Defective XPS 9720 BIOS Chips?

Question

Has there been one or more batches of defective bios chips for the XPS 9720? Has anyone else found that their XPS 9720 BIOS chip has died?

I have an XPS 9720 i5 motherboard (0TW02W) that wouldn't post and that I was unable to extract any BIOS information from, with the chip itself seemingly either blank or dead. As I therefore didn't have the service tag for that motherboard, I wasn't able to get any help from Dell.

So I bought a replacement motherboard, however when that one arrived, I found that it has the exact same problem. Not posting and and a blank or dead BIOS chip. I obviously can't get the service tag for that motherboard either.

This should be a quite rare failure, so the fact that I have got two in a row for the same motherboard version, for the same laptop model, makes it look like there's a problem with a bunch of these chips.

ejn63 · Answer

I think it's more likely that whatever you used to read the EEPROM is the issue, not the chip itself.

nuknkh · Answer

@ejn63​ I've used a couple of programmers to attempt to read the XPS 9720 BIOS chips, both of which couldn't get any signs of life from the chips. I've also tried doing the same thing to 5 other Dell laptops and was able to read the BIOS without any problems. So it's not the programmers, it's the chips themselves.

ejn63 · Answer

Is this with the chip removed from the board, or soldered in place?

nuknkh · Answer

@ejn63​ For the XPS 9720s, it's both. Unresponsive on the board and after being removed from the board. The other 5 laptops I tried worked first time with the chip on the board.

XPS

Defective XPS 9720 BIOS Chips?

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