Asus GL551

[trashmonkey]

Hello everyone,

I have a problem with my GL551JM. Long story short: I've installed an SSD via a caddy (instead of the DVD drive). After I noticed it was on a SATA2 connection I swapped the HDD (on SATA3) with the SSD, but it was still booting from the HDD. After some tries to make it boot properly by changing boot priority in the BIOS, I decided to take the HDD (together with the caddy) out of the laptop. But the BIOS still detected a "CD/DVD" drive. So I wanted to see what would happen if I chose that as the boot option, and poof - I bricked the laptop.

I know the laptop is working, hardware wise it's in good condition, the only problem is the BIOS. I've tried taking out the CMOS battery from the mobo - that did nothing. I've tried taking out the battery and doing the CTRL+HOME combo with a FAT/FAT32 usb (even found one <4GB), the laptop reads the stick but it doesn't boot. The file names were extracted with the Phoenix tool, I've tried AMIBOOT.ROM+.BIN, BOOT.ROM+BIN,kept the original extension etc... Nothing worked. It just reboots after that, the keyboard and LED indicators light up for a few moments and nothing happens (left it on for a while). Sounds to me like I might need to flash the BIOS chip on the laptop, and I've found this youtube video which pointed me to the forums.

Has anyone tried to flash the chip with the clip? Can anyone give me a valid BIOS dump? My BIOS version was 204 iirc.

The web is full of complaints of the same problem by various Asus laptop owners, just can't believe they haven't made an official tutorial on how to flash the NVRAM without electrocuting yourself or killing the device.

Thanks in advance

[jasko_jacker]

Re: Asus GL551

it is not always possible to reprogram the bios with the clamps, sometimes it is necessary to desolder the supply pin or (better) unsolder the whole chip.
When you reprogram the bios with a programmer you lose all information related to your motherboard but you can enter them later.
Try removing all the ram, the hd and the battery and press the power button, insert a bank of ram and try turning on.
If you want a bios dump post the number and revision of the motherboard.

[trashmonkey]

Re: Asus GL551

it is not always possible to reprogram the bios with the clamps, sometimes it is necessary to desolder the supply pin or (better) unsolder the whole chip.
When you reprogram the bios with a programmer you lose all information related to your motherboard but you can enter them later.
Try removing all the ram, the hd and the battery and press the power button, insert a bank of ram and try turning on.
If you want a bios dump post the number and revision of the motherboard.

I've tried to remove the ram, the HDD, the battery, tried shorting JRST2001 and JRST2002 (not crossing them tho), and again, it's still bricked. Shorting 2001 does make it power on by itself but the end result is the same (or so it seems to me). Shorting 2002 pretty much kills it, but shorting 2001 after that makes it power on again. Am I doing something wrong? Has anyone actually successfully recovered with the CTRL+Home+Power combo?

[trashmonkey]

Re: Asus GL551

Update: the mobo is 60NB06R0-MB3020, AAQ20

[trashmonkey]

Re: Asus GL551

Bump, anyone with a bios dump?

[cacla]

Re: Asus GL551

Pls sent me sn for this model and i will find you a correct dump

[cacla]

Re: Asus GL551

Here is your dump by sn. pls sent msg if is this is ok or not.

[trashmonkey]

Re: Asus GL551

Update:

The file is valid and works fine (even tho it says N series, they're pretty much the same).

So, for the poor souls that happened to brick their laptops - the best way is to reprogram the BIOS chip by desoldering it, dumping the file onto the chip and soldering it back on. The chip my laptop has is Winbond's W25Q64FVSIQ, be sure if you're replacing this chip that you get _EXACTLY_ the same chip. I tried flashing a brand new chip which was almost the same (W25Q64FVSIG), but according to https://cdn.badcaps-static.com/pdfs/...d69fd34b31.pdf , page 86 , it didn't have "QE=1 in Status Register-2".

Hope this helps anyone in need, and a huge thanks to cacla!

[jasko_jacker]

Re: Asus GL551

It's explained on page 17 but I think this is an option for quad mode ( page 10 ), what programmer you use ?
if you be able to program it there are no differences

[trashmonkey]

Re: Asus GL551

Tried doing it with a Raspberry, but I couldn't get a read of the chip, ended up giving it to a local repair shop to dump the file.