Problem that bios is in exe format

[mojarrah]

System Alienware a51 R4 pc

• Motherboard: ms-7a87

• BIOS Version: 2.0.7

• GPU: 3090

Hey. Hope you are doing great. I wanted to follow your steps to activate rebar. but I was surprised that dell bios is .exe and not .bin

How can we fix it?

This is the bios link

https://dl.dell.com/FOLDER08945518M/1/Alienware_Area_51_R4_2.0.7.exe

[mojarrah]

There are multiple links for download

Drop the link for the exact one I should use

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO got it now and opened successfully The correct version

Moreover, what settings I should check to make it work 100%

[mojarrah]

@xCuri0 I flashed it successfully now using fpt win32 version as winpad site suggests. The problem now is if I activate the rebar and reboot screen no longer work. The system boot but their is no screen. I have to reset the bios using the battery to get it working. What is the solution?

[Electron-PSO]

Apologies for the delay,

I was travveling home and had some sleep.

It should be the Aptio V version

[Electron-PSO]

Try a small BAR size first

1GB

[Electron-PSO]

Then check in GPU-Z

[mojarrah]

What number to put in rebar to equal 1gb? @xCuri0 @Electron-PSO

[Electron-PSO]

It is 2^x so for 1GB set it to 10

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO it worked!!!!

Now how I can set it to the maximum of what my gpu can handle?

It's a 3090 24gb vram

[Electron-PSO]

You'll need 15 as the bar size to give you 32GB. That will be enough to fit the 24GB VRAM

[mojarrah]

What's the best value?

[Electron-PSO]

Which Intel FPT did you use?

Have a link to it also?

I'm helping someone with a system and they have flashing issues too

[mojarrah]

Will send the link after the pc boot from pc bios reset

Moreover, it isn't working with anything above 1 or 2gb

@xCuri0

Tried multiple values, all of them led to failure!! What should I do?

[Electron-PSO]

Did you apply the patches via UEFI Patch tool ?

https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI/wiki/Using-UEFIPatch

[Electron-PSO]

I've just applied the parches to the extracted rom file.

Two patches are applied

These would prevent you from using a 32GB BAR size

PciBus | Don't downgrade 64-bit BARs to 32-bit (Haswell)

3C1DE39F-D207-408A-AACC-731CFB7F1DD7 10 P:833E067506C70604000000833E077506C70605000000:66906690669066906690669066906690669066906690

PciBus | Remove <64GB BAR size limit (Skylake/Kaby Lake/Coffee Lake)

3C1DE39F-D207-408A-AACC-731CFB7F1DD7 10 P:B800000000100000004C3B:B8FFFFFFFFFFFFFF004C3B

[mojarrah]

Good, how to make sure the pad isn't corrupted? I couldn't figure it out

[mojarrah]

Also, should I remove the .patched extension before flashing or what?

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO ?

[mojarrah]

@xCuri0

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO I am also thinking to reflash the bios using the x64 version of ftp. What do you think? Is there a difference?

[Electron-PSO]

If the 32 bit version worked, keep using it

Steps to take:

• Make ROM file from EXE
• Add ReBarDxe.ffs at end of DXE section
• Apply Patches

you'll get BIOS.ROM then BIOS_ReBAR.ROM then BIOS_ReBAR_Patched.ROM

I like to keep the .ROM extension and only one . in the filename

[mojarrah]

Alright, so when the uefi patch give me bios.rom.patched

I remove the .patched extension?

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO @xCuri0 tried it now. It applied two patches by it self when I written the code. I flashed the bios. Put a value of 13 which is 8gb. When it rebooted. It started beeping and I had to flash the bios again!!!!

[xCuri0]

You have to enable 4G decoding and disable csm

On Wed, Dec 13, 2023, 3:18 PM Mohammad Jarrah @.***> wrote:

@Electron-PSO https://github.com/Electron-PSO @xCuri0 https://github.com/xCuri0 tried it now. It applied two patches by it self when I written the code. I flashed the bios. Put a value of 13 which is 8gb. When it rebooted. It started beeping and I had to flash the bios again!!!!

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/xCuri0/ReBarUEFI/issues/103#issuecomment-1853588203, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AHBJLVKF6LCK3RNHRWYNTJTYJF2WNAVCNFSM6AAAAABAOPZDSSVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHMYTQNJTGU4DQMRQGM . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>

[mojarrah]

@xCuri0

Csm is disabled and 4g decoding enabled

Also, I have a skylake processor. And I flashed the bios with win32 version of the tool

And I didn't change anything in patches.txt, I just applied the code as is

[mojarrah]

@xCuri0 so what do you think?

[mojarrah]

This is what It shows when I use uefipatch with this code:

.\uefipatch .\rebar.bin

[mojarrah]

@xCuri0 @Electron-PSO adding to the above

Why there are 3 bars showing in gpuz

BAR0 BAR1 BAR2

[Electron-PSO]

It is like this on Nvidia cards

BAR1 is the VRAM BAR0 are Registers BAR2 is something else

🤣

[Electron-PSO]

So, even with the patches you can't use BAR greater than 2GB?

[mojarrah]

Yes, I applied the patches but it still won't boot after using big value. Tried 4, 8, 32 nothing worked

[mojarrah]

Also, right now, I tried 11. Which means 2gb and it is also not working

Only 1gb working!!!!

What is going on?!!!

@Electron-PSO @xCuri0

[mojarrah]

@xCuri0 @Electron-PSO

This is the raw working bios

backup2.zip

[Electron-PSO]

That file is only 12MB

It should be 16MB for a full chip

[Electron-PSO]

Have you got the file you want to flash into the chip?

[mojarrah]

This is the file I read from the chip. And it's the raw version

It's 12mb

The one we get from .exe gives error if you remember from the first time we tried

[Electron-PSO]

The 16MB file from the exe extraction gives an error?

[mojarrah]

Gives an error when trying with afu

Haven't tried with ftp yet

I am afraid it could brick my bios

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO what do you think I should Do?

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO That what it gives when I try to flash it using fpt

[mojarrah]

@Electron-PSO The 16mb one I mean

[Electron-PSO]

OK

So you have a 32MB Flash chip

I do love these Dell boards

Always good fun working with them

[Electron-PSO]

Have you flashed the board with the latest BIOS using the normal update tool?

[Electron-PSO]

So it looks like the 12MB file you read out is the option to use.

Update to the latest bios version and then read out the file.

Perform the mods

Flash mod file.

Reboot

[Electron-PSO]

I think the 16MB file we got from the EXE is 12MB with some padding at the end

[mojarrah]

Yes, I did all of this process on the latest bios version already.

Moreover, I have no problem in downgrading. And I have an older bios version .exe file. But how can extract the 12mb Rom from it?

[Electron-PSO]

You could just flash the older version then read out the "Bios" part with FMT.

[Electron-PSO]

This Dell stuff geeez

If x299 boards were not so expensive, I would recommend just replacing the board with an ASUS alternative.

[mojarrah]

It doesn't allow me to downgrade to older version when using the .exe

[mojarrah]

How to get the 12mb version from the exe?