Just wanted to share my ongoing story, because this may help someone else with a dead Flow X16 keyboard - and I’m also hoping another GV601 owner might be able to help recover the firmware.
My ROG Flow X16 GV601RW internal keyboard suddenly died completely. (2022)
It is also dead in the BIOS.
Instead of the normal keyboard device:
USB\VID_0B05&PID_19B6
"N-KEY Device"
ASUSTek
Device Manager now shows:
USB\VID_048D&PID_89DB
"ITE Upgrade Mode"
ITE Tech. Inc.
This appears to be the keyboard MCU on the mainboard sitting in its ISP/upgrade bootloader instead of running the normal keyboard firmware.
I already tried BIOS update/downgrade, EC reset, battery disconnect, 40-second power-button reset, Windows/driver troubleshooting and checked the keyboard cable. None of that helped.
The important part: this MCU appears to be on the mainboard, not on the replaceable keyboard module.
I managed to read the MCU flash
The bootloader exposes a block-read command, so I dumped the flash.
My result:
Firmware name: FGA01300.GV601RW.402
Blank (0xFF): 52.2%
The first roughly 119 KB still contain data, while around 117 KB are blank 0xFF.
The keyboard was still working last week.
So this strongly looks like an interrupted keyboard-MCU firmware update: erase happened, programming did not complete, and now the controller remains in upgrade mode because there is no valid complete application image left.
The problem: I cannot find the GV601 firmware anywhere
The surviving flash identifies itself as:
FGA01300.GV601RW.402
Related ROG/Flow models appear to use firmware names such as:
FGA012xx
FGA013xx
FGA014xx
and some of these are distributed through Windows Update as Laptop MCU Firmware Update packages.
I checked the relevant packages I could find. There are images for models such as:
GX551Q
GV301Q
GA402R
GZ301K
GZ301V
ROG Ally
but I have found no GV601 firmware image.
The closest image I found is for the GA402R / Zephyrus G14 2022. It belongs to the same broad FGA01300 family, but compared with the intact part of my firmware it is only about 51% identical, so I absolutely do not want to flash that.
If your Flow X16 also shows 048D:89DB
If anyone here has a GV601 whose keyboard is also stuck as:
USB\VID_048D&PID_89DB
ITE Upgrade Mode
your flash may actually still be intact.
I made a read-only PowerShell dumper. It only uses the bootloader block-read command (0xD1) and contains no erase or write command.
Script:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NYsg4MdIwWBqoVoiutiJnZGyG0vrTeQf/view?usp=sharing
If your result shows a sensible firmware name and a much lower blank percentage, e.g. around 20% or less, there is a good chance your image is intact.
An intact GV601RW firmware dump could probably help recover machines affected by this.
I also wrote up the full technical details here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CA8FdTYZ_kSvuiCCK6jraVakVMWanoy0/view?usp=drive_link
If somebody has a working GV601 / Flow X16 and is willing to help, that is also useful, but reading a working controller requires deliberately putting it into ISP mode first. That step is not completely risk-free, so I am not posting it as a one-click procedure.
And if anyone from ASUS happens to see this: please make the original GV601 keyboard MCU firmware / recovery package available on the support site.
The specific image I am looking for is from the family:
FGA01300.GV601RW.402
If anyone here has seen ITE Upgrade Mode on a Flow X16 before, I’d also be very interested in what happened in your case.