Bricked Sager NP8150 questions

tl;dr
I flashed the wrong bios and my laptop is bricked, looking for some answer/ideas on what to do next

History
I have a NP8150 with an i7 and 16gb ram (4x4Gb), with windows 8 so I thought I should update the bios to make use of EFI, UEFI. Xotic send me the version of the bios in 2 iso's that I could not use, so I decided to follow the instructions of the forum's post on clevo/sager bios. I flashed with the files found there for my model and all looked well. After some restarts (in 2 days time) the laptop was powering up, but only the bluetooth led would light; I suspected memory problems so I removed some of the ram dims. Then the laptop would boot properly, and if I added the memory back after a restart it would work. Ubuntu memtest showed a gazillion errors regardless of the configuration but if I made it to windows it would work as a charm. Then, I thought that the bios might be the problem so I flashed again, with a different version. The update went well, the laptop booted with a new logo, and I logged into windows with 16gb of ram. I run some tests, games, hwinfo and it was working perfectly. After rebooting, the laptop died on the spot, and does not even respond to the power button (bricked)

Questions
1. Laptop was bought in USA, I live in France now. Does anyone know of a place that I can fix it?
2. Can anyone give me a rough estimate of the cost? Like motherboard cost and work, or flashing/restoring bios if that is possible.

 

Update:
I just received an email from Xotic-Sager and they told me that the cost for the bios reflash is $149 + shipping.
I'm still trying to find a place in France, and the price for the motherboard.

 

It may also be cheaper to buy a motherboard from them than shipping your laptop (if you can't find a seller in France)


Sent from my EndeavorU using Tapatalk 2

 

All you need is someone to send you a freshly programmed BIOS chip worth like 3 bucks and solder it to your motherboard...

You can also just ask your local computer repair guy to re-flash your current chip for you wth a programmer...

This is the BIOS chip model:

MX25L3205DM2I-12G

Anyone here with a working P150HM can dump his BIOS with Afuwin and send you the file for the programmer:

https://www.rapidshare.com/files/2767281612/afuwin64.rar

Just use stock settings and hit save!

Good Luck!

 

A big thanks to both of you, Geekz and Perma; I will try to make some decisions during the weekend.

I found a repair center here in France, they identified the brand immediately (which I considered a good sign), but they told me that they can't find a MB themselves. I will also try to figure if I can follow perma's solution here, and I will update accordingly.

 

You can also check out the page jaug1337 posted showing resellers in EU http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/652403-clevo-resellers-european-union-v1.html there are a few from France on that page.

 

Hutsady, thanks for this info. I removed the CMOS battery, following the instructions of one of your technicians at xotic, and the laptop works.
I'm not certain that all the system's ram works perfectly (I have currently removed 8gb, so I have 8gb left, but the system seems stable).
I want to thank you for your support, and hopefully the laptop will keep going.

 

I would recommend running memtest86+ from a USB stick.

 

Glad to hear its working again. You could move some RAM around to see it its bad sticks or back RAM slots. Memtest86+ that Meaker mentioned works great too. You can burn it to a USB drive or burn it to a disc as an .iso file and boot to it. It will test your memory for bad sticks. If you find some bad ones you can just replace them, RAM prices have come down a lot lately.