Greetings everyone,
I refurbish computers for a living. An office in my area upgraded their laptops and sent the old ones to a recycling center in my area. The recycling center plans to scrap them for metal, because they all have Computrace active. If I can disable the Computrace, they're willing to sell them to me for cheap. They gave me one of them to play with and try to disable it. If I can't, they're going to throw these otherwise perfectly good I5 laptops in the shredder.
They are all Dell Latitude E5430. The one I got had bios A11 on it, and I flashed it to A18 (non-vPro).
Direct link: https://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER0413595...430A18.exe
Computrace has 3 settings in the Bios - "Disabled", "Deactivated", and "Activated". "Deactivated" means it's ready to be set to "Disabled" or "Activated". Once set to one of those two, it can "never" be changed, and the setting in the Bios is grayed out. I want to change the setting from "Activated" to "Deactivated" so I can then go in and disable it.
I found a video of someone doing this on a different Dell (this is exactly what I'm trying to do):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwsM51V0SXc
What I've tried:
- I tried extracting the Bios from the "5430A18.exe" file using the /writehdrfile and /writeromfile flags, but got errors and it didn't work.
- I used "Universal BIOS Backup ToolKit 2.0" to try to backup my Bios to a file. I ended up with "DellInc.-A18.rom", which is 14MB. It is attached.
- I then used "UEFITool_0.22.4_win" to try to edit the Rom. I found 2 Computrace modules, and a lot a Computrace references in "SetupPrep". The 2 modules were easy enough to remove, but wasn't sure if I should remove SetupPrep or leave it. I don't know enough to edit it. I decided to leave it.
- I got stuck when it came time to try to flash the Rom file back. Dell has no separate flash utility for Rom/Bin/HDR files; their Bios files are all EXE. I tried a few flashing programs, but they all said my Rom was an invalid file.
Can anyone please help me?
![.zip]( "ZIP File")
DellInc.-A18.rom.zip (Size: 3.5 MB / Downloads: 0)
I refurbish computers for a living. An office in my area upgraded their laptops and sent the old ones to a recycling center in my area. The recycling center plans to scrap them for metal, because they all have Computrace active. If I can disable the Computrace, they're willing to sell them to me for cheap. They gave me one of them to play with and try to disable it. If I can't, they're going to throw these otherwise perfectly good I5 laptops in the shredder.
They are all Dell Latitude E5430. The one I got had bios A11 on it, and I flashed it to A18 (non-vPro).
Direct link: https://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER0413595...430A18.exe
Computrace has 3 settings in the Bios - "Disabled", "Deactivated", and "Activated". "Deactivated" means it's ready to be set to "Disabled" or "Activated". Once set to one of those two, it can "never" be changed, and the setting in the Bios is grayed out. I want to change the setting from "Activated" to "Deactivated" so I can then go in and disable it.
I found a video of someone doing this on a different Dell (this is exactly what I'm trying to do):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwsM51V0SXc
What I've tried:
- I tried extracting the Bios from the "5430A18.exe" file using the /writehdrfile and /writeromfile flags, but got errors and it didn't work.
- I used "Universal BIOS Backup ToolKit 2.0" to try to backup my Bios to a file. I ended up with "DellInc.-A18.rom", which is 14MB. It is attached.
- I then used "UEFITool_0.22.4_win" to try to edit the Rom. I found 2 Computrace modules, and a lot a Computrace references in "SetupPrep". The 2 modules were easy enough to remove, but wasn't sure if I should remove SetupPrep or leave it. I don't know enough to edit it. I decided to leave it.
- I got stuck when it came time to try to flash the Rom file back. Dell has no separate flash utility for Rom/Bin/HDR files; their Bios files are all EXE. I tried a few flashing programs, but they all said my Rom was an invalid file.
Can anyone please help me?
DellInc.-A18.rom.zip (Size: 3.5 MB / Downloads: 0)
..... anyone wanting a confirmation just ask and ill post pictures of bios running thanks!!! and all the work i do i do for myself so i just share as a help out for whoever is playing with this old hardware some good tricks to know and also lolol im realizing alot of companies renamed am2 boards as am3 and updated to ami bios worth looking into!!! ive attached the bios i used you must use uniflash to flash or eeprom writer no other way make sure you are selected a 1/8mb flash rom or youll have issue booting and or going into bios other than that am3 support voila overclocking voila no more stupid ntune for me.....
Last bios in on this site: