rootboy

Hi guys, A friend of mine had his Dell Inspiron I7 5770 rooted, one of the symptoms being that it now asks for a BIOS password when he never set one to begin with. Dumping the BIOS and searching for the encrypted password string shows that the storage area for the password has all "00"s in it. So unless his password just happens to be the Dell password XOR decryption string (I'm sure that this happens all of the time), the rootkit isn't going to allow itself to be overwritten that easily. So we're not going to get in by the front door... Dumping the firmware was easy enough. The CH341 clip is fiddly, but it works. We bought a replacement laptop with the hope of using its BIOS in the bad laptop. So I read and saved the BIOS from the donor board, and flashed it into the problem child (erasing the chip first of course). Nada, just the fan spinning. Plan "B" was always to use the replacement board in the laptop so it hasn't gone to waste. I've been following this tutorial and have gotten hung up because the Flash Image Tool needs "Pmxdll32e.dll" installed. But it occurs to me that there will certainly be another half dozen hurdles to go, and possibly I can bypass the aggravation by asking if I am on the right track, and if there is an updated procedure available for this process. And as an aside, the replacement board doesn't have a service tag stored in the firmware. Suggesting that the retailer pre-flashed it before selling it to my friend (and the chip looks like it has been removed and replaced. And finally, the type of flash chip is different from the other board). Not that this is a problem, but does that sound normal? Thanks in advance guys! John Edit: English is like a second language at times. Sadly I don't have a first...