[clug] can upgrading ubuntu kill your bios?

Stephen Gibson Stephen.Gibson at anu.edu.au
Tue Jan 22 03:16:10 UTC 2019


There appears to be quite a few web reports of Dell BIOS updates 
bricking XPS 13's. Probably not Ubuntu's fault.

If worst comes to worst, as a final option, you can flash the BIOS chip, 
using a Raspberry Pi and pomona clip.

e.g. Instructions for a Lenovo here (ignore the part about compiling and 
writing a coreboot image):

     https://karlcordes.com/coreboot-x220/

I successfully flashed a 'bricked' Lenovo E530. The hardest part, apart 
from physical access to the BIOS chip, was extracting the 4Mb BIOS image 
from the manufacturer 'BIOS' executable.

Good luck.

Steve


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