Hello all 
Model - Satellite P55-A5104SL
Mainboard - VGSG MB Ver:2.1
All flashing done w/CH341 adapter & EEPROM chips off board.
PROBLEM:
After updating from BIOS 1.70 to 1.90, it shows Toshiba logo and halts. I narrowed it down to a possibly corrupted BIOS. How do I know? There is no similar machine in the forums, so I tried a dump for another model with same mainboard (L50-A-19N) provided by @ala_borbe in this thread. Flashed this on both BIOS & ME_FW chips and the laptop came to life again! BUT, with these symptoms:
- Dedicated GT740M GPU no longer works (error code 12 in Dev.Manager)
- Keyboard no longer works in BIOS, external USB keyboard does
- Dev.Manager shows "something USB" getting plugged-unplugged forever
It's clear the L50 files are different enough to the P55 to make them incompatible, even being the same board. I flashed both previously back-upped dumps, and it reverted back to non-booting state. Flashed L50 ones again, boots 'fine' again. So I was positive the original BIOS and/or ME_FW were bad and I just needed the correct ones.
WHAT I DID:
All BIOS packages from Toshiba for this P55 contain a 4.198.400 bytes file - 4Kb bigger than chip's capacity. I went with latest 1.90 one. Fiddling around I noted the 1st 4Kb is just a header, so I removed that with HxD Editor and sure enough, the new file looks 'good': 1st KB or so identical to @ala_borbe dump, and it's exactly 4.194.304 bytes.
Flashed this BIOS, and the same happens: only logo & no boot.
Did the same procedure to 1.60 & 1.70 original BIOS, same result.
Tried both L50 & backup ME_FW dumps with 1.60/1.70/1.90 P55 BIOS, no change.
Flashed back the L50 BIOS+ME_FW, as expected it boots 'fine' (non-working GT740M etc).
At this point I was scratching my head badly... what to do now
... Then I tried flashing the P55 backup ME_FW mantaining the L50 BIOS, to see if the original dump was bad. It still boots! The original ME_FW dump is good then, it has nothing to do with the problem. The d*mn board simply does not like its own model BIOS. What gives??
I cannot see any reason why is this happening, but that's where I am now. Also I find suspicious how many people had similar problems with these family of VGSG boards... almost like there's a bug somewhere in the update process...
WHAT I NEED:
A matching, working set of BIOS+ME_FW dump for this model
the L50 ones get the laptop to Windows, but they're not 100% compatible. ANY version is fine.
Thank you.
Model - Satellite P55-A5104SL
Mainboard - VGSG MB Ver:2.1
All flashing done w/CH341 adapter & EEPROM chips off board.
PROBLEM:
After updating from BIOS 1.70 to 1.90, it shows Toshiba logo and halts. I narrowed it down to a possibly corrupted BIOS. How do I know? There is no similar machine in the forums, so I tried a dump for another model with same mainboard (L50-A-19N) provided by @ala_borbe in this thread. Flashed this on both BIOS & ME_FW chips and the laptop came to life again! BUT, with these symptoms:
- Dedicated GT740M GPU no longer works (error code 12 in Dev.Manager)
- Keyboard no longer works in BIOS, external USB keyboard does
- Dev.Manager shows "something USB" getting plugged-unplugged forever
It's clear the L50 files are different enough to the P55 to make them incompatible, even being the same board. I flashed both previously back-upped dumps, and it reverted back to non-booting state. Flashed L50 ones again, boots 'fine' again. So I was positive the original BIOS and/or ME_FW were bad and I just needed the correct ones.
WHAT I DID:
All BIOS packages from Toshiba for this P55 contain a 4.198.400 bytes file - 4Kb bigger than chip's capacity. I went with latest 1.90 one. Fiddling around I noted the 1st 4Kb is just a header, so I removed that with HxD Editor and sure enough, the new file looks 'good': 1st KB or so identical to @ala_borbe dump, and it's exactly 4.194.304 bytes.
Flashed this BIOS, and the same happens: only logo & no boot.
Did the same procedure to 1.60 & 1.70 original BIOS, same result.
Tried both L50 & backup ME_FW dumps with 1.60/1.70/1.90 P55 BIOS, no change.
Flashed back the L50 BIOS+ME_FW, as expected it boots 'fine' (non-working GT740M etc).
At this point I was scratching my head badly... what to do now
... Then I tried flashing the P55 backup ME_FW mantaining the L50 BIOS, to see if the original dump was bad. It still boots! The original ME_FW dump is good then, it has nothing to do with the problem. The d*mn board simply does not like its own model BIOS. What gives??I cannot see any reason why is this happening, but that's where I am now. Also I find suspicious how many people had similar problems with these family of VGSG boards... almost like there's a bug somewhere in the update process...
WHAT I NEED:
A matching, working set of BIOS+ME_FW dump for this model
the L50 ones get the laptop to Windows, but they're not 100% compatible. ANY version is fine.Thank you.
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