Dead Ideapad 14 ADA previous repair attempt

[NanoPat]

Hi guys.

I got a Lenovo 14 ADA Laptop from another shop. They tried to flash the bios with a clip after the device was without any signs of life. Obviously its not posting and they nocked of a small parts arround the eeprom. Doesnt matter at least, replaced allready from a donor. The rest of the board looks fine.

Iam pretty new in this area but they begged for help and I want to learn something about it. Doesnt matter how it ends.

I decided to unsolder the Winbond W25Q64JW and make a dump with ezp in first step but I am wondering if I read out bananas. I downloaded official bios and extracted with rc2 etc. and command line to have a comparison. It looks way different but still hoping Iam wrong

With removed EEPROM the behaviour of the device ist still same, so Iam pretty sure that a working bios will fix it. Also Iam wondering if theres any backup Bios but cant find anything.

Anybody any ideas? Thanks in advance. I attached the dump I made and the cap file from official bios. Can somebody confirm that the dump is not corrupted?

If I missed any information Iam sorry, just give me a hint.

[reformatt]

Re: Dead Ideapad 14 ADA previous repair attempt

Do you think they actually rewrote the BIOS or is what you have the original? Your dump is better posted in the BIOS requests group and one of the legends there will repair it if needed. The one you dumped seems ok in UEFI tool.

Updates from the OEM's usually are only a partial BIOS, and don't have any of the DMI info needed. There's no one size fits all, and it's a bit of black art so best left to the guys who frequent that group.

Whilst a corrupted BIOS is a common issue, you don't start with that when you are dealing with a dead laptop. A lot of things have to happen before BIOS code is even read.

[NanoPat]

Re: Dead Ideapad 14 ADA previous repair attempt

Thanks for ur reply dude.

Since this guys played arround with the bios I wanted to have a clean base before tracing chiplevel issues. I was kinda confirmed when I removed the EEPROM and the device shows exactly the same behaviour. As the device turns on, power led is on, fan is spinning for a short while and also the charger is recognized Iam guessing theres nothing wrong with it except it seems not to be able to post. The usual things allready done like different known good RAM, unplugged all unnecessary periphery etc.

Also Icannot find any free boardview or schematic for it to have readings and a clue about the circuits. Waiting for replys in this case but I want to make sure to have a working Firmware flashed before wasting time. Might be the wrong thoughts

Later when Iam home Ill check if theres anything suspicious in the ps circuits of the board.

Ill add a Bios request then to get further with it.

Thank you sire

[reformatt]

Re: Dead Ideapad 14 ADA previous repair attempt

So you said you had a donor board? Is it the same model? You can take a dump of the EEPROM from the donor and use that for this one. If it's an Intel board you'll need to clean the ME, but even with a dirty ME it should still boot with it, albeit a bit slower.

If you have CPU Vcore, then you first check if it's the RAM slots that are the issue (check current with and without them inserted). I always cast a close eye over the pins of each slot first.

[NanoPat]

Re: Dead Ideapad 14 ADA previous repair attempt

Good morning.

Thanks for ur reply. The donor is from an v15 ada. it uses the exact mobo thats why iam wondering that there are no schems for this sucker. Seems like its used for all 14 and 15 series. Sadly not possible to use the dump of it because the EEPROM I removed in the past, also a few mosfets are missing.

Ill check the DIMM Slot then in next step. Good idea of course. Flashed a official rom which I got from a DC member just to see if something changes but no result. If it should post and create video output with that rom we can now clearly say that theres a chiplevel issue present