[Problem] Acer Nitro 5 517-54 BIOS Issue

Today I flashed my Acer bios chip XMC (QH128AHIC)(3.3v) with ch341.

Done via neoprogrammer:
I removed protect, then did read ic and made a bios backup. Then I removed the fpt lock and bios lock successfully, then went to flash it. Firstly, unprotected, erased chip, then wrote my modded bios to it. Then upon booting it. It gives a black screen, the led lights up for about 2-3seconds then turns off again. Fans do not spin up either. I tried removing CMOS but that didn’t work either. So I flashed my stock backup bios back. Then I get the same problem. black screen, led turns on for 3sec then off. Is there any reason to why this happened or any known fix?
I have attached stock bios file below.
stock.zip (6.4 MB)

Any help would be much appreciated… Thank you all


Edit by Fernando: Thread title and Category customized

What is the file you attached? Stock normally means ‘from vendor’, but this seems to be your initialized dump?

MEA gives an error about the EFS partition:
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I’d recommend cleaning/reinitializing ME and emptying NVRam volume in bios region or replacing ME region and NVRAM EFI volume with thecorresponding ME- region and NVRAM EFI- volume from a stock bios (uninitialized / from vendor!). Your variant is an a little older ‘GH5XGx64_NoPD’, code parts are identical to stock.

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Hello thanks for your reply, this dump was made via the ch341, supposedly the full bios dump, I named it stock to not forget it’s the original backup file, and named my modded one mod.bin.

Also how do I preform the following fixes? Such as cleaning ME or nvram clearing. What do I need to do here? I’m new to bios modding and don’t have too much knowledge, but I’d love to learn.

Another question, after checking my bios update page
(https://www.acer.com/us-en/support/product-support/Nitro_AN517-54)

After getting bios version 1.11, it gives me an .exe updater, so I used 7zip to extract it and I got a file named abobios.bin along with a few update tools like fwupd.exe. but the file named “abobios.bin”(I assume is bios file) is 20.9mb, way larger than my original dump of only 16mb. Is there a way to shrink it or use it maybe?

Awaiting your reply

Reinitializing an ME is described in this guide:

Transfering a complete region or volume is done by UEFITool/UEFIToolNE, it’s described quite often here, do some reading.

Your bios version isn’t 1.11. For extracting 7-zip is good enough:

The fd files contain a complete image, packed in by some sigs and flashing tools in beginning and end. Search for iflash / _IFLASH_BIOSIMG in HxD.

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