Hello peoples! I have a bit of a problem and hope you can help me with it.

I have an old Dell Latitude E6320 who worked greatly until yesterday. Since then, he seems to fail at POST. (Not sure, since he just show a splash-screen with a big “DELL” logo, under which is written “Latitude E6320” and the version of its UEFI. (Wrongfully called BIOS by the computer.)

If I try to access the BIOS, all or part of the screen turn black. (The non-black part, when there is one, still show the corresponding portion of the UEFI’s boot-screen.)

To me it doesn’t seem to be a hardware problem, more like a corruption of the UEFI itself. (Don’t ask me how that’s possible when I didn’t even try to flash it, I have no idea.)

I would like to know if it’s possible to compile CoreBoot or any of its derivate for it (and then flash it) or, failing that, if there is a way to try and change its UEFI config from a separate computer, in case it was just a corruption of some of the UEFI’s parameters rather than the UEFI itself.

Hope someone will be able to help save that laptop, I would hate to trow away a good computer, perfectly suiting my needs.

#Dell_Latitude #Latitude_E6320 #Dell_E6320 #CoreBoot #save_my_PC #save_my_laptop

  • drone328English
    2·
    2 years ago

    I’m not an expert, but it sounds like a hardware problem. I’ve experienced something similar when a ram stick failed. If you have multiple ram stucks, can you remove one and try booting? This helped me diagnose in the past. UEFI I don’t think goes bad too often, but ram fails a lot and is easy to check. Sorry that I can’t help with your coreboot question.

    • Bigou@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      I asked the same question on Reddit, and peoples there seems to agree with you. Even if I could make my PC start again, an UEFI corruption isn’t something that would happen without a component on the motherboard dying first. (In fact, the firmware might not be corrupted at all.)

      A parameter corruption is a bit more susceptible to happen, (not by much, mind you) but would correct itself if I remove the CMOS battery long enough.

      As for the RAM, I tried with another pair I had lying around, but it might not be compatible with this computer. (It is supposed to support RAM sticks of 8GB max, but I know some computers don’t like when there is more than 4chips on each stick, and those 8GB ones have 8chips by stick.) I’ll try each of its original 4GB sticks on each of its RAM emplacement this W.-E. I will post the result of all those last tests here, naturally.

      Thanks for taking the time to read and give your opinion on my problem, it’s greatly appreciated.