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I've got a Dell xps13 which I bought new about 4 months ago. It's a "Developer Edition", so it came with Ubuntu pre-installed.

Today it suddenly didn't awake from sleep anymore. The keyboard backlight lit up, but the screen was black.

I did a hard shutdown by pressing the power button for a while and then tried to boot it again. This gave the same result: a keyboard which lights up, but a black screen.

It seemed to be warm and I had to do some other stuff so I powered it down again and let it open for about 5 hours. Then I tried booting it again, and now it gave this screen:

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I tried all three options. All of them show variations of the screen below: all of them fail..

What is my next option to revive this machine? I'm in deep trouble if this machine doesn't work anymore (I've got an important day tomorrow).

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  • I have bad news for you. There really isn't a next step, other than contacting Dell and likely sending the device to them. If restoring the default configuration does not work then you are simply out of luck.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Nov 3, 2019 at 19:50
  • Can you get into the BIOS, if I remember correctly the downgrade option might be disabled so you just have to enable it
    – gregg
    Commented Nov 4, 2019 at 3:00

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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You need to use another computer to go to dell.com/support. Using your Service Tag, download the BIOS for the XPS 13.

Copy the file to a FAT32 USB key and rename it to BIOS_IMG.rcv.

Plug the key into the problem computer while it is turned off and reboot. You should now have the option of recovering the BIOS from the key.

For more details see the Dell article BIOS Recovery options on a Dell PC or Tablet.
I suggest watching attentively the included video before starting.

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  • Thanks for the tip. I downloaded the BIOS file, but its filename is XPS_9380_1.8.0.exe. I don't have Windows installed and it never even gets to the OS anyway. Does it make any sense to rename this to BIOS_IMG.rcv and try it?
    – kramer65
    Commented Nov 4, 2019 at 6:52
  • Apparently the .exe needs to be unpacked. Try to open it with 7Zip, for example, to extract the BIOS file, or try executing it using WINE. Note: The video lists the Dell models that qualify. While yours seems to be included, nothing is ever sure.
    – harrymc
    Commented Nov 4, 2019 at 8:01
  • No, an official instruction say that you must rename *.exe into BIOS_IMG.rcv No unpacking needed. And on the dell website you can expand the firmware file options and choos "Other formats" or "Older version" and you can download BIOS_IMG.rcv and you wouldn't need to rename it. My Dell Precision 5560 won't boot from recovery USB. The only way to enter to the recovery mode is holding Ctrl + Esc, press power button, and hold Ctrl + Esc until recovery screen appears. Then you can choose recovery image from your USB
    – vitperov
    Commented Oct 17, 2023 at 8:38
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To follow up on this for possible future readers. I contacted Dell support and they concluded my motherboard was broken. Since I turned out to have pro-support (I didn't know) they actually came to my work place and replaced the motherboard for me.

Afterwards I still had to fiddle around with the BIOS settings to get it working again though. Although I bought the device with Linux pre-installed their phone support people had no clue about it. So there's room for improvement there for Dell.

I whish all the best to future readers with the same problem..

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