[REQUEST] ASUS A43TK No Boot (Bios Corrupted - Power Loss)

[sypherscars]

  My laptop is going through Bios update and my kid just knock the power cable off my laptop (my batt is bad). now my laptop is bricked. I've bought CH341a programmer as i suspect my bios is dead. I've tried reflashing the bios chip. but still nothing happened.. now I've stuck and don't know what else to do.

my bios chip if not mistaken is Winbond 25Q16CV.

used A43TK 206 firmware for flashing. yet my laptop still not responding

need your guys help....

[Sml6397]

Hello,

Are you still looking for help with this?

First, do you have a full BIOS backup from before the brick?

If not, we have two options:

1.) There may be a built-in recovery mode that will allow you to reflash an official BIOS update.

2.) If there is not a recovery mode or the built-in recovery mode does not work*, then we may be able to find a backup of this board's BIOS image online. This would have to be a full backup - a BIOS update will likely not suffice.

*Recovery mode may not work if the recovery mode was stored in a section of the BIOS chip itself (as opposed to elsewhere) and the BIOS flash was an all-regions flash that corrupted the region that controls the recovery procedure.

Did you run a specific command to flash the BIOS (ie: something like "fpt -f bios.bin -bios") or did you use a utility (such as AFUWIN)? This will impact how we tackle solution #2 if we must use that option.

~Steven

[Sml6397]

Hello,

I'm going to reply to you here as it is easier to keep track of conversations in threads over PMs.

Could you take two BIOS dumps using the CH341A programmer? AsProgrammer is a great software for doing so: https://www.onetransistor.eu/2018/11/use...ndows.html

If you need help with pinouts, please reference this article: https://www.win-raid.com/t4175f16-GUIDE-...ammer.html

If there is anything that is unclear or something doesn't work, please let me know and I will do my best to help.

I ask for two BIOS dumps so that I can compare them to see if they are consistent (identical) with each other. This allows me to verify that the CH341A clip is getting a good connection to the BIOS chip.

The BIOS chip has several regions. If you have an Intel system, the regions of note will be the Flash Descriptor (FD), Intel Management Engine (ME), and BIOS regions. Oftentimes, BIOS updates don't touch the FD or ME regions. If these two regions are in tact, then I can (likely) take these two regions from your backup and combine them with the BIOS region that is available in an official BIOS update using either UEFITool or a hex editor. Otherwise, we will need to find a full working image that contains all regions.

-----
Edit: Does your system have an Intel or AMD CPU?

[sypherscars]

Hi,

Here I have attached the bios files that I've got from the manufacturer and few other sources.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...sp=sharing

I hope this might help because I've tried flashed each one onto the bios chip (with CH341a programmer) yet still unable to get the laptop unbricked.

My laptop is ASUS K43TK. using AMD A6 3420M.

[Sml6397]

Hello,

This is a difficult notebook to locate a full BIOS dump for. I thought I had a lead, but that notebook has an Intel CPU. Intel and AMD BIOS are always different.

I'm thinking that we are going to need to expand our search to include notebooks that have similar model numbers (same family, different model). For example, my lead was a K43SV notebook.

So our search now has the following parameters:
-Is a BIOS dump and not an official BIOS update. A full dump will be larger than just the BIOS region contained in update files. See my previous post on different BIOS regions.
-Is from a notebook whose model name is "K43XX" where XX can be any two letters.

This is not guaranteed to work, but it cannot possibly cause more harm than a hard bricked notebook.

In the future, try to avoid flashing an official BIOS update onto your BIOS chip, the reason being that they usually only contain the BIOS region. Actual BIOS chips contain multiple regions. Flashing just the update overwrites the first parts of the chip with the BIOS region data and renders the rest of the chip's contents essentially unrelated garbage. We all have to start somewhere, so don't feel bad!