Question Corrupted BIOS flashing and laptop motherboard upgrade advice?

[arkansawdave74]

I have a Dell Precision 7510. I love it. It got wet. Motherboard seemed dead. I reset motherboard after dry. Did nothing. Then I removed the cmos battery and reset the mobo again (remove battery, unplug, hold down power button) and it started posting. But...it can't enter bios settings, It has lost it's main nvme drive, doesn't detect it at all. The bios reset I attempted did not work, thank goodness, so secure boot is still disabled and everything is set just like I left it and near how I like it. I'd attempted to use the official bios recovery file from usb in the boot menu > Flash BIOS Update section, but it wouldn't show me the usb or anything else. Just a black screen. I had the stick formatted formatted fat32. Is that the right file system for a bios recovery usb? The Official instructions said just to copy it to a usb stick and that it didn't need to be bootable. LOL. I had to format it because I'd just dd'd it onto the drive thinking it should be bootable before reading that. I was able to get to the boot menu, so I made a windows10 installer and installed it to the spare hdd thinking I would use it to flash the bios. BUT do you think that's a good idea? Does it sound like flashing the bios from windows would fix it? I'm afraid it may reset the bios settings and not fix it. Then it would be all over, wouldn't it?. At least now, all bios settings are in a decent spot. I can install stuff, boot stuff, just can't enter bios settings to change stuff and it takes about 5 minutes to boot windows 10. So I'm asking you. Have you seen a predicament like this before? Someone KNOWS what will happen if I flash the bios from windows 10 in it's current state because they've done it before. That's who I hope to hear from. I just hope to get a better idea of the risk ratio so I can make a more educated decision. Should I flash the bios or not....

I've flashed my share of bioses, usually in unorthodox ways since I use linux, and I'm pretty well educated in computer repair, but this is my first corrupted (possibly) bios. For all I know, this may be the exact situation that a Windows Flash might fix the bios. I just don't want to lose my favorite computer, so I'm asking those with more experience.

QUESTION 2: I can't not flash this bios. I have to know if it will work. If it fails and I need a new mobo, I currently have one with an i7-6820HQ), but there are Xeon boards as well for the 7510. I also plan to move the Quadro m2000m to the new board. What issues could I run into attempting to switch to a Xeon board? Would the same heat sink/fan assembly fit on a Xeon CPU? Could the boards have different chipsets or other differences that would prevent a drop in upgrade?

 

[Lutfij]

Did you go through this guide;
https://www.dell.com/support/conten...es-using-the-bios-recovery-tool/6079779755001
?

Even if you flashed the BIOS outside of Windows from within BIOS recovery environment, your BIOS would be reset. I don't own a Precision laptop but every branded motherboard and BIOS out there follow the same principle, that the BIOS will be wiped clean of your prior settings once you've flashed/updated/recovered a BIOS.

 

[arkansawdave74]

Did you go through this guide;
https://www.dell.com/support/conten...es-using-the-bios-recovery-tool/6079779755001
?

Even if you flashed the BIOS outside of Windows from within BIOS recovery environment, your BIOS would be reset. I don't own a Precision laptop but every branded motherboard and BIOS out there follow the same principle, that the BIOS will be wiped clean of your prior settings once you've flashed/updated/recovered a BIOS.

I did not, but I sure will. Thanks much. I wouldn't mind the bios settings being reset as long as I could get to the bios settings after the flash, which I can't do now.

I didn't have a bios password enabled, thank goodness. I now also know a few more details I could add. I'll add them to the OP. It's taking so long to boot, about 5 minutes, that I'm afraid I may be on limited time to flash the bios. If it stops booting windows I may miss my only chance to do this.

Hahaha. @Lutfij , your link is leading to the Dell Laptop Store. Maybe that's a sign. Time to get another one!! But, reading the link, I did try the official bios recovery method, but when I select the Update BIOS Recovery selection from the Advanced Boot Menu, it doesn't show any drives, just a black screen. I was very fortunate in a few ways here. I'm lucky it will do anything at all. I'm also lucky used motherboards, even Xeon upgrades are within my price range, which is quite low.

 

[arkansawdave74]

This is fixed. I took out the NVMe drive that was no longer detected to see if it would increase boot speed. I would have taken it out last night but I didn't have enough light, I put it off until today then got sidetracked by not being able to enter bios settings. Little did I know the corrupted drive itself was keeping me from entering the bios settings. As soon as I removed it I was able to enter the bios settings.