Blockquote If you have opened your Surface anyway, double check and re-seat all connectors to the screen!
Just to be sure, this is the hard part correct ? Where I open the Surface (without destroying everything), locate the chip and try to inject the firmware you just gave me using a ch341a programmer…
And it seems that using the ch341a pliers could work but the common advice seems to be to unsolder the chip from the Surface then solder it back…
No easy task for me but I’m ready to try (once I get all the right tools).
That’s correctly understood. You have now a working device without touch. There’s a slim chance that the touch can be fixed, and there’s a chance that your surfbook won’t work at all afterwards.
Regarding the CH341- you have a good dump of your firmware, but for the programmer it’s still two a 100% identical dumps to be sure that you can read the chip properly (contact of the clamp, software, mainboard…) If you can’t read properly you most probably won’t be able to write either.
Ok thanks again for all the help, I’ll be back with news about the Surface, good or bad…but it may take some time since I have to gather all the tools and make time to do that without pressure
Good day!
I have Surface Pro 5 LTE with the same problem.
Background.
I wanted to replace the battery, but when I was disassembling the tablet, I accidentally damaged the touch cable. As a result, the touch did not work on the right third of the screen.
Later, I ordered a second-hand display. After the replacement, the touch worked fine. But only for a day.
A week ago, I accidentally noticed on the screen that the tablet was installing new firmware. After that, the touch stopped working altogether.
To check, I put the old display on, but the result is the same. The touch does not work.
I took a firmware dump with ME Tools and opened it with FIT (as described on Badcaps), but touch support (ISH) is enabled. HID-compiliant touch screen (twice) and Intel(r) Precise Touch Device are also present in windows without errors.
How long is the time between the day the touch worked fine and the time you noticed a firmware update?
Otherwise not much to do, possibly still / again hardware.
One could give it a try with cleaning / re-initializing the ME region and / or emptying the NVRAM (but Surfaces store machine specific data in NVRAM, so one couldn’t start completely empty)
Everything was fine in the evening, then the computer went to sleep, and in the morning, when I switched on the tablet, it started updating.
I had some thoughts that the display (I mean the touchscreen board on it) may have its own identifier that does not allow replacement, or it must be registered somewhere (like on some phones: iPhones and others).
It is still possible (touch cable?). I replaced the display with one that worked (but not all of it), and it didn’t work either.
But there was no physical movement inside the tablet, or a large thermal load on the tablet. What could be broken?
I don’t want to make a brick from a computer))))
Why did I turn to the forum, because I don’t know for sure what can be done (and then what can be restored) and what can’t be done.
I only have the CH341 in stock and I’m not sure if it will work with the W25Q128FV flash.
So, clearing ME Region (without emptying NVRAM) is safe?
Where (what chip) is “NVRAM” stored?
Is it possible to downgrade firmware version? (This can help to identify problem - hard or soft)
You can download Surface pro 5 updates and unpack them, afair they don’t include complete firmware images, but you might find different types of firmware, even for the touch controller itself. But if you compare versions they don’t changed, in fact files are still from 2018…
Both emptying NVRAM and cleaning the ME are safe. Open your dump in UEFIToolNE and expand bios region:
Examples for things you want to keep are _SurfaceSmbios* or OA3key. But you don’t select single variables, you just cut the NVRAM values. The parts dynamically written after manufacturing will get recreated.
But the danger of bricking is real in opening the machine, shortening something when trying to read / program the SPI …
If the machine has kinda service jumper it might be possible to flash the ME region, maybe with some hacks bios region, but I don’t think this will work. And those hacks themselves have the risk of bricking and then it’s the programmer anyway.
You need UEFIToolNE for structure and adresses, no use for UEFITool here
There’s no need to use UEFITool. Cleaning the ME working on a complete image would give you a complete image, deleting last part of NVRAM is done with hex editor
I try to clean the ME region, so I make the firmware according to the guides, but when I want to flash it (by FPTW64), I get an error:
error 368: failed to disable write protection for the bios space
Can I flash it through Intel Flash Programming Tool or only through the programmator?
You can attach the file if I should have a look into it.
Bios region is protected not only by flash descriptor! You could flash ME region with the -ME switch alone. I don’t think you need to extract it from outimage.bin, but I’m not a 100% sure.
I tried to download ME separately with the -ME key, but I was warned about the size - about 6 MB. After extraction with the Flash Image Tool (FIT) - ME Region.bin was about 2 MB.
As I said earlier, the tablet lost touch after replacing the display and updating the firmware. The touch on the new display worked before the update. I put the old display back to rule out the possibility of a hardware failure. The touch does not work on the old display either.
You recommended cleaning the ME. I dumped my firmware (dump.bin) and replaced the ME Region with a clean one from the repository (outimage.bin). However, I can’t flash the entire firmware using FPT because the security bit is set.
I’m waiting for a new touch cable to arrive. If nothing changes after the replacement, I will flash the Winbond with a programmator.
