Hamra
TLDR: Anyone know of a good repair shop in Lebanon that knows how to unsolder and reprogram a bios/uefi chip?
Long Story:
I have an Asus ROG GL702VM Laptop. I've had it for a year and two months. A Month ago I decided to experiment with SecureBoot a bit since I already use a custom Linux system on it sometimes. I created my keys, signed the EFI loaders, and went into the bios screen, and added my custom keys. The laptop borked up. The nvidia chip stopped being able to authenticate itself on startup, so I get no POST screen until the OS loads up. Once my graphical system requests the GPU to start, it starts up. So the boot process is a black screen all the way to the OS login screen. I couldn't enter BIOS or do anything. I thought if I remove my OS from the UEFI list, the system will force itself into the BIOS. I ended up with a laptop that just shows a black screen, stuck at (I suspect) a BIOS error that it can't find an OS to load, but I see none of it.
After a week of emails with Asus support, they gave me the phone number of a company in Lebanon called T.Pro, and T.Pro gave me the number of "Mobile Station" in Zalka. I carefully explained my premise to the dude, and told him it can be resolved. Reflashing stock keys into the chip should solve it. Queue a week later, they call to inform me the entire board needs replacement. Uhm.. This laptop is besically a board, a screen, and some plastic cover. His reasoning is "After a while of running, the CPU fan goes on, the GPU fan stays off, looks like half your board is offline". Well duh, why would the fan go on if the GPU is idle? I already explained it worked when the boot entry was right.
I got the laptop back. I would much rather a professional do this dirty job rather than myself, but if I have to, I'm willing to do it myself. Already familiar with unsoldering chips, and the reprogramming kit isn't hard to find.