Finally someone got it: P370SM bricked (or not?)

[Deutschmaschine]

Greetings from Germany.

My name is Thomas and at first I want to thank Prema for his great work. Using your BIOS' is so simple that I wonder how I (working in IT btw) managed to brick my P370SM.

Once upon a time it all began by using Prema BIOS v1 @P370SM. A GTX 980M was incoming so I updated to V2. There were two problems since using V1: The EC2 update progress did not start AND the notebook did not went of after shutdown (i had to press the power button every time). At this point I did not yet know that I have a so called development board without EC2. In the comment section I read about similar problems and Prema posted an alternative version. I updated BIOS again and after EC2 update still not working I turned the device off (like always) and also left the device at least a minute without power cord.

I guess that at this point i killed my lovely machine.

So i pressed the power button but nothing great happended. The power LED and the keyboard backlight is on. The BD drive seems to look for a disk. The screen stays black and the CPU and GPU1 fan start after a minute (GPU2 fan is disconnected). By pressing FN+1 the fans move at full speed. Pressing num lock or caps lock do not activate the corresponding LEDs.

The following steps I tried to bring the machine back to live.

#1) Downgrading to GTX 680M (yes, I used GTX 680M SLI in P370SM, not 780M an not P370EM).

#2) Disconnecting power cord, battery and CMOS battery for 5 minutes, connecting CMOS battery, battery and power cord and then starting again

#3) Doing #2 but waiting for one night instead of only 5 minutes

#4) Doing #2 and #3 but starting with disconnected CMOS battery

#5) Doing #2, #3 and #4 with

a) mSATA SSD, two HDDs and 4 RAM stick

no mSATA SSD, no HDD an only one RAM stick

c) no mSATA SSD, no HDD an no RAM stick

#6) Trying to recovery BIOS first with stock BIOS from premamod.com and later with Prema BIOS V2 - both renamed to P370SM.rom

a) on 16GB USB 2.0 flash drive and 64GB USB 3.0 flash drive connected to USB 2.0 eSATA combo port and all the USB 3.0 ports, first formatted with FAT32 an only ROM-file, then as bootable FreeDOS FAT32 and ROM-file added. Each time after doint steps #3 and #5

burned at a DVD and inserted into the BD drive. Each time after doing steps #3, #5

I pressed FN+B and holding it down while pressing the power button and still holding down FN+B for additional 20 seconds. I also tried FN+R, Win+B and Win+R.

The USB 2.0 flash drive has a red LED as read/write indicator but the LED does not flash at any recovery attempt

So I do not know what additional things I can do. I finally have one question: Did I brick my BIOS and/or EC?

If yes: I guess I need a new mainboard because i saw that the BIOS chip is soldered in literally dozends of junctions so that installing a new BIOS chip will be a quite difficult task.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[Guest]

Yeah, no EC2 and not properly shutting down from Windows with latest BIOS /EC means it is a development board.

Could you link me to the exact version that you flashed last.

[Deutschmaschine]

Yeah, no EC2 and not properly shutting down from Windows with latest BIOS /EC means it is a development board.

Could you link me to the exact version that you flashed last.

It was that one: https://mega.co.nz/#!ud0HTD6K!lo0VrDxdEEy3FN-S2A25Ve-EqYKc1kz75PoMEa1mmtE

[MT1]

Yeah, no EC2 and not properly shutting down from Windows with latest BIOS /EC means it is a development board.

Could you link me to the exact version that you flashed last.

...is there any solution to this situation with a development board and the shutting down problem with the P370SM? ...will the new bios you release in the future resolve this problem?

[Guest]

@Deutschmaschine

Did that flash finish or was it interrupted? If it got stuck, do you remember during which part?

Try FN+B with this file (do not rename): P370SM030

@MT1 only using a very old EC/BIOS version helped, but I would have to dig it up in my mails to be more specific.

[MT1]

@Deutschmaschine

Did that flash finish or was it interrupted? If it got stuck, do you remember during which part?

Try FN+B with this file (do not rename): P370SM030

@MT1 only using a very old EC/BIOS version helped, but I would have to dig it up in my mails to be more specific.

Thanks Prema...If you were to dig it up and find the very old EC/BIOS version, would you still be able to adjust it so that it had the latest updated features that your new bios'es have?

[Deutschmaschine]

@Deutschmaschine

Did that flash finish or was it interrupted? If it got stuck, do you remember during which part?

The flash finished as always. The EC2 update did not start so i manually turned off, disconnected AC and waited for a minute.

@Deutschmaschine

Try FN+B with this file (do not rename): P370SM030

I tried. There was "some" success. I pressed FN+B and power button. After a few seconds the HDD LED of my machine started to flash. Surprisingly the (i guess) POST screen appeared and then it entered the bios configuration menu with the recovery menu opened. At the bottom I could choose to flash the BIOS. Then some digits and bars appeared and after a few moments (maybe 30 or 60 seconds) the notebook went off. But after a second it seemed to start again, but it was only the power button flashing in some kind of a 2 Hz interval. After 3 minutes I disconnected AC and battery (pressing power button for long time did not turn off the machine). I connected again after 60 seconds but since then the notebook only starts for 6 seconds (blank screen), turns off and then starts again for 6 seconds and so on. If I press and hold down FN+B with USB flash drive connected the notebooks also starts (blank screen) and the HDD LED flashes a few times. After 30 seconds the notebook turns of an on again and would repeat this behaviour if I continue pressing FN+B.

[Guest]

Make another cmos reset.

[Deutschmaschine]

Make another cmos reset.

I forgot to mention that I flashed your rom yesterday yet and let it without AC, battery and CMOS battery over night. Sadly it did not help.

Of course I can try an other CMOS reset again. Should I try it without any RAM this time or does it not matter?

[Guest]

IDK man, if it successfully booted into recovery, made afresh flash and still doesn't work, then maybe repeat the same thing (only with the same file!!!) and this time just load setup defaults.

If that has the same result, boot again from that file into recovery and try to reboot into DOS for a complete flash of the alt version with BIOS/ME and EC1.

[MT1]

Hi Prema. Im not sure if you did not catch this message i sent to you a few days back.I wondered that if you were to dig up the old bios would you still be able to update it with all the new features that all your new bios releases has?...If you can do it i sure would make it worth your while.Its a pain not being able to shut the system down properly.When i first got the P370SM it was shutting down just fine until i updated my bios!..I worry that i will not be able to sell it on in the future, to upgrade to a newer model with it like it is....Thanks...