[FIXED] Bricked P35x v3, v5 and P17

So I opened SmartManager, and it listed a new Bios (FB12/F00F). So I thought that might be the update for the multithreading error. So I started the update - it seemed to proceed normally, then the machine shut down and stayed down. No matter what I do, I cannot seem to get it to start. I would have disconnected it and removed the battery to try to reset it, but battery is not removable without taking the back off. I guess that is my next step. Any other thoughts? It is within the 2 year warranty, and purchased from ZOTICPC, so I can try both of those sources for help.

Ouch!!

Joe

 

Bios updates are risky indeed. Try removing the battery and CMOS battery as well....if no luck call Zotic, although Bios updates are not their responsibilty, and they might have you contact Gigabyte support.

 

Opened up the back and disconnected CMOS battery, reconnected and it booted normally. Whew!!

Best,

Joe

 

Great to hear....did you check the Bios to see if it was updated or did it revert back to the original version?

Enviado de meu Pixel 2 usando Tapatalk

 

I checked, and it did update. Haven't, so far, found any significant differences. I had already applied the fix for the hyperthreading error, so that seems unchanged. There wasn't anything on the Gigabyte site previously that describe the changes or rationale for the new version - I will keep checking and post if I find anything. So far, all seems ok.

Joe

 

Guys I need your help please.

I did the bios update on my P35X V3 and it seemed to be bricked now.

When i turn the laptop on, it just flashes some leds and ramps up the fans once in a while. But no post screen or something like that.

What happend:
I did flash bios with smart manager

Why: it quoted to be a new version with windows 10 support and I wanted to just install windows 10.

What did you change in the notebook:
I only erased the hidden drives with the windows 8 install Folder. I only did use windows 7 and just wanted to upgrade to 10.
It is still in raid mode bevor installation of the bios.

What did you do after bios update failed?
Unplugged it and did hard reset. Resulted in the above quoted symptoms.
No post screen.
I did plug in external monitor - nothing
I disassembled everything.
Searched for bios chip. Found one near the CPU and GPU. Not near the Bios Battery.
I saved old files in bios chip and tried flashing bin file to chip. Didn’t work and also the flashing tool said the file is too long an rest will be ignored.
There are two bios bin files. I already notices that one is for raid and the other acpi or how it is called.
It seems to be the wrong file for the chip.
Please help me guys

I got a CH341A programmer and in circuit clip to programm the found MXIC 25L2006e chip on the Mainbord.

I can post you guys everything to get my laptop back to life.
Just tell me what to do.
Can someone sent me their running bios file?


I am from Germany. Please excuse my bad English. Thanks

 

The ' 20' in ' 25L2006e' means it's a 2Mbit/256Kbyte chip, which is far too small for the regular bios, hence the complaint by the flashing tool. Likely this chip is for the vbios or ec, so first thing is to write back that backup you made.

Next, search for a similarly-looking '*25*' chip, but this time one that says '*25*64*' or even '*25*128*'. That will be the bios+me eeprom you need to flash. You can use one of the two bin files you already downloaded, so there's no need to use a dump of anyone else's system.

It is very unusual they supply a raid and non-raid variant; this is normally handled by a simple bios setting. Set to raid if you want to combine two or more drives in an array for increased speed, redundancy and/or simply to be able to create a larger partition (nice, simple article here). One of my systems uses raid-0 for the boot drive, but the default bios setting is ahci. So if I flash a new stock or modded bios then it'll refuse to boot the os since the data on the drive is incomplete, every odd data block of a file residing on drive A and every even block on drive B. Simply setting back ahci -> raid in the bios menu and it'll boot happily again (without any data loss, of course). Either Gigabyte doesn't think too highly of their customers or there's two motherboard variants of this system, saving a few dollars pennies on the non-raid model by omitting the raid controller chip. Anyway, you just flash whichever is applicable to your setup, just on the off-chance these really are for different motherboard versions.

 

You are totally right.

I found the "right chip" it´s a non marked MXIC 25L6406E M2I-12G.

I looked at the files on the ship and they look like the new Bios version that was tried to be installed. Here is what i did now but cant get any further:

- flashed back the Backup on the "wrong chip"
- red out the "right Bios Chip" and tried to flash it with the downloaded bin file (_sucess)
- i installed the bios battery. mounted everything needed. But no Post-Screen or Boot Logo. Again the Fans are spinning after a while but the screen stays black all the time.

What i will do next:

- get back to the "wrong Chip" erase it and flash back the backup again (verify the written data with the tool)
- i will screw the hole laptop together as it was.
- i will be abled to get access to the "right" bios chip trough the service door. i will erase it and try older and newer bios versions.

what i don´t understand is why the screen is black all the time? at least it could turn on backlight?!


regarding the two bios files: i red that there are always to bios version on gigabyte motherboards. but i don´t understand what this should be for? i am only abled to flash one bios file to the chip, or do i have to put those 2 files together and flash it at once?

One file is 8.192 KB big and called A10, the other C10.
The newer files are named A11 and C11 for windows 7 and B11 and D11 for Windows 10.
i have no idea why there are two files

https://www.gigabyte.com/Laptop/P35X-v3#support-dl

 

I thank you guys so much. It works and i am so happy !!!!!

What i did:

- erased wrong Chip (VBios or something like that)
- wrote backup to it and verified it

- then i did erase the BiosChip and wrote C10 Files to it and verified it.

- then i totally essembled everything as it was, except backcover.
- i turned it on and it works like nothing happend. Date and time is wrong but the screen is on and i can see post screen now.

Guys thank you very much. Can i donate to the Forum?

Question: Should i make a manual with pictures on the forum? or just post some pictures of the Bios Chip position in this Thread for other people to come and seek?

 

I think one main Problem was, that the screen didn´t turn on as long as the laptop wasn´t fully assembled. Everyone knows that if you close the Screen the Screen turns off. I think that was a problem that i thought i didn´t work, as the screen didn´t turn on

 

Nice job ! And the time/date thing is what you want to see after a full flash or cmos reset; means you're running a 'fresh' bios.

Nope, but you could mention NBR if people need help fixing things or seek buying advice (the WNSIB? section is great for that). Either way; traffic makes the advertisers happy and pays for the upkeep of the forum.

It's sure to help fellow users of the system, so it would be very welcome. The photo will be a lifesaver, same for the one of the vbios or ec. We haven't pinned down which one it is for, btw; if you can upload the dump then we'll know that as well.

That's because there's a small neodymium magnet in the bezel which flips a reed switch located right opposite the magnet when you close it:

Spoiler: magnet and reed switch

Take a refrigerator magnet and hover it over/off the switch area and you'll know instantly why it was such a great invention. Anyway, with a laptop screen it's a switch that breaks the 'backlight-on' pin of the display cable, meaning that it's always powered on unless the magnet is close to the switch.

Btw, the switch only powers down the backlight, but usually not the lcd itself since the backlight consumes 2/3ths of the power. So with the refrigerator magnet (and display open) you can still spot a faint image on the screen. This is a nice way to know how to tell the difference between an lcd that is truly off and one that has a defective backlight (or stuck reed switch).

Hmm ... a better-designed system would also turn off the lcd, but it'd take a slightly more complicated circuit. There's no single wire for that on the display cable and you can't turn off the complete display output since you'd also kill the signal to any monitor hooked up. A single, extra relay would work though, so guess most manufacturers can't be bothered with that.

 

Hey guys, Hi btw... but I'm in the same boat... bricked laptop, no boot, black screen of death, corrupted bios, OK so I tried most things bar getting myself a usb-bios chip programmer and clip etc etc and getting a new bios written from a downloaded bin/rom file from my laptop makers website right? easy... just don't know which files to flash, it's not as clear cut as most, my laptop btw is a Gigabyte P17 now I've downloaded the bios files there and can one of you confirm for me that the file 'OutImage.bin' is the one I need to flash... I'm just waiting on my bios-programmer to arrive in the post but I was thinking I'd better make sure, it's an 8K bin image, seems OK... my bios chip name is a 25B32BSIG (I do have a picture of it) and there's another ME chip close by, same 8 pin 25B16BSIG (as far as I can tell) anyway my laptop went mental after a win-10 update, installed... seemed fine, did a few restarts... was gonna install some more programs as I thought all was well... I'd deleted partitions you see, clean install... shut-down... machine entered bios everytime saying no rom image found or something... I pressed enter and before you could say locked out my bios was being written to and that was it... so I just hope you chaps could help me flash the right bios data, thanks

You can see the image of the chips in question here as I'd posted there first, anyway please advise, thanks

 

Very kind of Gigabyte to label the smd components. And yes, you surmised correctly; the '25B16BSIG' eeprom is meant for the Intel Management Engine (ME).

The bios eeprom is '25* 32', so it's 32Mbit (= 4Mbyte). Similarly for the ME; '25* 16' = 16Mbit = 2Mbyte. The 'OutImage.bin' is 8Mbyte, so obviously won't fit on either eeprom. Don't know what it's meant for ... content is ME+2MB blank+EC+BIOS, but not identical to the files used by the .bat flash commands, so the Gigabyte flash sequence does nothing with this file.

The 4MB 'W650SJ.GI5' contains the bios and ec, you can safely use this to flash the bios eeprom. The 6MB 'W650SJ6M.GI5' has the same bios and ec, except preceded by an (old) ME version, so the first 2MB of this file can be written to the ME eeprom. Curiously, there's also a separate EC file ('eW6xSJ04.GI1'), but this is one version older than the one embedded in the other two files . The Gigabyte sequence flashes the new version first and then flashes this older version over that. Just ignore this and keep the 4MB; perhaps they unlocked something they didn't really want unlocked ...

To program the 2MB ME eeprom you can just point the programmer to the 6MB 'W650SJ6M.GI5' and write that. It'll yelp about data overflowing, but that's fine, so it's good to proceed; we only need the first 2MB anyway.

Just in case, the 1:1 files:
Gigabyte P17F - me+ec+bios eeprom binaries.7z

 

Thank you and for the download, I'll report back on how things go, would both chips need to be re-flashed or just the bios? - suppose I could just try it and see when my bits arrive, cheers

 

Just to say thanks very much for the help, my P17 was restored using a newly flashed BIOS,didn't need to re-program the ME chip, turned on and a couple of seconds later the gigabyte logo appeared, couple of auto-restarts and windows 10 set up devices as new and bingo my account as there waiting for me to log in, simples! =) thanks again.

 

Nicely done !

And could you do me a favour and check the EC version in the bios menu? Think you now have a version that's newer than the most recent one as released by Gigabyte.

 

OK, sure thing...

BIOS Version : 1.03.06RGI5
KBC/EC Firmware Revision : 1.03.04GI1
ME FW Version : 9.1.0.1120

 

Hello, I’m having a similar problem with my P35x v3. I think my VBIOS has become corrupted somehow. My laptop will boot and operate on an external monitor as normal but I get no BIOS or splash screen on the internal lcd and windows 10 won’t work on the internal display either (it isn’t recognized at all in the device manager)...However, if I boot Linux, about halfway through the boot the internal display starts working normally so I know the hardware is ok. I’ve ordered a programmer so I can try flashing it manually, since you already have a copy of your VBIOS chip would you mind posting the file? Also a description of its location on the board would be helpful as well so I don’t flash the wrong one!



Edit. — ok, further digging reveals that it’s possible this may be a case of a Windows 10 / Nvidia corrupted EDID. :-/

 

Could be. Try this guide; at step 09 you'll know whether it is indeed corrupt. Most software tools get their info from the registry, but i2cdump accesses the eeprom directly. If it is corrupt then please report back with the dump and I'll find you a working edid to flash.

 

Well, the checksum is valid so I guess that's not the problem. :-( Thanks tho. Based on the symptoms and the fact that the screen can work with Linux, the VBIOS seems like the next logical problem area to me so hopefully @elClemente will be able to upload his at some point.

 

Successfully erased and flashed the BIOS with a programming tool but it didn't help. Can anyone with the CH341A and a P35x V3 get me a dump of the chip that the arrow is pointing to in this picture?

 

Anyone? L’il help?


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What gpu does your system have? Knowing that you can easily find a binary somewhere. Might also read out the chip; the header will contain the necessary information as well.

 

Hey I´m so sorry. I was to busy and didn´t have notification of this forum turned on.

Do you still need vBios files?

@ALL: I just discovered Liquid Metal for my P35x and this is awesome stuff


Here download Link: https://goo.gl/mf2hBo (256KB)
P35xV3 VBios (green dotted chip)

 

Does your internal display show up on the intel display manager (if installed) ?

 

Thanks for the file, I’m going to try that later today to see if it helps.

In Windows 10, it doesn’t recognize the internal display at all. Not in the Windows device manager or the intel display manager. It’s like it doesn’t exist. But Linux and Mac OS X recognize it just fine. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. :-/


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so your display works in MacOSX like normal? then your hardware switch should be fine. It turns the screen off if you close your laptop.

 

It does. But only after about halfway through the boot process. I can only get the BIOS up on an external monitor... Won't have a chance to try flashing until tomorrow. It's a shot in the dark really, I have no idea if it will help.

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I updated my bios twice so far. It’s scary for sure. System powers off and does nothing, your heart starts racing and that fear sets in. Luckily it has gone smooth both tries.

I have bricked a couple video cards. But fortunately, I was able to flash the bios back in total darkness with success.

“Your typing a command in to a computer with no monitor signal, as the light is totally orange, as your trying to memorize the commands and hoping you spaced everything right. And sure enough it works!

^ that’s only for bricked gpu experience that is.

 

Thanks for the upload but, unfortunately, that didn't fix it either. I'm really at a loss as to what has happened to it. Anybody have any suggestions on what to try next?

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