Bricked P157SM-A

Greetings all,

I did a full bios reset today on my P157SM-A, hoping to set everything to bios defaults. After saving and restarting, the laptop will no longer post. I've tried copying the latest Prema Mod onto a flashdrive with a .rom extension and holding down FN+B when the laptop starts up but nothing happens. It keeps restarting with a black screen.

I know that FN+1 still works, I hear the fans spinning up. What am I doing wrong?

 

Did you try entering the BIOS? With F2? Most likely it's because you don't have UEFI on. Defaulting in those BIOS would turn off UEFI. Try pressing F2 when you start the laptop

 

I can't enter the BIOS at all because of this issue, so F2 does nothing unfortunately. I just get a black screen, even with an external monitor. There is no logo, no POST. And it restarts soon after.

 

Press F2 and don't let go of it. Might work. Take out the CMOS battery and try too

 

Did both of those, still nothing.

 

Your best bet is to get a programmer and reflash the BIOS with it. Get the TL866II Plus. Should have a few guides in this forum. Maybe someone else can give some further advices on what to do

 

When you say you did a full BIOS reset, what do you mean by that?

 

I went into the BIOS settings and selected 'reset to defaults.' I was trying to get the 4940mx temps under control but had forgotten the default voltage. So I figured that by resetting to default I would just mess with the voltage from there. I selected 'save and exit' and let the laptop restart. After that, black screen and constant restarts.

I've gone into the BIOS before to change things, like boot sequence, turning on UEFI, etc. This is the first time that this has happened with this current board.

I've had to send this laptop back once to Digital Storm in 2016. That is when everything on the laptop was still stock. Same thing happened, I reset everything in the BIOS to default and had the same problem with it booting or posting. I wasn't even running Win 10 in UEFI mode. When I was told about the diagnosis regarding the issue, they said that the motherboard was defective and had to be sent to Clevo for repair.

@joluke: Too late at this point, I guess. I already ordered a replacement motherboard on ebay. I'll keep the BIOS programmer in mind just in case.

 

Have you tried pulling the CMOS battery?

Reset to defaults doesn't necessarily reset to defaults. Pulling components associated with the issue and booting once tends to trigger resets regarding that component. For example pulling a memory stick will reset memory settings, and pulling the CPU will reset CPU settings.

 

Have you tried booting with one stick of ram?

 

Yeah, I have two 8gb sticks so I tried pulling one out then swapped it with the other. I also pulled the 4940mx and replaced it with my old 4810mq, still nothing.

 

Good luck on the replacement then.

 

Well, after a great deal of frustration (dead motherboards and ebay sellers who can't tell the difference between P15xSM and P15xSM-A series motherboards) I ended up getting a replacement from Eurocom. I went ahead and installed it, immediately got EC Panic. I re-flashed the EC, now it happens intermittently. So I reseated the GPU and memory. Working okay so far.

The problem I'm having now is that I don't have access to any of the advanced options in BIOS, like CPU multipliers and voltage. Flashing Eurocom's supposed 'unlocked' BIOS does nothing for me and I'm trying to get this 4940MX's temps under control by undervolting.

 

Still better than nothing

 

Intel XTU should have the controls.

 

Looks like I'm back to having intermittent EC Panic. I replaced the 4940MX with my 4810MQ and back, still having the issue. I reflashed the EC and let it shut down, go back into BIOS settings, set to default and shut off the laptop.

In regards to Intel XTU, Throttlestop shows that boost wattage (short and long) are still locked. I can limit the voltage though.

 

Ah the 17 inch machines had that unlocked but the 15 inch did not on the stock BIOS IIRC.