XPS 8930, possible blown motherboard

I am another unfortunate victim of this botched BIOS update.  I used the "Flash BIOS" method with a USB stick with only the BIOS 1.1.27 file on it.  It initially ran OK and then I was left, like so many with just a DELL logo and no way to get into the BIOS.  Being frequently here in the past, I immediately fired up my DELL laptop and searched this Forum.

For me, ultimately, the solution was to download RoHe's BIOS 1.1.26 recovery image, shut down, insert the USB FAT32 stick, and power back up, holding the Ctrl-Esc key long after the NumLock light came on until I was presented with the BIOS recovery screen.  I told it to recover BIOS.  It did.

I am very grateful to RoHe and the other experts at this site.  Thank you for your help.

I downloaded this BIOS 1.1.27 update directly from the Dell Support site this afternoon.  It was listed as critical.  If Dell was a responsible corporation, it would immediately pull this update from available downloads.  It is borking computers.

Unlike many less educated computer users, I have weekly system images of both of my Dell computers, and I backup all changing data files to another internal drive in my Dell XPS 8930 SE, as well as to the cloud.

I was also smart enough to come here.  How many Dell customers will think that their computer is toast and purchase another computer??  How many have no backups??

I was about to try removing my NVMe drive.  This computer is only 3 years old and I paid substantially for it so that it could handle HD video editing with ease.  Thankfully, I was able to resolve my issues within 90 minutes, thanks to RoHe.

I long ago removed SupportAssist and Dell Update from my computers.  They were more trouble than they were worth.  I check the Dell website every Friday for updates.

I cannot understand why Dell programmers cannot "remember" our BIOS settings!  Why do we have to go back into the BIOS and restore our settings to avoid Windows updating us and enabling BIOS recovery and integrity checking?  Surely they have the brains to do that if they cared about their customers.

Dell owes an apology to all of us.  There is NO excuse for borking peoples' computers with a botched BIOS update.  Where is their QA Department?

Smarten up, Dell.  Pull that BIOS update and apologize.  You BLEW IT!

Regards,
-Phil

This is just a quick aside; I'm still going to try and write a detailed post-mortem on everything that happened but I've always used the AHCI setting on all my computers which had SSDs (namely a couple of other XPSes, an 8700 and a 8900) after having read a few articles about how you don't really need the SCSI setting anymore unless you are actually using it with 2 or more drives in some kind of RAID array and I've never had a problem with it as far as I know. When this 1st happened to my 8930 I had a Dell OEM Samsung 512MB SSD installed. As part of my troubleshooting I changed it out for another Dell OEM Samsung 1TB and then another Dell OEM Kioxia 1TB and then finally a "retail" Samsung 960 EVO, all with the same version of Windows 11 Pro on them and all ending up with the dreaded Dell logo on a black screen. Maybe I didn't mention it but I went through an exhaustive process, just in case it was something wierd with the SSD but I always got the same result: stuck at the Dell logo and no POST. My last episode (when I restored it back to BIOS version 1.1.26 with your recovery image and it finally booted, before being hosed again with [presumably] Windows Update updating me back up to 1.1.27) was with the retail Samsung 960 EVO so I can almost guarantee that it's not a problem with the SSD per se considering how many different ones I tried. I intend to keep the Samsung 960 EVO in there now, come what may. If Dell pulls 1.1.27 from their website I hope they remember to tell Microsoft to pull it off of Windows Update as well or it will still come in "thru the back door" unless the BIOS setting is changed (and how many end users will know to do that?). The Flying Fickle Finger of Fate sure seems to point at that 1.1.27 BIOS version as being the culprit here. I'll stay tuned for any further news of this fiasco. I'm shocked that more people haven't reported in about it thus far.Screen 1Screen 2Screen 3Screen 4

And here are the last 5 screenshots from my successful "recovery" operation (before it reverted back up to 1.1.27, thanks to Windows Update, as Screen 10 seems to indicate).Screen 6Screen 7Screen 8Screen 9Screen 10

Ignore the date on those pictures; I unfortunately didn't notice it at the time. They were taken on 14 December 2022.

@RoHe 

I am ahead of you.  I have used all of your recommended BIOS settings and will henceforth always get into the BIOS after a Flash Update.

Dell Support is still showing that BIOS update (1.1.27) as a critical update for my XPS 8930.

My BIOS is set for AHCI because I formerly had an internal Samsung SSD that performed faster than with the default RAID setting.  I really don't want to mess with that, as the computer has performed just great for over three years now.

I can't thank you enough for that BIOS recovery image for 1.1.26 and the Ctrl-Esc trick to get to the BIOS recovery feature.  It was pretty scary having a borked computer for which I had paid so much.

Thank you again, and have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

@garioch7  - All recent BIOS CVE fixes seem to be marked "Critical".

If you reconfigured Windows to use AHCI and simultaneously changed BIOS to AHCI, that should be fine, unless the BIOS 1.1.27 update was expecting a RAID/RAID config, like on my PC where the update installed without problems.

We really need a postmortem from Dell to explain what happened with this latest BIOS update failure.  So -maybe- users can take steps to avoid this kind of "misadventure" in the future.

RoHe,

Dell has still not pulled that BIOS update.  I would very much like to see a postmortem to determine what went wrong, so users can be prepared and perhaps Dell will improve their QA.  This kind of thing should not happen, period.

Thank you again, and have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

BIOS 1.1.27 isn't unstable on my XPS 8930. It was magically installed here with none of the problems others have reported, and has been working perfectly since the day it was installed.

Agreed, and I pretty much had the same experience as you with my XPS 8930. You seem to say that you're back at the 1.1.26 BIOS release (as am I). Is that correct? If so I take it that you're going to stay there until Dell comes out with a 1.1.28 version? In my case that's my only option, as the upgrade always ends-up back at the Dell logo on a black screen (with no POST) until I downgrade back to 1.1.26. I've tested this out about 3 times, all with the same result. (I'm kind of an old hand at the downgrade process now) As a side-note, I read somewhere that the BIOS update (and downgrade also, I presume) process kind of "takes its toll" on the firmware, meaning that you don't want to do any more than necessary (like I have during my testing process). I don't know if this is true or not; it's just something I ran across years ago.

Try @RoHe's advice from his 12-12-22 post on downloading and applying the recovery image, following his instructions exactly. It got me back to functionality so at least I can still operate until Dell comes out with a further fix. You might have to try it more than once, until you get the hang of it. It's the 1st time I've ever had to "downgrade" back to an earlier BIOS version so there is a slight "learning curve" to it. It does work though.

As I mentioned somewhere up above (this thing is getting so involved that it's hard to keep track of now) I've always had my BIOS configured for AHCI, since before Windows 10 came out and certainly from the time I did a clean install of Win 11 Pro (which I always do), so the OS was installed from the get-go with AHCI enabled, meaning that I never had to change or reconfigure anything later on. It was humming along like a charm until (again, apparently) 1.1.27 got installed "through the back door" via Windows Update, per screenshot #10 that I posted (it was a re-creation) somewhere above. Since I disabled "UEFI Firmware Capsule Updates" per your advice this had not happened again and it's been stable once I downgraded back to the 1.1.26 release. As also noted somewhere above, I've tested the upgrade to 1.1.27 at least 3 times, all with the same result, so I'm pretty well stuck where I am until Dell revises the last update (which apparently happens to some, but not all, XPS 8930 computers). I'm just glad I didn't shell out a few hundred bucks on a new motherboard, which I came very close to doing until I checked in here first and saw that others were having more-or-less the same glitch. Still though, Dell needs to at least acknowledge the problem and get a fix out (in the form of a 1.1.28 BIOS release, I suppose). I've pretty well documented what happened with the step-by-step screenshots #1 - #10 that I posted earlier. I guess I'll just sit here in "park" until further notice. The advice here has been most helpful though and is appreciated.

@Travis_Lloyd 

Yes, I am back on BIOS Version 1.1.26.  I plan to stay there until Version 1.1.28 is released.  I have added a new step to my BIOS updating now: CHECK THE FORUM FIRST to see if others are having issues before initiating a FLASH BIOS to a new version.

This incident has really shaken my faith in the stability of Dell drivers/BIOS updates.

Thanks to @RoHe I was able to recover without disassembling my computer.  It was a very stressful couple of hours until I saw Windows loading again after the successful BIOS Recovery to 1.1.26.

Have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

@Travis_Lloyd  - You're assuming BIOS 1.1.27 doesn't expect/require the PC to be a RAID(BIOS)/RAID(OS) configuration, as Dell shipped it. That would be strange, but who knows...?

My XPS 8930 is still the factory RAID/RAID config, even though I don't use RAID, and 1.1.27 installed correctly and has been running without any problems.

After the failure, another user had BIOS 1.1.27 listed in BIOS setup and changed it from AHCI to RAID. Then reinstalled the NVME SSD and PC booted right up, asked for user's OS login PIN, but then had other problems, possibly/probably because the OS was installed for AHCI and couldn't run correctly with BIOS set to RAID. 

This thread showed up as the first result when I googled "fix corrupted bios dell xps 8930". I let Windows Update install a bunch of Windows 11 updates on my 8930 - my very bad, I did not pay close attention to exactly what before letting it do that - including a Dell BIOS update, I forget which version.

Result: on auto-restart as part of the update process, the PC only got to the Dell logo on a black screen, nothing else. I'm not sure it completed the updates. I suspect that the BIOS update is the cause here and so I suspect a corrupted BIOS.

None of the F keys got any response. I've tried CTRL-ESC which produces no result at all. The wired Dell USB keyboard on this machine shows the numlock is on but it's fixed, ie, pressing the numlock key to turn it off does nothing, the keyboard light stays on. So I will follow the steps described in this thread and see how far I get.

Thanks for the comprehensiveness of everything I have read here, much appreciated.