UEFI BIOS ROM Recovery on the Lenovo Thinkpad E555
By Trenkov
Warning: This is only for people that knows what they are doing.
To help other people, who are suffering like me, I will provide the full solution about the recovery of corrupted BIOS on Lenovo E555 / E455:
1. You need to buy a CH341a EEPROM programmer, which costs about 2 US dollars.
2. You need to install CH341a drivers and software on a running pc/notebook.
3. You need to verify that Programmer is recognized by the computer. Put the programmer on usb port on the working pc, run CH341a software and see the bottom right corner.
4. You need some solder skills to solder wires from your bios chip (or desolder it from mainboard) and connect it to the CH341a Programmer (see picture)
5. Attach your bios chip to programmer with soldering wires pin by pin (8 wires, 8 pins), or desolder it from mainoard and attach it directly to the programator. Plug the programator in the USB port of the working pc.
6. Select your Bios Chip manufacturer and model (for the E555, chip is Winbond W25Q64FV), click on "Read" button in the CH341a software. If you wired it correctly it should take some time to read it (a few minutes). If program gives an error about not finding the chip, please check your wiring and position of the chip pins. You may found this video for usefull (it helped me) .
7. Download the pure BIN file, I will provide the link to the bin soon.
8. Erase your bios chip using the CH341a Software. You don't need to save your current bios, because it's corrupted/Broken.
9. Open the downloaded BIN file in CH341a Software and Hit Program/Write button (depends on which version of CH341a you installed). Wait to program to finish and verify the file that you have uploaded to the chip.
10. Unsolder wires from the BIOS chip (or solder the chip to its place on motherboard, if you hooked it up directly to the CH341a).
11. Attach all connectors from your E555 to the motherboard with installed fresh bios, plug charger in charging port and hit power button of your E555. It should start in a few seconds.
Files
More Notes
The orientation of the attached chip to programmer MUST be like shown on the printed PCB of CH341a programmer on bottom left. Chip should be positioned on 25XX place. The marked dot on printed PCB shows where should be pin #1, which is also marked with dot on the bios chip Winbond.
Some people asked me why I didn't desoldered the chip using hot air gun and then reprogram it. I will explain:
1. Bios chip is soldered and glued with a silicone. If you want to desolder it, you should first remove that silicone, which is not so fast procedure.
2. When you use hot air gun, you transfer extra unnecessary heat to the chip and also to other components on the mainboard. There's always risk of damaging an element, even if you isolate the board with hot resisting tape.
3. If you desolder it, you should solder it to ch341a programmer, then after reprogramming you should desolder it and again you should solder it to mainboard. Every solder/desolder with hot air gun stress the chip and the chance of damage of course goes bigger.
