Dell Vostro V131 BIOS recovery

I was trying to update the bios of my Dell V131 laptop from A03 to A06 last weekend, and inexplicably the update window disappeared and the fan started to run very fast. For some reason I decided to shut down the laptop, which started my nightmare.

The laptop couldn't start. The power and wifi LEDs lighted up when I pressed the power button, followed by the flashing of the three accessory LEDs. Dell logo did not appear and the fan hummed momentarily. The laptop was just over one-year old and Dell's customer service wanted $59 for a one-time diagnosis fee!

I started searching online and found many helpful informations on mydigitallife.info, especially in the master thread for bios recovery procedures (http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/870-Bios-Recovery-Procedures).  Dell's customer service told me that the bios of my laptop was made by AMI, but the methods given in the above thread did not work. So I started blindly trying all the methods listed in that thread for AWARD and Phoenix BIOS, and it was a no-go.

At that moment I started to wonder whether my motherboard was fried as well. I knew from my trials that the laptop still read from the USB key, but it didn't recognize an attached USB floppy drive. Was it able to detect the other components? I removed the rams and without them the laptop did give two short beeps. So I thought to myself that the motherboard was most likely fine.

Well, life had to go on and I did have another laptop that I could use. So I put the bricked laptop aside while thinking of other possible recovery means. I visited a Chinese website biosrepair.com which also had a lot of information. In its forum there was even an post with the extracted bios file for V131. To my surprise, the file had an BIN extension, which suggested the bios was made by AWARD from my readings, yet the methods suggested in the thread at mydigitallife.info for AWARD didn't work.

My success finally arrived after I came across a post on recovering Insyde bios (http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/13095-Undocumented-INSYDE-BIOS-recovery-method-Use-andy-s-tool-to-obtain-possible-names). The tool (pheonix214.exe) linked in this post showed that my bios was actually "EFI/Insyde." I couldn't help cursing the Dell customer service guy who gave me the wrong information, but later it turned out that he was actually right. Anyway, here are the procedures that worked for me:

1. Use HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool with MiniDOS files to make the USB key drive bootable.

2. Execute the Dell BIOS update application (V131A06.EXE) in a command window with /writeromfile and /writehdrfile options, respectively. Rename the generated files "V131.HDR" and "DJ5A06.ROM." These names are the ones given by pheonix214.exe when analyzing the EXE file.

3. Remove the battery and plug in the USB key drive. While holding down WINDOWS and B keys, insert the power cord. Wait for a few seconds and press the power button. Keep holding the keys until the light on the USB key drive starts to flash.

I can't remember exactly what happened after I performed these procedures, but the screen lighted up in a few seconds with the Dell logo! Then I just followed the on-screen instructions to update the bios, and my miserable four days were finally over. OK. I admit that I almost made another mistake here. After rebooting, the laptop complained about the lack of a bootable device. Did I just ruin my SSD?! I scratched my head only to realize that I didn't put it back after backing up my files!

Now to the innocent Dell guy. It turned out that the bios is indeed made by AMI, but it is a special line called Aptio, which I learned in the recovered bios.