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Updating your firmware comes with certain risks, and if you don’t perform it properly you can cause damage to your PC or even file loss.
This is exactly what some users experienced with their Razer Blade 14, so let’s take a closer look at this case and see what went wrong.
Do the following to avoid bricking your Razer Blade 14 during a firmware update
Updating your firmware is important, but if it goes wrong, you might find yourself in trouble, and this is exactly what happened to one unlucky Reddit user. Here’s how he described his issue:
I wanted to update the firmware so went to razer’s official website and downloaded the latest firmware updater.
I installed it alongside synapse and proceeded with the update. It said that the update was successful but after the restart the second attached image appeared saying new CPU is installed and that fTPM is corrupted. I hit N but the system restarted and gave me the same screen so l hit Y and it boot windows but my windows hello was gone.
Luckily for him, this was expected because when you update the laptop firmware, the fTPM that is inside the firmware sometimes gets changed as well, and it needs to be reset to work.
When you updated your laptop’s firmware the fTPM changed so the fTPM needs to be reset to generate a new TPM key.
You’ll need to sign in with your password and reset the PIN. Before you do that make sure that you have pressed “Y” during that warning screen in the second picture to reset the TPM key, otherwise, you might have trouble resetting the PIN.
This can fix the problem with the PIN, but as users write, updating firmware can also affect BitLocker:
Security features that rely on the TPM key like BitLocker will stop working because they were set up with the old key and you’ll have a new key now.
When fTPM changes, you won’t be able to bypass BitLocker, and you’ll likely have to use your recovery key to get access, so maybe disabling BitLocker before the firmware update can help you.
It’s important to mention that some updates will affect TPM while others won’t, so always read the release notes and prepare yourself properly.
It depends on the bios update. Some clear your TPM and others don’t. It’ll usually mention it in the release notes if it will.
Some users are blaming Razer for this problem, saying that this is a common glitch with Razer software and devices:
Just don’t use razer software, I stopped when they rolled out the update which disabled razers’ 7.1 spatial sound drivers on headsets that were marketed to support them
Speaking of firmware new Alienware AW3225QF firmware was just released, and it fixes various issues, so be sure to get it.
Milan Stanojevic
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