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February 7th, 2025 12:22
Why is BIOS update failing?
So, I updated my Vostro laptop to Windows 11 and am stuck with a black screen and mousepointer. This is a known issue that just needs the BIOS updated to solve it. However, I cannot flash the BIOS.
I have tried via the BIOS's own Flash BIOS option with the new bios executable on a USB stick. It successfully opens the file, sees the new BIOS version, but when I let it run it reboots the machine and immediately says that the update failed. I have tried entering /forceit into the options field on the flash bios utility to no avail.
I then followed the instructions to use the DDDP utility to create a bootable usb stick and run the bios executable from there. It says 'this program cannot be run in DOS mode'!!!
I am completely stuck and have effectively bricked my laptop. I cannot get it into safe mode so I can't even undo the Win 11 upgrade. And all because I can't do a simple BIOS update. What might be causing it to fail? There are no admin passwords set. I have just replaced the battery (which was failing) and have run the Support Assist diagnostics - everything reports as being ok. I am at my wits end with this machine now!
ejn63
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February 7th, 2025 13:44
For what model system?
mikew5163
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February 7th, 2025 14:21
@ejn63 It's a Vostro 5581 laptop.
I've just done a clean Win 10 install on to a spare disk so that I can at least boot the machine again. I made sure bitlocker was off. I ran the firmware update utility in an elevated command propmpt with the /forceit switch (as per instructions on the Dell site) and got 2 error dialogs. The first said 'Could not find valid Policy or Resource Payload' and the second said '[String 1000010D is not found]. Please Update Resouce file.'
(edited)
ejn63
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February 7th, 2025 15:21
Rather than complicate the situation with a firmware update, have you tried a clean install of Windows 11 first?
mikew5163
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February 7th, 2025 15:32
@ejn63 Yes, I have (on the same spare disk I just put Win 10 on). At first it worked ok but after it had been around the Windows update cycle a few times it went back to a black screen. This is a known issue and Dell's answer is to update the bios to 2.15.1, which is what I have been trying and failing to do:
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000196864/vostro-5481-and-vostro-5581-do-not-boot-after-upgrading-to-windows-11
mikew5163
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February 11th, 2025 09:11
Does anybody else have any thoughts on this? I am still stuck, unable to flash the bios and therefore run Win 11.
When I try to flash the bios via the bios flash update process itself, it recognises the new bios version, reboots and then the update immediately fails. It's as if something is preventing the process from being allowed to go ahead, but I cannot find any settings in the bios that would suggest bios update is disabled.
mikew5163
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February 15th, 2025 22:27
Well I finally solved this, but no thanks to Dell!
I ended up trying Bios Recovery which reflashed the bios from the recovery partition on the SSD back to the original (even earlier!) version of the bios. So then I accessed that partition and replaced the bios recovery file with the updated version but could not get it to do a recovery from that newer version.
Suspcious that the file sizes were very different I stumbled upon this article which talks about extracting the actual bios image from the executable (https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-uk/000130691/bios-recovery-steps-for-a-no-post-issue-on-alienware-aurora-r5-r6-r7-r8-r9-r11-and-xps-8910-8920-8930-pcs). The command line switches in this post produced errors, which led me to try /? and that gave me /s /r as switches with which to run the bios executable from within Windows (I booted into Win10 for this). So I ran the bios exe with /s /r /l c:\log.txt, the machine rebooted and it went through the bios update process. Re-installed my previosuly upgraded Win 11 disk and now Win 11 works.
So, in summary, what I think has happend here is that Dell have changed the way their BIOS executables work, but not got round to updating the documetation to reflect this. Thanks Dell - that's just wasted many, many hours of my time, and I very nearly binned a perfectly good laptop with years of life left in it. Not impressed.