Bios corruption overnight? Interesting...

So uh yeah, per Malibal's diagnosis over support tickets, my p170hm apparently suffered bios corruption overnight while it(and I) was sleeping. Just wondering how a bios can become corrupted while the computer is just harmlessly doing nothing o.0(the same as what it has been doing for the past 3 weeks, lol)

It's rather strange that this could happen... apparently it was caused by something to do with the new generation of Sandy Bridges' microcode... whatever that means.

Anyone else with the 2x60 sandy bridges encounter this? I'm sending my lappy in to be (hopefully) repaired.

 

Wow, no I haven't ever heard of that. I've seen Hibernate/SSD issues of firmware corruption, but never on a mainboard. Your system sounds like a beast, are you running the M4 in the Removable ROM bay?

 

There could have been a power surge/bump/outage while you both slept, therefore causing problems.

It's a good idea to just turn the machine off completely when you're finished for the night, unless you need to leave it on overnight. If it's off, there's less chance of a power problem to occur.

 

I'm running the M4 in the secondary Sata 3 port and the 750gb Momentus in the caddy.

Eh, I've already been told that the corruption is due to a bios issue with the newest mobile 2X60 sandy bridges... just really crazy how it happened while the laptop was effectively off(sleep is basically a power off state).
As far as outages or power blips go, I've got a surge protected UPS... which is already double redundancy because the laptop has it's own UPS(what is this battery life you speak of? lol).

It pains me to have to use a crappy old desktop(sold my old custom gaming pc) in lieu of my awesome laptop... but it's necessary. Hopefully their new bios will actually fix the problem for good.

 

What BIOS revision was on your baby when it passed out...BIOS 05 and EC 09 are officialy still the latest...what did they say about a new BIOSl?
Asking because I have a 2960 sitting on my table and waiting for the transplantation...

 

I saw some microcode changing in bioses lately, speaking of p150hmx.

I think clevo is aware of the issue, in fact in previous bioses relased, at least the latest 2 ones, they changed the cpu microcode. In bios infact mine has changed as well.

Who knows probably its related to this problem?

EDIT: seems that p170hm had the same bios update. Havent you flashed the bios in august?

BIOS 1.01.08, standalone - For EC/KBC use link below August 2011
Update CPU micro code.
Run update.bat to update BIOS.

Thats pretty self explanatory. Since im using a 2760qm first thing i did was upgrading the bios as well

 

Sorry I forgot to mention that I have the 3D version where BIOS 05 is the currently highest public release.

 

I got my 2760qm p170 about 3 weeks ago... it should have been all set and glitch-free... but it clearly didn't even go past the BIOS POST checks the day that it just decided it would corrupt itself

AFAIK the 2X60X/QM series was released early september(sources show 9/4) and there hasn't been any CPU related bios update in a while. The latest one for the P170 seems to just have fixed the fan issues(fan cycling on turbo mode, i'd assume). I probably should have flashed my bios, but I've always been wary about flashing the bios on my computers... and since it came to me in flawless working condition I just decided not to. Guess it wasn't a good idea

 

What does it mean by the BIOS being corrupted? Mine gives me the message "Unable to send end of POST to ME" and I'm set up for an RMA but can't at this point of time due to college exams.

Is this the same issue that you are seeing?

 

Nah, that is probably some hardware issue. Mine just doesn't even load/boot(whatever it's called) the bios. I'm greeted with a black screen and a prompt shutdown.
Nice thing is that malibal gave me an E-shipped UPS 3 Day Select label... so atleast I'll get it there and back within a week or so. I will be annoyed if UPS delivers and I'm not home to pick it up though... signatures.

 

Actually same thing happened to me, I flashed to the 06 version to fix the fan cycling. Everything was working perfectly for 2 days, then suddenly the machine wouldn't turn on (light comes on for about 5 seconds then turns off, screen black the entire time). I hope my new replacement comes with a bios I won't have to mess with.

The thing I don't understand is how it worked perfectly after the flash for 2 days, usually a BIOS problem is game-over immediately.

Mine came with the version 08 stock, I believe. Was told to flash to the 06.

 

Yea that happens, we've had them in the field for two days, a week, a month. And at some point <blank>. We've found that if you take the CMOS battery out for a night with no battery and no plugged in sometimes it'll reset it and be happy again. But its actually not the BIOS thats corrupt, its the EC chip.

 

Actually had tried that, the battery was completely enclosed in a black heat shrink and had leads going to the motherboard. It wasn't easy to remove the leads without breaking something. Regardless, process didn't work this time. Maybe a word of warning to those wanting to fix the fan problems on a P170, just live with it until a more recent fix is posted.

 

Good news is there is a new EC -> 09, bad news is.. its the board that randomly does that, we've seen it the entire life of the board. From EC01 -> EC09

 

That's not good... so what you're saying is that it's not a software issue so much as a hardware problem with the p170 mobo? Why haven't there been more reports of issues encountered? In my case I have alternative computers to use around the house and workplace, but it would suck if the laptop was the only one I had and it just decides to not turn on after N days.

Mine seemed like a gradual regression into death.
Day 1 of its failure had my laptop taking many tries to start up... many ending in the "oh, you thought I was going to turn on? JUST KIDDING!"... but after a couple of tries it turned on.
Day 2(day it decided to completely fail) it would just turn off after a few seconds... no visible life besides power LED being on.

 

The only other thing we've seen cause the same looking issue was bad ram. Sometimes when ram goes bad it has the same issue as it can't power up the ram so it does that no beep codes or anything just turns off.

 

Don't know about other cases, but in my case, I had 4 sticks... and actually did check each one individually just to be sure that I didn't have ram failure. I don't know what the exact chance of 4 sticks of ram simultaneously failing, but I'd say they are pretty low, unless the motherboard has some hardware issue screwing the ram up... which I presume would cause a much greater amount of people to post about it.

It's rather discomforting that it narrows down to an issue inherent in the motherboard... is this an acknowledged issue by clevo or..?

 

Over time I have read some reports here of people with identical problem...all had to send it in...

BTW for me it looks like Mythlogic are the only reseller here with deeper technical understanding who are also sharing it with the community...you gave us so many times the little extra info...even Clevo ignored you when you informed them about the EC 08 glitches and now months later they gave us EC 09 to fix the error that didn`t exist...you shall get your deserved rep now...THX...Mythlogic rep+1

 

I would like to hear an official response too, if it's a hardware flaw I hope clevo stands behind it and offers to fix any problems regardless of warranty times etc.

 

Well, seeing as this got bumped to page 2 in under 6 hours, just gonna raise it up.

 

I don't know if its something that will affect EVERY motherboard I think its just a random thing that happens. So I don't think its something that needs to be recalled. I believe what we've seen is it has to do with the voltage that the board takes down and how its designed. Now granted, I don't have huge quantities of numbers to back that up, so thats not gospel by any stretch. Just reporting on the issues we've seen, and how we've had to deal with them. I wish they would tell us how to recover the EC / BIOS (We know the key combo, but don't know how to design the CD), but alas we don't get everything

 

Yes it`s a shame that Clevo still keeps the bios recovery a secret even from their resellers, just to bring business to their own service centers...wish someone would leak the information...