Hi,

My Alienware Area-51 R2 Specs:

- Intel Core i7-6800K CPU @ 3.40GHz 3.40 GHz.
- 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor.
- Windows 10 Home.
- Intel c610 series/X99 chipset (stock).
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (stock).
- Samsung 970 Evo Plus (boot SSD drive w/M.2 to PCIe adapter).
- 16GB RAM (stock).
- BIOS A14.
- BIOS Chip: Macronix MX25L12873F

A Little History:

I, unfortunately, installed the wrong system firmware. I did not know at the time.

I then restarted my computer and my BIOS beeped at me 10 times then turned off and on in an endless loop. I had to disconnect it from power. Every time I attempted to turn on my PC, it did that endless loop. I couldn't get into the BIOS nor did I see any video feedback. My keyboard or mouse never lit up, but my tower did for a brief second each loop.

That software update bricked my motherboard. I took out the CMOS battery and reset my CMOS with the jumper plug. After doing so, the endless loop was gone and my PC turned on and the tower and keyboard lit up, but the mouse did not; I still did not get any video feedback.

So, I had to buy a programmer and test clip to flash my BIOS directly on the BIOS chip. After I did this, I got video feedback and was able to enter the BIOS, but it could not read a boot drive. So, I changed it from Legacy to UEFI (what it was before the hiccup [GPT partitioned SSD]), saved it, then restarted. My BIOS beeped at me 10 times again and went on the endless on and off loop again.

I then replaced my CMOS battery with a new one and it booted right up and found my boot drive automatically.

However, I saw the system firmware update that caused the issue still in Device Manager. It is giving a Code 10.

I then went to the Dell Support site and downloaded the updated BIOS version for my PC. The installation wizard said my current BIOS and the new BIOS are the same versions. I installed it anyway. The system firmware that caused the issue was still there and in the same state as before.

Here are some screenshots of my Device Manager:

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The Hardware IDs of the system firmware:

- UEFI\RES_{7039436b-6acf-433b-86a1-368ec2ef7e1f}&REV_C
- UEFI\RES_{7039436b-6acf-433b-86a1-368ec2ef7e1f}

How I am Going to Fix POST/Windows Issues:

I am going to flash my BIOS again to A14, but, this time, I am going to do it via the one-time boot menu (F12) and with the BIOS A14 BIN file extracted from the Dell Alienware BIOS exe file.

I am doing this because I am having a longer POST and Windows startup than before, and Windows updates along with an incorrect system firmware that a normal BIOS update will not fix. I am then going to do a clean Windows installation right after I update my BIOS.

I have been doing a bunch of research on how to use the A14 BIOS BIN file extracted from the Alienware BIOS exe file from the Dell Support site as the file I can update my BIOS with. I am not very confident so I would love to hear someone who has more knowledge on this.

EDIT: I have found out that I am using an AMI BIOS thanks to erpster5z in the reply.

I could use flashrom to load onto a boot USB along with my BIN file and it will flash my BIOS.

My Questions:

1. Can anyone confirm if my BIOS chip has been successful in flashing with flashrom or some other software?

Here are the contents of the exe file someone kindly extracted for me:

- a14.bin
- AFUWIN64.exe
- amifldrv64.sys
- FWUpdLcl_w64.exe
- gzip.exe
- me.rom
- NTIOLib.sys
- NTIOLib_X64.sys
- Wipeall.exe

Thank you in advance for the help or for just taking the time to read this!

If I successfully do this I will make sure to update this thread.

Edit by Fernando: Thread title shortened/specified/customized
Edit by Tug_44: Thread title specified/customized * Thread Text customized/added to

check out this youtube video on fixing a dell alienware area 51 r2 with a corrupt bios

maybe that will help; ask the person there

edit - the amifldrv64.sys & AFUWIN64.exe files you mentioned are for AMI bioses. awdflash is for AWARD bioses only

Zitat von erpster5z im Beitrag #2

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edit - the amifldrv64.sys & AFUWIN64.exe files you mentioned are for AMI bioses. awdflash is for AWARD bioses only

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Zitat

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check out this youtube video on fixing a dell alienware area 51 r2 with a corrupt bios

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I used his YT and website tutorial to fix mine and it worked like a charm. I could definitely ask if he knows of a program that can flash my BIN file to my BIOS to my chip.

EDIT: I actually do not need to use flashrom, correct? Since it already has the AFUWIN64.exe, I just need to format the USB then load all of those files onto the USB and boot from it, correct? Or is there something else I need to do?

It's unclear what really did happen here. You possibly flashed a wrong bios, reprogrammed it with programmer, but get the same symptoms again, this time because of wrong boot settings (legacy vs. UEFI)?

- Those vendor specific flash programs normally do not write the complete bios image, they spare some regions.

- You didin't make a backup of your bricked bios before reprogramming, did you? So your serial, service tag might be lost?

- The firmware in device manager is a link to a bios/ bios update. In your case it's connected to oem32.inf, which I assume is the inf file for a windows bios update, that possibly never happened. This is menat for updating firmware via Windows update.

Please do yourself a favour and dump the firmware which now is installed, attach it here or post a link and lets have a look into it to find out what really is installed right now!

Now thinking on it, I very well could have flashed the wrong BIOS. Yes, it would not recognize my boot device so I went into BIOS and changed it from Legacy to UEFI since my boot drive is a GPT partition. The BIOS then beeped again 10 times and went back into the on and off loop. I changed out the CMOS battery with a new one and then my PC booted from my SSD no problem.

I do get a Windows blue screen error every now and again right when it boots Windows. The BIOS alien I see when it is booting up is completely different.

- I had no idea. I wonder why they spare some regions.

- I made a backup of what was on my BIOS before I reprogrammed it but it kept failing for some reason and now it's just a crdownload file. I would attach it here but it's 4GB and zipping it would not compress it enough. I have it uploaded to mega to download but I cannot add any links (completely understandable). And that's actually crazy, my service tag is lost. I found that out yesterday. Dell support site cannot identify my PC and Dell Support Assist (DSA) has a completely different service tag than what is listed on my products vis Dell. There is always an error when trying to log in with my Dell account via DSA.

- That is interesting.

I have attached the BIN file I used when reprogramming my BIOS chip. I do want to note that I downloaded the BIOS update exe file from Dell and went through with the update even though the installation wizard told me the BIOS version was the same.

Thank you for the help!

I'm interested in what the current (dumped) content of your bios chip is, not the Dell stock firmware file.

Yep, that's the reason why vendor specific flash programs spare some regions- these regions contain your machine specific data and the settings (NVRAM), thats absolutely meaningful. That's the reason why your serial and service tag are lost now since a stock bios does have empty areas where your original bios used to have this information. Since you programmed the complete 16 MB with an 'anonymous' stock bios this information is overwritten now.

How did you manage to get a 4 GB file out of a bios dump of 16 MBte?

You can post links if you don't let them look like links, some spaces do the job.