Asus G53SX Brick after bios update version 209

[C4RN1]

The title says it all

I bought a laptop off ebay and it finally came today. I unpacked it and power it on, updated the video driver and monitored some temps. Everything was fine, i checked the bios and it said it was 203 from when it was made. So i decided to update the bios.

For the most part asus makes quality products, i have 2 asus rigs (one with 3 hd5970s) and have owned 3 rog laptops so far, i decided the g53sx was a good choice for me. I also own and run a small computer repair store and have updated the bios on more than 500 computers. So I didn't think updating the bios was that risky since i know what i'm doing. I entered the bios setup and used the asus ezflash to flash the bios to 209. Everything went fine, no red flags. The computer said it was going to shut down in 2 seconds, which it did and then the power light stayed on. So being careful i let it sit for a few minutes, then i unplugged it and it still was on so i had to pull the battery. Now when i press the power button there's no response.

I know this can happen because i've seen an acer do this before, but why did it happen to me? It's an official asus bios update from here.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download G53SX

I did some research and found people with the same issue, there's quite a few cases like this out there.

Can anyone tell me why this happened, and what i did wrong. I imagine if i was computer illiterate it would be my fault in some way, but i have a 4 year degree, certifications and own a computer company..... how the hell can this happen?

I had the computer for 45 mins and broke it, now it's sitting at a workstation with the bottom taken off. I'm pretty sure i can use an eeprom reader i made years ago to directly connect to the pins on the bios chip and flash it. Though i should probably just send it off to asus though they would do the same thing.

I called asus and he had me try things i already had tried, i know it's bricked i don't need help diagnosing that. I know if i could find the cmos battery and do a hard reset it still won't help... the computer is f'd.

Anyway what did i do wrong?

[hackness]

The title says it all

I bought a laptop off ebay and it finally came today. I unpacked it and power it on, updated the video driver and monitored some temps. Everything was fine, i checked the bios and it said it was 203 from when it was made. So i decided to update the bios.

For the most part asus makes quality products, i have 2 asus rigs (one with 3 hd5970s) and have owned 3 rog laptops so far, i decided the g53sx was a good choice for me. I also own and run a small computer repair store and have updated the bios on more than 500 computers. So I didn't think updating the bios was that risky since i know what i'm doing. I entered the bios setup and used the asus ezflash to flash the bios to 209. Everything went fine, no red flags. The computer said it was going to shut down in 2 seconds, which it did and then the power light stayed on. So being careful i let it sit for a few minutes, then i unplugged it and it still was on so i had to pull the battery. Now when i press the power button there's no response.

I know this can happen because i've seen an acer do this before, but why did it happen to me? It's an official asus bios update from here.

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download G53SX

I did some research and found people with the same issue, there's quite a few cases like this out there.

Can anyone tell me why this happened, and what i did wrong. I imagine if i was computer illiterate it would be my fault in some way, but i have a 4 year degree, certifications and own a computer company..... how the hell can this happen?

I had the computer for 45 mins and broke it, now it's sitting at a workstation with the bottom taken off. I'm pretty sure i can use an eeprom reader i made years ago to directly connect to the pins on the bios chip and flash it. Though i should probably just send it off to asus though they would do the same thing.

I called asus and he had me try things i already had tried, i know it's bricked i don't need help diagnosing that. I know if i could find the cmos battery and do a hard reset it still won't help... the computer is f'd.

Anyway what did i do wrong?

You flashed from your hard drive or from a USB stick? NTFS is known to have chance for a bad flash to happen when using Ezflash. You have gotta make sure the drive you placed the BIOS at is a FAT or FAT32 file system.

[C4RN1]

That makes sense, i downloaded the file and threw it in a directory the flash program could see. I can't remember the name of the folder but it had skins in it.

After it bricked i looked around and there's tutorials on how to format a usb drive to fat32 to flash it from there. Though i'm hesitant using usb to update the bios. I guess that's the way i should have done it, odd i've never had any problems like this before.

Thanks for your input

[C4RN1]

So it's sent off to asus, they said it happens all the time. I should get it back in a couple weeks.

I was browsing and found this.

I dumped the contents of the bricked BIOS, and discovered that the Easyflash tool uses an incorrect buffer pointer (at least when doing NTFS based updates). Rather than the new BIOS code, the tool wrote the contents of my hard drive directory tree into the flash. Nice, huh? Needless to say, the G74SX would do nothing, after the update (no sign of power, no
lights, dead to the world).

It looks like if i wanted to i could fix the bios but i'll let asus honor their warranty for their screwup.

[Mobius 1]

You actually can restore the BIOS yourself

-Borrow another G53
-Open until you find mobo BIOS chip
-Get a PLCC extractor, or figure out how to remove the BIOS chip by soldering
-Boot up the other G53, remove BIOS chip, stick your "bricked" BIOS chip in
-Flash with correct procedure (from FAT32), your bricked BIOS chip is fixed
-Put original chip back to each machine

This is what I used to do with older gen mobos anyway.

[C4RN1]

So you want me to borrow a friends expensive laptop and try to follow your horrible directions? Think i'll stick with the rma, it's a design/programming flaw. They can fix it, i have a handful of other computers to fix anyway.