I need a way to reset BIOS settings to factory defaults

Sorry to hear this but the laptop was working from the beginning and with an operating system installed. All malfunction was caused by its manipulation, which I understand is expert, but that cannot be verified if it was correct.

Manipulation of options given and posted here officially. Any other company supports Linux, only chuwi makes it this complicated. I’m getting back my money.

officially?
I have not seen an official thread with the instructions

In the instructions, an USB keyboard is mentioned. Is it a must to have in order for this to work?

Not 100% sure, but I don’t think so. I believe the instructions were originally written for a tablet.

Yep usb keyboard is for Tablet, I’m getting a ch341a chip flasher, seems to be the only solution, it costs like 5 dollars :wink: should work just flashing this [Lapbook Pro] [Official Version] Chuwi LapBook Pro Windows, Drivers,Download

Why do all this if the laptop is still new (less than 1 year old, in the warranty period)?

How exactly do you plan to extract the Windows key from the BIOS and flash it back again?

The guaranty is in China and I’m in Mexico and have to pay the shipping costs like 70 dollars, it takes more than 2 months to get it fixed and back they say, the BIOS is non functional and I’ve s windows professional key extra anyway, this is the cheapest and easiest solution, I’ll do exactly what they will do.

Good point. Didn’t know shipping costs could be that high (no response from Chuwi support at all).

Will probably also try to flash the BIOS: CH341A chip programmer with 1.8V adapter and soic8 clip (to avoid (de)soldering the chip).

You may not need to add the Windows key to the BIOS, if Windows is already activated at first boot and connected to the internet.

Has someone already opened the laptop and identified the BIOS chip?

I saw a teardown and it has a 25Q80CS16

It worked! :smiley: do this I already did it.
Also made a little tutorial, I got my Linux partition working and everything booting correctly

That is very good news.

Location of the chip: is it the 8-pin chip closest to the larger square indent on the heatsink?

Did you flash with (the standard) 3.3V, that is, without a 1.8V adapter?

Any other useful information maybe?

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Guys, by flashing the bios nothing will happen. I had the exact same issue (thanks by the way chuwi for shipping a bios that bricks your laptop if you change something in the config :+1:) and I flashed the bios several times, it didn’t work (be carefull however, there are two spi chips, the one further away from the cpu is for the embedded controller and has only 1mb of storage, the other one has such tiny legs, I found it very difficult to attach the clip, btw. the bios spi chip is 1.8v).
The reason why is that the bios config is not stored on the chip but in a separate NVRAM / CMOS. On desktop PC’s you would take out the CMOS battery, on this particular laptop I believe the only thing working is plugging off the power and battery for a sufficient long time. @joalruch did you plug off the power and battery for flashing? If not, what kind of flashing tool did you use?

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Please post in this thread if you are interested in getting coreboot BIOS support.

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Yes also is easy to identify since it’s the one that has a little colored dot (in mine was red) close to the processors plate, also the orientation for the tools is what matters remember there’s a little black circle in one of the corners which indicates to what side the red cable has to go and don’t forget to unplug the battery. The model I used was ch341a and the adaptor with 8 pins yes, once in the software, choose “identify”, once connected, it will find a Gigadevice 25q80. There’s plenty of YouTube tutorials about how to use it :smiley:

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First you have to disconnect the battery, then you connect the tool (ch341a and find the correct orientation) once there, in the software it must be detected as gigadevice 27q80) then erase it and flash the bios.bin file that management provides in another thread here in the forums, it booted fine after this, in my thread I also wrote how to boot into Linux and avoid the black screen. Hope it helps!

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Success! The laptop boots again after clearing the BIOS settings.

Thanks to the hint by @lead4good: leave the battery connector disconnected for a while. There is no need to flash the BIOS.

Steps:

  • Disconnect the laptop from the charger.
  • Open the laptop.
  • Lift the black tape that runs along the side of the battery. Lift it on the motherboard side were the connector is located.
  • Gently push the battery connector (the one with red, white, blue and black wires) out of its socket.
  • Wait a while (try one hour) and then reconnect the battery.

(I also pressed the power button for a few seconds while the battery was disconnected.)

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Please specify. I have a lapbook pro 8/256 Type: cwi530. He has a connector for connecting the battery: four black, one white, one yellow and four red wires.
Removing this connector and waiting for 12 hours did not bring any results.

I have the same model and specs. Everything I tried is mentioned in this thread.

There is only one large connector with wires to the motherboard. The rest are all flat cables IIRC. (You can unscrew the battery and lift it a little to look underneath and double-check which wires/cable are coming out of the battery.)

hmm … it’s strange that the model is the same, but the connectors are different. repeated these steps and left the laptop without power for 24 hours, this did not help. Here is my battery connector.

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