Help with removing GPU whitelist, XPS A2010

Discussion in 'BIOS Mods' started by tsalat, Apr 15, 2017.

  1. tsalat

    tsalat MDL Novice

    Apr 15, 2017
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    Hi,

    i need some help or advice for modifying a DELL bios of XPS one A2010. The XPS A2010 is an old all-in-one computer released by DELL i guess 8 or 9 years ago so its pretty old but still a very nice piece. I started to modify it a little bit, changed the CPU to Q6600, add some RAM, changed the HDD to an SSD and installed also Windows 10 on it, with everything working. The last thing I would like to change is the GPU. The default GPU inside the XPS is an ATI HD2400 and I would like to swap it for nVidia FX770m. The XPS has a MXM slot on the mobo so the change is possible but apparently the bios has a whitelist for the ATI card (this was discussed back in 2011 on a different forum where one modder confirmed the whitelist, removed it but its not accessible anymore). If I place the FX770m into the XPS I hear around 30beeps (very strange) but afterwards it will boot to windows but with the screen black all the time. I have TeamViewer on the machine and the card is recognized by Windows and so it looks it should work but the screen is black all the time, even while booting.

    So, I decided to look on it myself. Found a tutorial about changing the IDs of a wifi card inside BIOS to allow the use of another card and this method I tried to follow. I extracted al modules from BIOS and searched for the HEX code of the ATI card (the mobo has also a on-board card). Found the DEV, VEN and SUBSYS ids inside one module (ID 1B, Single Link Arch BIOS) – see attached, I also highlighted the on-board GPU (DEV/VEN), the SUBSYS is the same for both GPUs. I have changed the DEV/VEN and SUBSYS of the ATI card, flashed the BIOS but the Vidia card is still not working and moreover the ATI card is still working:confused:. Apparently these changes are not doing anything. However, I found that the SUBSYS string is multiple times inside this extracted module but I have no idea what to change and where. The best solution would be to disable the whitelist check, but where to find it? Or at least swap it from the ATI card to the nVidia one… anyway, Iam lost already, have no idea how to proceed :confused:

    Below some information about it:
    -Manufacturer: DELL
    -Motherboard Model: XPS one A2010
    -Bios revision: 2.0.6
    -Bios Type: AMI BIOS
    -Bios Download Link: dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=R215335

    ATI card:
    Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_94C9&SUBSYS_02261028&REV_00
    VEN: 02 10
    DEV: C9 94
    SUBSYS: 28 10 26 02

    On-board card:
    VEN 8086 DEV 29C2 SUBSYS 02261028
    VEN: 86 80
    DEV: C2 29
    SUBSYS: 28 10 26 02

    What I would like to add or replace with (nVidia card)
    Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_065C&SUBSYS_30E7103C&REV_A1

    VEN: DE 10
    DEV: 5C 06
    SUBSYS: 3C 10 E7 30

    Any help would be appreciated, Tomas
     

    Attached Files:

  2. tsalat

    tsalat MDL Novice

    Apr 15, 2017
    8
    3
    0
  3. tsalat

    tsalat MDL Novice

    Apr 15, 2017
    8
    3
    0

    Attached Files: