace is stopping the download at 80%. LimeLinx.com would be best. Thanks.
Andy, Please upload v2.05 to another site. SendSpace is stopping the download at 80%. LimeLinx.com would be best. Thanks.
No I'm not. The screenshot from the modded EFI now I can add is this, with the table size equal zero. View attachment 15615 Another screenshot from the modded EFI now with different size View attachment 15627 As you can see the unknown table has different values, although the memory address is the same
seems Dell is aware of this tool, tried to patch an optiplex 990 bios (any version) as by default it has NO slic table in the BIOS of these machines. Phoenix tool fails with msg HDR cannot be extracted. Now I noticed this latest Dell method uses a single exe which does NOT extract any temp files, the exe itself is digitally signed, and loads straight from the exe into some temp memory area of the bios, and flashes the bios at reboot. There is some info on the net to use firmware A02 and use a specific asset tag ("31/12"), but when trying to downgrade from A07 to A02, the BIOS flasher said "this bios revision is blacklisted" and aborted!!! Since then it was impossible to flash to any BIOS (it showed A02 but was seemingly incomplete flash), and windows failed to start. I had to use an asset tag wiper (DOS tooL) from Dell to wipe this 31/12 string. Since then I was able to start windows again and upgrade the bios to A13 without an issue. So it seems Dell is definitely closing SLIC backdoors and blacklisting tricks to OEM activate Windows!