Acer Nitro 5 AN515-46 DMI not working

[aico60]

Hello everyone,

I am working on an Acer Nitro 5 AN515-46, board HH51R LA-M002P Rev: 1A with an AMD CPU and Insyde Bios rev 5.

Short issue description: BIOS does not recognize any of the DMI data.

History of the laptop:
The seller of the laptop said that it shut down during a BIOS update.
I bought in in a condition where it turned on but did not post.
While waiting for my RT809F to arrive, I tried to perform a Crisis recovery, which messed up the EC firmware, so... the laptop stopped even turning on. Power and Charging LEDs didn't work either which was expected with a corrupted EC FW.

Troubleshooting steps performed:
Once the programmer arrived, i took the latest bios update 1.16 from Acer and extracted it using BIOSUtilities and flashed the correct EC FW.
I read the old BIOS multiple times (while attached to the board, using a pogo pin) and the reads didn't match. So I compared all of them and fixed any DMI discrepancies I was able to find and inserted it into the fresh clean bios from acer.
For the comparison, I also used a bios I found here (https://www.badcaps.net/forum/troubl...46-bios-please)

I found the following DMI offsets:
first offset 19CD000 - 19CD805
second offset 19CE000 - 19CE805

Then I flashed the new BIOS and the laptop booted but didn't recognize the DMI.
Model is shown as LILAC-RMB, Serial as 123456789012, UUID as FFs, only the last part of the UUID contains the LAN MAC and the first DMI offset gets blanked.
The first DMI offset is getting blanked except the MAC address in the UUID.

I have tried the following:
- flash the BIOS I found in the topic above in case my DMI wasn't properly formatted but it didn't get recognized either. Same results.
- inject the DMI data using H2OSDE but it gets written in a "sequential' order, like string after string, under some $DMI section in the bios with offset 1F84000.
- disable TPM, read the bios, modify DMI and rewrite with the same results.
- read and write the bios after detaching the chip from the motherboard. I got consistent read results here but still the DMI was not recognized.

Has anyone faced the same issue?

Attaching the old bios, dmi bin and the modified bios 1.16 with my dmi info.

S/N: NHQH1EY0063381ABFD3400
Model: Nitro AN515-46

Any suggestions on how to get the DMI recognized are welcome!

Thank you!

[SMDFlea]

S/N: NHQH1EY0063381ABFD3400
Model: Nitro AN515-46

Any suggestions on how to get the DMI recognized are welcome!

Try this bios.

[aico60]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.
I just tried it and the results are the same.
Initial boot does about 6-7 reboots (keyboard is flashing) and then when I go to the bios, it still doesn't show the DMI data. Windows doesn't see it either

Did you use the DMI from the old_bios.bin file? As the chip was attached to the board at this time, the read might be slightly corrupted, so I included dmi_original.bin in the zip which I corrected based on the comparison of all reads I did (about 5).
For example, the MAC starts at 19CD07A and it can be seen again at 19CD130.
old_bios.bin has this wrong, MAC is correct at 19CD07A (08 8F C3 5F D3 BF) but wrong at 19CD130 (08 8F C3 5F D3 FF)
it was read correctly at 19CE130.


Does this mean that all of my DMI reads are corrupted and can't be recovered? In this case, why doesn't it work with DMI from another laptop with the same model? Is there any other check the BIOS does besides the MAC address?

Is it possible that the EC has something to do with it? For example if it keeps some kind of checksum or anything.

Thank you!

[aico60]

Hi,

Update:
Issue is resolved. Found a dump from another model, same EC size (160KB) and noticed that it contains the DMI at the end. Once I added my DMI to the EC fw, it was recognized by the BIOS. So likely the comparison is done based on that.

Thread can be closed.