Hi guys.
I have ASUS X202E.
My BIOS got corrupted during Windows update. I bought a CH341A from eBay, found a dump online, looked up the differences (there was a seemingly uniform “empty” FF block missing which I added to my corrupted bios) and then reflashed it. The system boots but the LAN card is not detected.
I checked in BIOS and it’s enabled. There’s a small chance that LAN card died but I assume that the problem is a corrupted MAC address. Can someone, please, look up in my BIOS dump and see if you can find UUID, serial, MAC etc? I have no idea where to look for it. FD44 won’t read the BIOS, reports “incorrect ASUS BIOS file”.
I’m uploading my dump and some other dumps that I found, might be useful for you.
I’ve noticed that difference as well but I’m not sure if the data still might be there just not properly detected. If I actually look inside the “Padding” at the begging of the BIOS region there’s a bunch of NVRAM values that are not detected but are still there.
So if you noticed that…!!!
Go ahead just look into the other files PADs…you’ll see their data there… (and i’m not talking of NVRAM data…) you know what i mean dont you… its not the original machine file, was tampered before or you just dont have the info anymore and want to add it.
So not seeing then what’s your problem, since you already noticed it before.
That’s it, good luck.
EDIT:
FD44 mostly on desktop mbs, but go ahead search that GUID…
FD44820B…
My problem is that I lack the knowledge to read the information. I’m able to notice that there’s a difference but no idea what these differences mean. In my BIOS dump there’s also PeiRamBootPei which should be the one to contain private informations on ASUS boards (FD44820B GUID) but I have no idea how to read it.
Also, flashing the other BIOS doesn’t solve my problem, still no LAN
Edit, I realized that I f-ed up my BIOS by importing the stock BIOS region from the ASUS website. Added it to the upload. Is there a way undo the damage?
The Asus file are updates files not complete bios… fixed bioses should/can be NVRAM empty and any volume corruption usually can be taken from Asus files or dumps… the user must know what is doing and understand it, but still remains the original system data, you can find sometimes labels with Mac, the SN…in the machine chassis itself, but not UUID.
EDIT:
Sir…what RAW? On this bios generation, the data seems to be on the 2nd PAD, the one you lost… that your “original” reading/dump, doesn’t have one.
Don’t you see that all the other files you provided, the data is in the same PAD.
Some are empty…on purpose, not sharing original data.
You want somehow, a miracle was assigned to you and there’s indeed, duplicate data inside the file in another place, good for you, start looking then, you are the owner and have the asset in your possession, so get those numbers from labels/pcb prints and look for them.
EDIT:
No…? I see…
And strings… ? What strings and what does strings has to do with this human reading data…?
EDIT:
Well, not in the file you shared as “x202e_-_mine.zip” or all this time you just made loose my time with the wrong file shared???
If you found that serial…then im sure that by now you found the MAC.
Im out of here.
I’ve added the original dump, but it also has no detectable personal information, at least not by UEFITool. If someone can get something out of the raw (unlabeled) data, that would be great.
Not all others have the second pad, and some second pads are empty.
But I didn’t just lose the second pad I’ve also “lost” the first FFS2 (NVAR values) which makes all the mess. Still, if you look at the size of my pad you’ll see that the size of the pad is 524288, while the BIOSes with two pads are 65536+131072+327680=524288, exactly the same. The strings in the second pad don’t look like a MAC, either UUID or a Serial?
Edit: I was right, the serial number is at offset 230000, I’ve confirmed from the sticker. What are the next two numbers I don’t know
String as in any sequence of characters. Here the first string is a serial number of the motherboard but the next two strings are 20 and 17 characters long. Too short for UUID (maybe someone knows better)
It’s interesting that a ME 8 notebook with latest vendor bios from 2013 still would be updated from MS- update. In addition all the code volumes are unchanged while the NVRAM is erased?! Normally especially this area is untouched when updating the bios region.
Would you mind making a screendump of your c:\Windows\firmware folder? Should look like this example with some (different) GUIDs and other stuff in it
The system is running on Win10 2016 LTSB
Also, NVRAM is not erased, it’s still there just the formatting got corrupted so UEFITool is not reporting correctly. Look at the 230000 offset in original_read_data and you’ll see the MOBO serial etc.
NVRAM is at 0x210000, at 0x230000 is a padding with machine specific data.
And as you can see where NVRAM is in a complete bios region (left side) there’s nothing on the right side (your dump).
The padding before (EC firmware) and after NVRAM volume are just fine, you erased the complete NVRAM volume.
Yes, that’s what’s been destroyed.
If I copy my 230000 pad region to Asus X201E Main X202E Rer2.0 HM65, which looks fine, would that be enough to solve the problem? Seems to me that 50 46 5D is the MAC address
Take the NVRAM volume from Asus update “Bios 210”, it’s in the unchanged CAP- file from 0x10800 to 0x307FF (including), and replace in your dump 0x210000 to 0x22FFFF (including).
