[SOLVED]Lenovo X121e (x120e ,x130e) bios recovery mode

[EjđiSixo]

Of course as expected I screwed up. Due to my impatience while waiting and due to huge curiosity towards modding i bricked my Lenovo. Now I need help getting into bios recovery mode. I followed every possible guide / tutorial but none of the key combinations work for me. It's Japanese model with few extra keys if that means anything. When I start laptop fan spins then stops for a second and continues again and thats it. No mather which combination of keys I use usb stick drive led blinks for 1 second normal like when you plug it in and thats it.


Additional info (advanced, don't have to read): I was playing with LenovoSetupConfig module in bios. Its a module for config tab in bios and I found a lot of hidden cpu features and options inside. Since there is no precise tutorial for this I messed with jumps in IDA pro. I flashed the bios but there where no changes in menu or options so I messed a little more with it. Before flashing again I searched the internet because I was 95% sure I'll brick it , and it seemed according to forums that bios recovery is more less straight forward process. I got tools like minidos and wincrisis and then flashed my bios again. All worked nice, program said it will restart and when it restarted and bam, no screen just fans spin.

I said ok lets try to recover it. But the sh*t went very soon from chill I got this to oh look thats the second dead Lenovo you have here in just 2 weeks!
First I couldn't get wincrisis to work, project path is grayed out. I have 8GB stick, figured thats the problem. Went to buy 1 or 2 GB stick , [censored] Japan and standards cant find nothing less than 4GB. Finally found 2GB microsd and card reader. Same problem. Turns out its always grayed out, you have to have bios and all files from wincrisis in that same folder and it works. Nobody on any forum mentions that , although a lot of people report same problem.


I don't think this is unrecoverable since I didn't change too much , and both module and bios size are same size as original, but please help me before I [censored] things up to seriously snd have one more in a huge collection of bricked devices lol. I saw somewhere that Lenovo officially didn't never release recovery procedure. If it indeed recovery mode doesnt at all exist in the system and cant be recovered that way, than sure enough this is my last lenovo for this and other reasons.

Thanks!!!

[EjđiSixo]

Ok, so nobody knows anything about bios recovery and bios chips on a bios forum, how about that , eh xD?

I have another question. Seems that people report much bigger success rate with floppy drive than with pen drive. I would buy usb floppy drive and floppy disk, but problem is that my bios file alone is bigger than floppy (2mb to be precise). What are my options here?

[EjđiSixo]

Took a closer look at extracted bios update .exe and found few interesting files , and one that really caught my attention is FvRecovery.fd. . Does that ring any bells to anyone? Some other recovery methods for using that file? It has around 2.5mb , it's slightly bigger than bios file.
Thanks

[BDMaster]

Hi friend,
on Lenovo Laptops is a goal lottery with Bios Recovery !
Buy tools and rewrite Bios into Eeprom Chips is better and quick
Look here :

https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-R...val?page=2

try to looking for Lenovo + Recovery Bios and will find the surprise nothing working . . .

[EjđiSixo]

Hi! Thank you very much for reply!! Well, just as I was afraid so.. Lenovo complicated it or my boot-block somehow became corrupted (doesn't make sense but oh well).

So spi programmer is I guess my only option. Which is not a option for me, because I have to buy tool which I'll probably use only once and I have to wait for it long time to arrive since I doubt I'll find this stuff in Japan believe it or not, and I kinda need laptop now. Other is resoldering bios chip. Again with the waiting for chip, my soldering skills are not on that level + I dont have the tools for it. Finding here somebody to do it is impossible and probably pricey. [censored] it ,have this thing for barely 1 week..

[EjđiSixo]

Ok , I think I'm on to something , just not sure what. Some part of laptop is definitely alive, but not sure how to take it from here. Here is what happens:

When I plug in that micro sd reader with that micro sd card I bought 2 days ago PLUS any other usb stick into other of 2 available ports left then it looks like this: I press power button without any other button ,fan turn on like usually on around 50% power, usb blinks at this point it doesnt read it, it just blinks because it got power and usually story would end here but IN THiS CASE right after that, usb pen sticks led turns on again only this time for little longer, like 1 second or 1.5s. It definitely looks like its reading it for that short time so I connected my android smartphone (Nexus 5) to see what happens. So when I power on laptop nexus is just charging like normally on charger but when that 2nd blink occurs nexus reports that it's connected to pc and usb debbuging notification shows ( I have it on). Hm.


So for that time, something comes alive in laptop, not sure why and what is it trying to do. I tried all other possible options like that sd card in other reader ,other 2 usb sticks plug in and so on, but this happens ONLY when that usb card reader whit that sd card is in. And the funkiest part is that when this reading occurs that it reads all other usb devices but not that card reader. I dont know whats so special about that combo and the content of it is just extracted original bios file with fl1 extension. If I press some of the combinations like fn+r nothing changes.

In 3 days of trying I did get 100% fan speed on twice only by holding fn+r which is supposed to be bios recovery mode but unfortunately both times I only had my phone connected to usb ,and it didnt try to read it (at least I thought) , I connected usb stick immediately but no signs of life. Also it happened randomly and I couldn't reproduce it with any combination I tried.

Some other behaviors I noticed in 3 days of lifesaving:
Sometimes when I turn it on ,fan turns on then stops for a 0.5 sec but power led is still on and then fan turns on again and runs like that , but sometimes just runs constantly. Btw this laptop has power led only. If I unplug CMOS battery to reset it , then the laptop turns on by himself as soon as I plug in power chord. At that time when that fan stopping happens power led also goes of. On other times it turns him self on off 2-3 times (fan and led) and then just continues to run.
Twice something strange happened. After longer reset of cmos after plugging in power, power led blinked in the intervals of 1 or less second but the FAN WAs OFF and the screen flickered ,randomly turning on but it was just pure white, nothing on it.



Sorry for huge post, I'm just trying to save it, because I loose quite some money this way now and not to mention it was my only working laptop and I need it right now. So maybe somebody gets some better idea than me. Or this will maybe help somebody else. If nothing I guess the leasson is learned ( one of many already)

[EjđiSixo]

Ok I gave up, lets just say its completely bricked. I am looking now into spi programmer method.

I found this :http://www.aitendo.com/product/10939

And this : http://eleshop.jp/shop/g/g9BU133/

Would this work? Spi doesnt have my or any winbond chip on the list as supported.
Also , does usually spi or clip come with wires for clip? Because I can't see it in a picture and it doesnt say anything.

If that would not work , here is the full list what they have, maybe something would work.http://www.aitendo.com/product-list/705

[BDMaster]

It's an CH341A Generical SPI Programmer for 24 / 25 Eeprom Chips !
I think It will work on WinBond too (is generic) !
Your choices seems good for me . . .
Regards

[EjđiSixo]

So it should work with test clip? Because heard about problems with this method.

[EjđiSixo]

Ok so I went ahead and used my last money in pocket to buy spi programmer and clip lol. They didn't have adapter and wires for clip so I bought some wires which would go on very narrow clip pins.

Now need help. Which wire to connect where on programmer? I can get datasheet for my chip. Im not sure which chip is EC and which bios. I think 25x is bios?
Which drivers / software for programmer to get since it didnt come with one?

First time using spi programmer, anything I should knoe about?

Detail pictures are attached in zip.

EDIT: here is my pin layout of 25Q16 chip

EDIT 2: Couldn't find anything online but figured out which wire where. It reads and write BUT same thing happens like before. I think I maybe edited by mistake my backed up rom so its the same one that bricked it. When I flash official .FL1 file , then laptop acts differently of course but no screen. Usb work whole time. I doubt that can work since fl1 file is more than 2mb and backup is 2 mb exactly. What are my option?

Thanks!!