Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

[bootpanic]

Greetings everyone,

I'm having trouble in bringing my Lenovo G500 laptop back to life.

Brand: Lenovo
Model: G500
Main board: LA-9631P
BIOS: 78CN25WW (Modded: advanced options and WLAN whitelist removal unlocked)

After accidentally disabling the Intel graphics from the advanced BIOS-menu the screen stays black and the laptop is not booting whatsoever. The laptop does turn on (power light comes on) and after a minute or so the CPU fan starts spinning. The person who modded the BIOS warned me not to disconnect the Intel VGA card or not to change the size of the video memory. Unfortunately this was more than six months ago and i forgot about the warnings... In an attempt to enable the onboard AMD GPU I turned off the Intel graphics. Now my laptop is bricked

Symptoms when power button is pushed are:

• Power led turns on.
• CPU fan start spinning after a short while.
• Don't see the back-lighting turning on.
• While on the laptop beeps when the power adapter is plugged in or unplugged (normal behavior).

What I've already tried without success is the following:

#1 During boot-up, if pressing Fn+F2 to access the BIOS.

#2 Removing the AC adapter, battery and disconnecting CMOS battery, then pressing the power button for 20secs.
Reconnecting the AC adapter without putting the battery back in and pressing the One Key recovery button.

#3 Disconnecting all power sources and leaving the laptop overnight.

#4 Removing AC jack, Main Battery, and disconnecting CMOS Battery. Removing HDD and all DIMMs. Waiting 10 mins. Pressing and holding power button for 30 sec. Connecting CMOS Battery and one DIMM only and inject AC jack (without Main Battery). Boot laptop.

#5 Shorted "clear CMOS" (CLRP2) pads on main-board beneath hard-disk slot (picture attached) and cycling power on (1 minute) and off, remove short.

None of the above changed anything...

I've attached some images with extra info about the laptop.

Any thoughts or advise is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Patrick

[KvnTM]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Remove CMOS Battery (if it has one) i believe BIOS Settings are stored in SRAM.
Remove battery and unplug it from AC.
Wait a minute and start it with ac or battery. Doesnt really matter.

If this doesnt work you may have a serious problem if the settings are stored in EEPROM/NVRAM.
Then you‘d have to reprogram or replace the EC.

Please correct me if someone knows better.


Does it boot into windows? You could try to connect an external display if only the dedicated gpu is working.

[lefos]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Hello,

I guess that you have to flash the BIOS again.
Do you have the modded BIOS dump ?

[Dan81]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

I'd agree with KvnTM on removing the CMOS battery. The modded BIOS should, by default, have the Intel iGPU enabled and set to a default memory size.

[KvnTM]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Hello,

I guess that you have to flash the BIOS again.
Do you have the modded BIOS dump ?

I‘m not sure if this will fix the issue. Usually there are no settings stored in the ROM chip. Maybe you could flash the „normal“ bios which will fix this itself.

[KvnTM]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

I'd agree with KvnTM on removing the CMOS battery. The modded BIOS should, by default, have the Intel iGPU enabled and set to a default memory size.

Maybe those „special options“ are stored in NVRAM/EEPROM as a initial configuration from the manufacturer. Those wont change when disconnecting the cmos battery...


And MAYBE he could change this option blind if the laptop does enter the bios without the iGPU.
Some reference Video would be helpful for this. Pretty sure there are Videos on the Internet.

[digitalpc]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

do u have video with vga/hdmi cable

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Thanks for your reply KvnTM

Remove CMOS Battery (if it has one) i believe BIOS Settings are stored in SRAM.
Remove battery and unplug it from AC.
Wait a minute and start it with ac or battery. Doesnt really matter.

If this doesnt work you may have a serious problem if the settings are stored in EEPROM/NVRAM.
Then you‘d have to reprogram or replace the EC.

Please correct me if someone knows better.


Does it boot into windows? You could try to connect an external display if only the dedicated gpu is working.

I did already tried what you are suggesting, thanks anyway :-)

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Hello,

I guess that you have to flash the BIOS again.
Do you have the modded BIOS dump ?

Thanks for your reply.
I'm going to try to flash the original BIOS.
I attached the modded BIOS.

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

do u have video with vga/hdmi cable

I forgot to mention that i did try to connect a monitor to HDMI and analog VGA, unfortunately no output...

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Does anybody knows where the BIOS flash chip is located on this board (LA-9631P)?

[SMDFlea]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Short the CLRP2 pads. Page 14 in the schematic.Remove the bios battery first then power up while shorting.

[piernov]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

NVRAM settings are stored in SPI ROM with the BIOS usually. Some of them get invalidated with clear CMOS, others don't. If clear CMOS doesn't help then indeed flashing the BIOS can be a good idea.

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Short the CLRP2 pads. Page 14 in the schematic.Remove the bios battery first then power up while shorting.

Thanks for you reply
I have already done that.
It is mentioned in my initial post :-)

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

NVRAM settings are stored in SPI ROM with the BIOS usually. Some of them get invalidated with clear CMOS, others don't. If clear CMOS doesn't help then indeed flashing the BIOS can be a good idea.

Hi piernov,

Thanks, gonna try that tomorrow...

Greetings,
Patrick

[bootpanic]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Hi everyone :-)

First I want to say THANKS to all the people who replied to my post, trying to help me out! ;-)

Today is disassembled my laptop and used a Raspberry pi 3 to flash the BIOS of my Lenovo G500 laptop with the original one and it fixed the problem. The laptop is back fully functional :-)

Cheers,
Patrick

[surecando]

Re: Lenovo G500 : Accidentally disabled the Intel video card in modded BIOS (bricked)

Cool!