Another Briked G75

[Jihilian]

I know there's a lot of post about bricked notebooks who update their BIOS. I'm here just to ask some questions and cry a little. First, my note is stucked in the black screen, but the backlight of keyboard is responsive to Ctrl+Home function, the lights indicators works, so i don't know if this is a full brick.

To the questions. First, the Ctrl+Home+Power combination resets the BIOS defaults or just enter in EZFlash ?
Second, is there any internal batery in G75 ? I opened the HD section and couldn't find anything.
Last, holding the power button ,after removing the battery, clear the CMOS ?

Now the "cry" section. Really, i'm almost giving up to this. I brought the note outside my country (Brazil), and choosed ASUS to not have a headache with problems because i trusted the brand. But now, after less than a month this happens.
If this is a problem with notebooks who were updated with WinFlash (like me), and after so many problems with this, why the WinFlash is still in the downloads sections ?

I'm now waiting for a response of ASUS support center to see if there's any assistence in my country (i don't think so).

1 less client of ASUS.

Sorry if i talked any crap. I'm too frustrated. 1500 dollars in a black box.

[dwcl99]

Hi jdfrench3,

Yup, pretty much everything that I tried was with the original Windows 7 Pro HDD in the original slot. *The main problem is that the screen doesn’t turn on, nor does it show up on an external display, so I can’t even get into the BIOS. *At this point, just seeing the BIOS would be progress :\.

Thank you for your reply.

[jdfrench3]

OK, then you have a GPU problem, either your GPU card is fired, GPU card connector, display connector fault, display, or even motherboard failure.

I would suggest you start a new forum post with a new Title maybe "ASUS G75 Does Not Complete BIOS Action (No Display).

I would also suggest you break down the laptop, reseat the GPU card and reseat the display connector. While in the laptop check that all connections are secure. Once reassembled, reboot the laptop and let us know the results.

Good Luck

[dwcl99]

Hi jdfrench3,

I'm not sure how I would be able to test if the GPU Card is fried, but I do know that when I took the computer apart last week, checking for any lose connections, and then put it back together, it was doing the same thing that it was before I took it apart.

When I turn it on, the Power Indicator light stays on, the battery light shows orange when charging and green when full, but there isn't really much activity from the Drive Activity Indicator light, other than when I first turn the computer on. My guess is that if it were just the GPU, then the Drive Activity Indicator light would be flashing on and off, showing that it was accessing the hard drive, but I'm not sure.

Also, if it were a motherboard failure, would that stop the "Always On" USB charging port thing from working? Because it still works when the computer is plugged in. Or would that be set up differently and wouldn't necessarily be a symptom of a motherboard failure?

I was hesitant about creating a new forum post, because I didn't want to clog up the forums, but I will go ahead and do that as well.

Thank you,
-David

[Sanctrum]

dwcl99 wrote:
Hi jdfrench3,

I'm not sure how I would be able to test if the GPU Card is fried, but I do know that when I took the computer apart last week, checking for any lose connections, and then put it back together, it was doing the same thing that it was before I took it apart.

When I turn it on, the Power Indicator light stays on, the battery light shows orange when charging and green when full, but there isn't really much activity from the Drive Activity Indicator light, other than when I first turn the computer on. My guess is that if it were just the GPU, then the Drive Activity Indicator light would be flashing on and off, showing that it was accessing the hard drive, but I'm not sure.

Also, if it were a motherboard failure, would that stop the "Always On" USB charging port thing from working? Because it still works when the computer is plugged in. Or would that be set up differently and wouldn't necessarily be a symptom of a motherboard failure?

I was hesitant about creating a new forum post, because I didn't want to clog up the forums, but I will go ahead and do that as well.

Thank you,
-David

🙂 🙂 🙂
I’ve had the same case but for mine g751jy... 10 minutes job trivial solution: There was touchpad buttons/LEDs ribbon micro misalignment! The same ribbon is responsible for LEDs and the touchpad buttons. Had to try several times to have it properly placed. So no any MB failure... just trivial logic!

[Dreamonic]

It's been ages everyone...

Hi dwcl99!

So the only way to recover your notebook in its current state is with an SPI programmer. There is no need to desolder the MXIC SOIC either.
There should be nothing wrong with your hardware, as it's a reoccurring BIOS bug with the G75 series notebooks when changing boot order and or modes.

If you'd like to know how to go about recovering your notebook, you'll just need access to another PC and an SPI programmer such as the TL866A kit with the 25 SPI flash adapter and a Ponoma SOIC8 5250 clip.

Let me know what you would like to do and I can help you out with repairing your BIOS image when the time arrives.

[dwcl99]

Dreamonic wrote:
It's been ages everyone...

Hi dwcl99!

So the only way to recover your notebook in its current state is with an SPI programmer. There is no need to desolder the MXIC SOIC either.
There should be nothing wrong with your hardware, as it's a reoccurring BIOS bug with the G75 series notebooks when changing boot order and or modes.

If you'd like to know how to go about recovering your notebook, you'll just need access to another PC and an SPI programmer such as the TL866A kit with a Ponoma SOIC8 5250 clip.

Let me know what you would like to do and I can help you out with repairing your BIOS image when the time arrives.

Hi Dreamonic,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I'd love to try to repair the BIOS image, and if I don't have to desolder the chip, that would be even better.

The only problem is that I've never used an SPI Programmer, nor do I know anything about SPI Programming, or really programming for that matter. I am eager to learn though, and would love to revive this computer.

So my first question is, is there any SPI Programming guides that you'd recommend, so I can start looking into it, to decide if it is out of my skill set or not?

Thank you very much for your reply, and offer of help. It is greatly appreciated.

Take Care,
-David

[Dreamonic]

When I had my forum up and running back in the day, I had guides created for just this very thing. As you can see in my signature, the forums are no longer online/accessible unless you use the wayback machine here. I wrote what I came across when I did mine and it's been invaluable to everyone who has a DIY mindset.

In short however, it's fairly easy to do physically once the notebook has been disassembled enough to gain access to the SOIC pins of the BIOS chip, which IIRC is directly underneath the keyboard panel assembly on the G75 notebooks.

I'll update you once I have time to gather what you need to follow and you can go from there; few hours perhaps.
Regarding the BIOS image repair, have a read here.

As a side note, if you can disassemble a notebook to do a repaste on one of those models, you definitely have the astute "skill set" required to use a programmer.

PM sent

[b1063n]

Dreamonic wrote:
When I had my forum up and running back in the day, I had guides created for just this very thing. As you can see in my signature, the forums are no longer online/accessible unless you use the wayback machine here. I wrote what I came across when I did mine and it's been invaluable to everyone who has a DIY mindset.

In short however, it's fairly easy to do physically once the notebook has been disassembled enough to gain access to the SOIC pins of the BIOS chip, which IIRC is directly underneath the keyboard panel assembly on the G75 notebooks.

I'll update you once I have time to gather what you need to follow and you can go from there; few hours perhaps.
Regarding the BIOS image repair, have a read here.

As a side note, if you can disassemble a notebook to do a repaste on one of those models, you definitely have the astute "skill set" required to use a programmer.

PM sent

Yes, thank you so much for the detailed tutorial. I was able to bring back my 9 year old G75 which just died while changing BIOS settings. I knew something happened to the BIOS, then. As everyone described, lights on they keyboard turned on but nothing else.


Anyways, I bought a cheap CH341 programer with a clamp connector. Used this software and followed your instructions. There is a part of changing the "descriptor" of BIOS, I had to skip this step to make it work.
https://www.onetransistor.eu/2017/08/ch341a-mini-programmer-schematic.html


So my laptop is back and as good as always except now windows says it is not activated, anyone knows a work around for this? Which part of the bios should I copy in order for windows to think it is installed on the same computer? must be some sort of BIOS serial or something right?

Greeets!! Thanks!

[Dreamonic]

Almost forgot to follow this up with the results: dwcl99's notebook BIOS recovery was a success.

To make a very very long story short...

The allotted time and sheer oddities with the TL866II Plus programmer and the latest programmer software for it, with the MX25L6445E IC profile algorithm, created numerous data disparities between image reads in the beginning. We were figuring out if whether the Pomona clips, DuPont wires, 25 flash adapter, USB port power were the root causes of those disparities. It turned out, while some of the listed parts were a probable cause, there wasn't anything concrete yet to point the finger at. Even to say that there were fake Pomona clips being sold online by what appeared to be a reputable seller, to give you an idea of the time and patience dwcl99 had in order to resolve JUST that matter before proceeding any further, would be an understatement on the level of troubleshooting involved; ballpark of 50 reads until images finally matched 100% before a write was to commence.

The root reason for the data disparity between reads ended up being the latest version of the programmer software XGPro and this particular SOP8 EEPROM mentioned earlier. Strangely enough, the older XGPro (v7.10) software was the located fix as it had the proper IC algorithm profile, but required an annoying workaround that dwcl99 discovered in order to write the reconstructed BIOS image if a recovery was to happen at all.

It was quite the recovery process I must say, and one I know we're proud of for seeing through right until the end.

Great job again, dwcl99!

[y_u_s]

results: dwcl99's notebook BIOS recovery was a success.

Hi Dreamonic and all,

I am a new member here. I was reading this forum looking for solutions for my G75VW-9Z203V (French 3D model) that I adopted for work. The solution on this forum I used was for installing 32Gigs of RAM. I also added an external NVIDIA RTX card on a cheapest mini pcie to pci-e 1x adapter, and installed ubutu 19.10 on the 2-nd hd. With this setup I was able to quite successfully do development and and run tests. On GPU I calculate I do not play. My computer shuts down randomly on linux when using internal gtx670m, something I learned from this forum is ok for this model =). I run it often 24/7 and sometimes like 12h on 100% CPU, I never use much of GPU these days. I also use this computer to watch 3d pictures and movies I take as I have a small 3d panasonic camera that still works.

On Tuesday (3 days ago) I installed ubuntu updates including new nvidia drivers and turned the power off.

Next day when I turned the computer on, it started, turned itself off, restarted and the bios password (enabled) had not appeared as usual. It turned itself off after about 2 min. Finally I figured out that it cannot pass to the bios. Now I think I am not sure if it can even pass POST.

My best idea is that it is either corrupted hardware or a corrupted BIOS. CPU seems to be functional as the computer still doing something: turns on/off the fans and lights up the keyboard. No display at all either on internal or external cards.

As I need to have this model functional asap, the fastest solution would probably be, I think, to buy the same used model cheap and/or to buy a compatible g75vw motherboard + asus adapted gtx670m cheap from ebay/aliexpress.
All this will still take some time, and in the meantime I want to recover some data from the hard drives.
I am also curious what really happened, cause it may happen again, so I also bought a good POST card to see what was broken. Among the things that I could have broken can also be the pci controller as I was running the external gpu through a 1.2 meter usb3 cable (its equivalent wave resistance is about 100Ohm same as minipce wires so I was hoping it was ok, but who knows).

Please help me with ideas on what it was and how can I return my setup to working conditions asap?

Thanks to all

Addition after 1 day:
I stripped the electrical setup to the bare bones minimum: motherboard + 1 ram chip + cpu, no GTX670M, no hd-s. It behaves exactly the same if I turn it on: does something for 1-2 mins, shuts down, turns on on its own, shuts down after 1 min. I suspect "Intel C216 Chipset Platform Controller Hub" = slj8c chip on the motherboard is to blame. I will post an update when I know more.