Clevo P775TM1-G AMI BIOS recovery

[UzY3L]

Hello,

I'm trying to enter recovery mode on a bricked Clevo P775TM1-G.

Pressing Fn+B during POST does make it read from the USB drive but after a few seconds (USB drive with LED blinks for about 3 seconds) it just gives up and does nothing, no matter how long I leave it.

Reading from the USB drive occurs only after the keyboard lights have finished their show(seriously, whoever programmed this had a lot of time on his hands).


It does seem to recognize AMIBOOT.ROM and BIOS.ROM files because if the filename changes, then the LED on the USB drive only blinks for 1 second before giving up.

I've tried with all BIOS versions I could, olded to newest, but what I would really want is 1.05.09 as this is the last known version to work properly.

BIOS chip is MX25L6473F . BIOS is AMI Aptio if I remember correctly but BIOS files are from manufacturer so it shouldn't matter.


CH341A programmer is on its way but I was hoping to do something in the meantime.

I've attached a service manual, maybe it helps. Page 75.

I'm at the end of my knowledge. I hope someone could please help with this.

Thank you

[UzY3L]

Fixed it with the CH341A programmer. Was very easy! You can find it if you search for the chip itself. In my case, the MX25L6473F. There is only one programmer for this sold on ebay and it ships from Greece (not sure if I can post links to it, hence the details. Title is: CH341A BIOS Programmer 24x/25x 1.8V 2.5V 3.3V 5V version v1.36 + Adapters) .

Worked first time, no issues, system booted right up and I didn't even need to power the board or desolder the chip, as many have suggested.

Funny thing is: compared the information on the chip to the ROM file and they were an exact match. So it's not that the system was badly flashed or that it couldn't boot up but it was specifically designed NOT to boot up when you downgrade the BIOS. Genius!

Also found out that Clevo removed the recovery option from their version of the AMI BIOS. I speculate that they had only one reason for this: if you downgrade the BIOS, it is not covered by warranty and they will tell you (as they have told me) that the board needs to be replaced. A replacement board is 600$ without shipping. They take your old board, flash the BIOS on it and BOOM: it's back in another system or up for sale to anyone who downgrades the BIOS. All for 15minutes of work to strip down the system and flash a BIOS on it.

This is Apple level of greed. Who knew?

tl;dr: 2,000$ machine doesn't have dual-BIOS and is designed not to boot if you downgrade the BIOS even if the new BIOS will boil your GPU because the fans no longer start (V1.25).

Hope this helps someone else. My advice: don't send the board. Buy a cheap BIOS programmer, do it yourself, save a ton of money and time. Thank you for reading. Cheers!