Clevo PB70EF-G No Boot (HELP!)

Finally managed to overclock into the void. Looking for someone who knows if I have actually bricked EC/BIOS or if there is a way back to life. This could be very simple?

The only thing that happened previous to the machine not booting was I changed memory timings (incorrectly). Changed and botched timings many times in the past, CMOS reset always worked. Dozens of times over. This time I have no idea what's wrong.

My PB70EF-G (PowerSpec 1720) will boot to blank screen, no fans, no BIOS promt. CMOS reset, NVRAM reset, all new DDR, sat overnight no power, seem to not help. I never receive confirmation of reset or any inputs.

The laptop simply turns on, 1 green Power LED sits idle indefinitely, no screen, no fans. Or, if clearing CMOS battery occasionally I can get it to Flash orange Power after sitting idle some time and spin up the fans for 60 seconds before it auto shutoff. No screen ever, no normal fan spin up on Power. It's like it doesn't see any hardware. If I remove all RAM and CMOS battery and boot it's the exact same behavior.

Factory BIOS, no voltage mods or anything out of the ordinary. Other than a bad memory timing in BIOS, nothing should be stopping it from booting. Yet here I am.

Before you suggest;

F2
F7
Fn + D + Power
Fn + G + Power
Fn + B + Power
Holding indefinitely, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, 60 seconds.
USB Boot with BIOS Flash

^I have tried these hundreds of times. Nothing happens. Is the keyboard even recognized/initialized? External USB keyboard same thing; USB devices seem unrecognized.

I am happy and open to suggestions. I will even ship the laptop to someone who is able to fix it and pay for your time and effort.
I am not sure if a new BIOS/EC chip(s) may be required? But I have no idea. The factory BIOS is readily available online and I thought hard to "brick".

 

The only time I've bricked a laptop is a Dell work provided one. Something borked during the install and Dell sent a tech to replace the MOBO.

Timings should only produce an error though if incompatible / soft reset as you've tried.

Advanced MOBO recovery might require some sort of extraction and serial cable recovery to flash the correct software back to the chips. The fact that trying to get into a flashing scenario not being recognized makes this issue more complicated for recovery.

The basic things to try would be removing everything from drives to ram and see if you can get some sort of screen response when hitting the power button. if a peripheral is causing the issue, removing them might get you to a different point where you can recover it. I know when I'm in a sticky situation I usually try DEL or F10 or F2 which varies depending on the BIOS to get into the screen to make changes. I don't know of a power up key sequence though to get into a "bootloader" like you can on a phone to recover things manually though.

 

You will need to diagnostically check if you bricked the motherboard since disconnecting the CMOS battery does not reset your motherboard to allow you to boot in to the BIOS. I had the same thing happen to me years ago when trying to push the overclock limit on an ASUS gaming laptop (G73JH).

I am not sure how you would go about diagnostically checking if the motherboard is bricked; I am sure one of the other users can provide a way/method.

[EDIT: Yup, I found my old thread where I posted about this overclocking issue on the ASUS G73JH at the time; feel free to read through it - especially reading through the ASUS forum link in the second reply to my old thread; as many users encountered the same issue as mine which sounds the same as your issue.
Link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/asus-g73jh-cpu-overclocking-black-screen.680590/ ]

 

I am fairly competent with a digital multimeter, but somewhat out of my depth when it comes to where to check. Will continue troubleshooting.

Just really kicking myself because this seems unlikely to be a hardware failure. I put a bad memory timing in and rebooted to a BRICKED laptop? After doing the same thing and recovering dozens of times? Seems so unlikely. Pretty frustrating.

Would be happy to ship to a Clevo reseller if they would agree to look at it? The repair could be a simple chip swap and flash which I can afford. I even have all necessary BIOS/EC files. Sager, XoticPC, etc etc Perhaps Meaker or one of the many other fine folks will see this and have an idea. I haven’t reached out to anyone specific yet, figured I’d give it a few days.

Thanks for the replies and ideas so far!

 

Hi, I've been having a somewhat similar issue on my Clevo P870DM-G.

I press the power button and these things happen:

1. Power light comes on.
2. Monitor's back cover LEDs come on.
3. Keyboard lights up. (Note: although the keyboard lights up, pressing the caps lock and number lock buttons do not activate the little indicator LEDs for those two keys.)
4. Little green Power LED comes on below the keyboard.
5. Little orange battery charge LED next to that also comes on. (That one also stays on if the laptop is off, but plugged into the power brick. Will turn green when fully charged)
6. The monitor screen stays black and never lights up. I tried an external monitor through the HDMI as well, but the external monitor never detects a display signal from the laptop.
7. After about 30 seconds, the the fans inside the laptop turn on full blast and they stay running for about 60 seconds.
8. After 60 seconds the laptop auto-shuts itself off.
9. No POST. No Logo. Nothing comes on the monitor. No beeping sounds either.

I've tried all manner of things:
1. Swapping Ram sticks and using different DIMM sockets.
2. Replacing the CPU with another CPU of the same model.
3. Removing all the drives.
4. Booting with and without the GPU and/or CPU.
5. CMOS resets - Removed the CMOS battery for 3 hours. Pressed the power button for 10 minutes without battery. Bought a brand new CMOS battery.
6. Booting with an external monitor plugged in.

Been discussing it in this thread for a couple weeks: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...rs-lounge-phoenix-has-arisen.781814/page-1008

I've pretty much given up. I believe it's either a motherboard issue or a GPU/screen issue.

 

Very poorly timed hardware failure in my case if that ends up being true. I just don't want to believe it died right as I changed a memory timing and rebooted. It seems too coincidental with the BIOS change I made. I have been wrong many, many times before though.

I'll leave this open for a while longer while greater minds than my own may chime in.

Partially considering contacting Micro Center where I purchased and seeing if they can get it serviced through Clevo? Might not be worth the cost, but I certainly have the time considering it's just a dead brick at this point. 99% expect them to just quote me for a new mainboard. I also know of a few US based shops that do advanced BGA repair and chip/flash related things, just unsure who to trust really.

 

I am back online!!!

A "simple" (new to me) CH341a tool with ASProgrammer and the correct ".bin" (renamed from Clevo's available ".11/12") flashed and I booted straight up. Beyond happy! $1500 saved.

Thanks to @HenryCase @ViktorV @Meaker@Sager and all others who may have replied and PM'd!!

 

Nice work!