[Solved] Lenovo Flex 5-14ARE05 bricked/black screen

BIOS/UEFI Modding BIOS Modding Requests
103

When extracted the original damaged bios I accidentally pull only 512kb…
And then erased it
Is it possible to managed without the full bios?

104

Possibly if you find the Lenovo tools somewhere. Some Lenovo bios updates for Thincentre ask for new serial, but I’ve seen Laptops updates mostly not asking.

105

I downloaded the bios 1 and bios 2 files that were posted here and bios 2 was successfuly loaded and the laptop is back to life!!
Thanks for the info, great forum

106

Hello everyone, I also updated the bios to a friend of mine’s flex 4 14ARE05 and I found myself in this situation. I purchased the CH341A programmer and I think I managed to read the inside of the bios, I attach it in the message, now what should I do? SN: R90YD&XN

tnx

107

Can’t find a flex 4, serial isn’t valid and dump may not be valid.

Did you dump the file twice with a 100% identical result?

108

Hey tnx, flex 5 sorry, the exact model is the flex 5 15ARE05 R90YD6XN (wrong serial in previous post), i updated with the latest bios on lenovo site before the brick (EECN44WW version). How can I compare the various dumps? I bought the CH341A programmer without the 1.8 volt adaptor, is necesary? Tnx

109

ok i have compared 2 dump yersterday and today, with hxd, the dump results as identical

110

That’s a good start, but your dump has 8 MByte and the Lenovo firmware has 16 MByte?

What’s the chip identifier?

112
113

made a couple of dumps, this time with asprogrammer and adapter, the chip was recognized, this is the dump:

Now I don’t know what to do anymore. Tnx

114

AMD is difficult/ unpredictable because of the large propietary firmware blobs with no known structure.

image
image1099×316 6.21 KB

But the last EFI volume should be static firmware code and while all the structured parts of the firmware are EECN44WW the last EFI volume is not. I hope this is just static code and nothing gets changed when in use, but I can’t unfortunately check for older versions since versions earlier than EECN42WW aren’t available any longer.

So I replaced the last EFI volume, might work or might not work…

newdump1c.zip (5.4 MB)

115

Hey on another forum an user give me another bios and worked, flashed some minutes ago, the pc started to work. Thank you for help :slight_smile:

116

Well, you have now possibly his serial and windows code, but anyway.

117

I cheched, he modified with my serials, but now when i start the pc, want the ac adapter to make a bios update o.O

118

I was able to fix my brother’s Flex 5 thanks to the information in this topic. I wrote a blog post detailing my steps if it helps anyone else to repair theirs.

1 Like
119

Hello all, Can someone please repair this dump? I cannot figure out how to get my SN, ME, etc information into a working BIOS .bin file to reflash my chip. I have extracted the .CAP from the most recent BIOS update on Lenovo’s website (EECN44WW) but I’m not sure which data i need. Thanks so much. My SN is R90ZK3M0 and model is 81X2. Upload Files | Free File Upload and Transfer Up To 20 GB

120

thanks for the great tutorial, after following this the flex 5 is booting but I’m receiving an error right after pressing power that “new CPU installed. fTPM NV corrupted or fTPM NV structure changed” etc etc etc. is this normal? i have the option to pick yes or no

121

Thanks to everyone above for incredibly clear info!
I’ve had this same problem, and have ordered a programmer with the 1.8V converter.

Question: how can I identify the current (corrupted) BIOS version so I can download the correct one from the lenovo site to flash onto my machine? Apologies if that was stated above and I’ve missed it, I do think I read everything though!

122

Extract latest firmware and search for the known version code, search your dump at the corresponding address

If that doesn’t work:
Check ucode versions with MCE to get a time window, then use a hex editor to compare.

This is a general advice, I don’t remember everything from this thread, if an update did go wrong you may have parts of two firmware versions in your dump

1 Like
123

Replying to notify of success!
My steps were as follows:

  • I got the programmer and 1.8v converter; my model was a CH341B, not A; however, I compared it to an “A” and it had the same chip on the PCB, just different pin out on the pins for jumpers, etc.

  • I tried to extract the bios using windows and AsProgrammer, but it wouldn’t detect the programmer; I then succeeded with a new install of Ubuntu 24, and used the flash ROM utility as described here: [Guide] How to Use a CH341A SPI Programmer/Flasher (with Pictures!)

  • I used md5sum utility on Linux to compare the hashes of several bios chip reads, both without removing the chip clip and after removing and replacing it to confirm it wasn’t misaligned.

  • I compared the extracted Bin to the latest Lenovo bios: I used a tool (I think linked above?) to extract the .CAP file from the Lenovo EXE, then UEFITool to extract the .bin file from there.

  • I used HxD to look at the files; I searched for “IdeaPad” and found the section with my serial number.

  • I put this section into the extracted Lenovo bios; I didn’t try to copy across the other section that posters above said looked important.

  • I flashed this back onto the chip as per the winraid link I referenced above.

  • I read this back from the chip and compared the md5 hash for what I read and what I intended to flash, to check they were the same.

Then it worked!

My takeaways:

  • Linux detected my programmer better, but it didn’t work when it was connected by an external usb hub - had to be direct to the pc.
  • It takes a couple of minutes to read the bios chip, be patient and don’t panic!
  • I checked my replacement bios looked very similar at the start and end, and was exactly the same size.
  • The great thing about flashrom is it automatically detected the bios chip model for me.