I did something stupid, I was trying to flash my modded Aptio IV bios I just changed some settings to “User” using AMIBCP, however I flashed it using flashrom… (Instead of afudos /gan) and the bios was only 6 MB and not 8, So i think it was not a full SPI flash.
Now the notebook is not turning on at all, two lights just keep blinking nothing more then that. I feel so stupid because normal i’m so careful doing such things however the excitement got me so far bricking it. So now I ordered a SOIC8 SOP8 Clip and lots of pin headers and I hope i’m able to fix it using my Raspberry PI. I was hoping someone could get me on the right track.
EDIT by Fernando: This post has been shortened and customized by me (to save space and for a better readability). Hopefully the author will agree. Otherwise I beg his pardon.
EDIT by Toetje583: Updated post using Fernando’s suggestions.
I will follow the guidelines sorry for that, from now on I will use the right formatting to make it easy for all the people that would like to help me. is there any reason why you removed the OLD bios report? or perhaps by mistake?
@Toetje583 : Welcome at Win-RAID Forum and thanks for your detailed informations.
Unfortunately I can not help you personally, because I am not an expert regarding your problem. Nevertheless I hope, that you will get support by someone else.
It was not my intention to remove the OLD bios report. So I obviously have done it by mistake. I am sorry about that. Please edit the related post and re-attach the OLD bios report. Thanks!
It was not my intention to remove the OLD bios report. So I obviously have done it by mistake. I am sorry about that. Please edit the related post and re-attach the OLD bios report. Thanks!
Thanks for the warm welcome, from the Netherlands!
So if I understand properly, the BIOS you flashed and have attached at the 1st post is proper. It’s just that you used the wrong tool/command and thus flashed the BIOS-only region (6MB) at the entire 8MB SPI image. You basically wrote the BIOS region on top of the Flash Descriptor and ME which come first (4KB FD + ~2MB ME + ~6MB BIOS = 8MB SPI). Correct? In that case, you can take the full 8MB SPI dump you found online, replace it’s BIOS region with your own via UEFITool (same size, ~6MB) and then follow the ME cleanup guide to make that dumped ME region proper for your own system.
Thats about right, two years ago this notebook was send back to Medion due some issues with the screen, However they replaced the hole board and somehow the Intel ME device was gone. I didn’t care that time. So i used Linux to see if i could find the device, but nope so i assumed they flashed a bios without it. So this is where I started to do some stupid things However i still own a 6MB dump, I make it with afudos before I changed anything. The final goal for me is to get a working notebook and ME back
They changed the board but left the old SPI image intact. The ME is dirty from the old one though and cannot work properly due to reasons explained at Section A of the ME cleanup guide linked above. It cannot be removed, just soft-bricked so to speak (Recovery mode). If your BIOS is proper and you follow what I said above you should end up with a working BIOS and ME, thus a working system.
If I merge my backup with the version i found, what about the ME protection, I just found this:
"Probing works (Winbond W25Q64, 8192 kB, SPI), but parts of the flash are problematic: descriptor is r/o (conforming to ICH reqs), ME region is locked."
You have an external programmer so the Flash Descriptor protection does not matter in your case. It matters for software flashing with flashrom, afu, fpt etc. It only concerns the Flash Descriptor itself and the ME, not the BIOS region so that’s why you were able to flash before with AFU. Mind you that the BIOS can have read/write protections of it’s own but these are not related to the FD locks and are irrelevant to what you are trying to do here. Generally, if you want, you can additionally remove the FD lock before you flash with the programmer so that you are able to reflash the whole SPI with software tools in the future but the choice is yours. By the way, no need to tag me with @username, I check the topic regardless.
Well i wanted to unlock some bios settings aswell after I replaced it, I found out that there are two bios setup images, one text “Setup” and one “oemsetup”.
Seems like once I enter the bios i get this one:
OEMSETUP
But there is also a normal “setup” with as far as I can tell is fully unlocked. I don’t know if there is way to access it but you never know
