Question Need helping flashing bios on Dell N411Z

[Myronazz]

Hello,

I'm trying to get my Dell N411Z to charge, the charging light is flashing with an amber colour, doing a research online multiple people mention to flash newest bios to the motherboard and that should fix the problem. unfortunately the tool requires 10% battery charge to proceed (But how am I supposed to do that if I can't charge it at all!!!) doing a forceit command to the executable doesn't work

Now I went to the temp folder and found something the tool extracted, it's a Phoenix WinFlash Tool along with a bunch of images, i'm guessing I can use that to manually flash the bios? The problem is there are like four different files and i am not sure which to flash. here is the tool

And here are the files inside the folder the original Dell Utility extracted

I'm guessing it's the BIOS1.wph file but the utility browser doesn't include the .WPH file extension at all so it can't see it unless I set it to 'All Files' the only one it can see is the FcRecovery.fd but again then again, if all of them are there, wouldn't all of them be important? I'm so confused... maybe someone can guide me here? Don't worry should worst case scenario come to pass and we brick the motherboard, I won't blame you and whoever tries to help, it's my responsibility and I fully realize that. Besides should this actually happpen, there are new EPROM CHIPs online I can buy, and I have plenty of soldering experience to put in the new EPROM CHIP. but of course it's prefered it doesn't come to that

Thank you

 

[COLGeek]

Have you considered just replacing the Dell's battery? This will either fix the lack of charge issue or help you isolate the physical issue. A BIOS update is very unlikely to resolve this issue.

Also, you really just just use the Dell update utility, downloaded from Dell, and not muck around with work-a-rounds.

 

[Myronazz]

i have considered it, since the laptop is kind of old (2012) Dell no longer offers any official replacements, so I will have to do with the aftermarket eBay ones, the no charge thing has existed for quite sometime and the battery hasn't been charged in years as a result, I tried measuring output voltage with my multimeter and it outputs 0 volts, and from what I've heard if a lithium-ion battery completely discharges it won't charge again, so I really have no choice but to replace it

Although I believe it's officially documented by Dell that the BIOS update is likely to fix the battery issue, just putting this out there for anyone facing the problem, it's worth a try, I managed to get the tool to work and it just ended up telling that I already have the latest revision

But again for anyone trying to do this with less than 10% battery can either try running the tool from MS-DOS (since it's officially supported, although I can't seem to get it work) with the /forceit parameter OR run the Dell utility and let it extract the files to your temp folder, once you do that go to your temp folder and locate another folder called WinFlash, run the tool and browse to the BIOS1.WPH file, if it doesn't see it make sure your browse Window is set to 'All Files' then finally click on the advanced button and make sure all the following options are checked:

1. Verify Block After Programming
2. Update Boot Block
3. Update BIOS region of the image
4. Update EC region of the image

Then after that, hit the flash button, the laptop reboots and starts flashing the image, I know these are the correct settings because I accidentally opened the Dell utility on my main computer and it opened the Winflash utility with these settings, including the path to the BIOS1.WPH file, which is what I then used on my Dell laptop and finally it started flashing, but really @COLGeek is correct, these work-arounds should be avoided but if you are completely desperate and you know for a fact that your battery is good, I think it's worth a shot, but with that said, use this guide at your own risk, but I would recommend trying to do it through MS-DOS first