Shuts down every 30 min, Can't downgrade bios.

Hello Notebook Reviewers,

TLDR; tried everything can't downgrade bios.

I've had a very sad problem. Recently I've bought 2nd hand NP900X4D-k01ru everything seemed good. So like a normal dumb ass I've wiped hard drive, And installed windows 10, after installing samsung's own tool it started downloading everything including new bios and flashed it. Then it started shutting down every 30 min, without any BSOD, warning anything. Just shuts down completely. I'm not totally sure if it was happening before or after bios update. When that started, I suspected overheating and totally cleaned up and even applied new cooling paste. But even without touching anything it shuts down exactly 30 min mark. So I've removed every part, HDD, one of the RAM, wifi, battery, cmos battery and booted with usb drive and waited. Again shuts down exactly around 30 min. So my last guess it might be bios. So I've followed everything from this post. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/samsung-laptops-roll-back-bios-updates.696197/
And I was able to get bioses

• p00abk - Closes immiedatly after saying os not supported
• p02abk - Able to get p02abk.cap, has winflash tool, but won't flash Says Security mechanism not supported. Please get correct capsule
• p03abk - No more winflash, now it's SFlash tool, tried using command sflash64 -file p03abk.cap -sforce -pwd 123, but It says Error 230 - Failed to verify admin's password. My bios does not have password so I assume it might be samsung password.
• p04abk - Same as 03
• p10abk - Now can't even see cap files and tools. All it shows is DebugAppLog.txt
• p11abk - Same as 10

I've ran out of options. Tried downloading different bios tools to force flash bios but all of em gives random errors. Bios seems like pheonix bios.

Here is my question.

1. What might be causing shut down every 30 min?
2. Where to find bios admin password?
3. Is there a tool that force flashes pheonix bios?
4. Where are p10 and p11 files getting extracted?

I really loves performance, weight, screen, speaker and everything about this laptop. But it's now only facebook machine that shuts down every 30min.

Please help me. Any help is really appreciated.

 

You can see if any of the unbricking solutions help.

John

 

There may be a Samsung set password but that you have to contact them for, we can not here help you on that one. I assume you are not bricked as you had not mentioned that. Probability is isf at exactly 30 min there is a shutdown each time then it is not temperature related.

 

Thank you guys, I tried to contact samsung us but they just forwarded me to russian one. Since this is has ru serial. Don't know how to contact russian one, plus it's 2nd hand laptop.

Today I've had experienced even weirder stuff. Laptop stopped booting up. Screen was not showing up to be exact. So i've took apart again and tried everything again. After removing bios battery it started working again. How weird is that?

@john I've read through items unfortunately none applies to my issue,

 

Not that weird. if the hardware table for the bios got corrupted it needed the cmos reset to clear hardware resources.

 

Tried my luck with Russian support. They won't give me password and says I can't downgrade. That's really messed up. Could it be bad bios battery issue? Is there a way to re-flash with same bios? Is there a tool that reads my bios and re-flashes it?

 

I've just read about Intel's anti theft technologies. Could that thing shut down laptop every 30min? https://www.cnet.com/forums/discussions/toshiba-shut-down-randomly-every-30-minutes-634655/

someone said The problem is Intel Anti-Thief technology, **** OFF

 

A question would then be do you have the software and/or pop-ups from the IAT?

Also try; http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/samsung-series-9-anti-theft-system-lock.714083/

 

Nothing pops out. Cleared bios multiple times.(Or I've thought i've cleared) still nothing shows up. Also I can't find MEI driver in device manager. Not sure if I must use windows 8 to be able to use that AT tool

 

I think i'm getting closer guys.
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-Yoga-Series-Notebooks/Yoga-2-Pro-sudden-shutdowns/td-p/2213262

People says they have this problem a lot. It seems like ever since intel shut down their AT stuff laptops gone wild. Tries to connect main server in 30 min if fails to do so i5 chipset just kills laptop no matter.

 

Yeah, looks like you found proper topic where needed info is collected.
I have some Intel ME stuff and tools version 8.x and can upload so you could play with those if you haven't found it before.

 

@James

Thank you i'd love to try anything out. Currently trying to run this https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/19009/Intel-Management-Engine-Verification-Utility without luck. Problem is I can't find anything under device manager. But it AT does shows up in bios. But nothing pops out, like error message.

also found this topic http://www.win-raid.com/t596f39-Intel-Management-Engine-Drivers-Firmware-amp-System-Tools.html but has no clue yet

 

Most likely if you try run fpt or meinfo utilities from windows then it will not work because your ME is corrupted and OS doesn't see it. In that case only DOS will work.
Basically you need to ask help in that thread I linked above but before that try to read a little bit and test windows tools like Meinfo and fitc. Create a full backup of your BIOS etc.
https://mega.nz/#!ZM5nGayK!2MhzkfJV1X_lLVB6D3DU-LJT59voYHSfEjo_IKPNG30 This is my collected stuff but most likely win-raid forum has the latest and best in your latest link.

 

Starting from bottom. How to properly backup BIOS?

 

You can try something like fpt.exe -d mybackup.bin
Or fpt.exe -d mybackup.bin -ME for ME region only. Anyways there is a System Tools User Guide.pdf and you better asking questions on win-raid because it's been years since I ever looked at this stuff and I have never actually learned it to the ground, just tested for fun a little bit.

 

Thank you again James.
More sad news. I've tried all meinfo from 2 to 11. Since it is intel 7 series i should use 8.1 right? But it gave me error 9460 Unsupported something error.

 

guess what getting error 26 the host cpu bla bla bla, so unable to backup bios.

 

I'm in the same boat as you. Did you manage to downgrade it with FPT? Did you flash all the bios or just ME?

 

I'll be so glad If I can help you. What I did was this http://www.win-raid.com/t1379f39-Yoga-Pro-shutdowns-every-minutes-5.html . I've had friend who has bios reader/writer equipment. Was able to dump whole bios using that equipment. And tried to remove ME but was not able to. And that person helped to remove and fix that. After that laptop started running more than 30 min. Also ME gets installed in windows.

 

You can buy programmer for few bucks, it's called 1) CH341A 2) Clips for BIOS chip for in-built programming after disconnecting all power sources from motherboard.