Hi,
I have a board with a corrupt ME Region which I am trying to fix. The normal tools for updating ME fail (behave as though the device is absent) and the ME version is listed a "N/A" in the bios. I understand that the correct procedure in this case is to reflash the ME region of the flash. I have unlocked the flash descriptor however I can see from reading the sticky that I cannot just flash a RGN or a EXTR directly to the board because an RGN must be configured first, and an EXTR will have initialisation information that must be cleaned.
I am thus trying to clean as per the guide but I have come to a problem. I have the correct RGN for my my board (ME9.1_5M_Production.bin) but all of these seem to be around 9mb in size. The ME region on the board is only 5mb. Can anyone explain the confusion? All of the RGN ME files seem to be 9mb in size despite being described as 5mb…
Regards,
Achelon
Hi Achelon,
First of all I’d like to thank you for having done your research prior to creating this thread. Everything you said at the first paragraph is correct. The SKU names of 1.5MB and 5MB are not really indicative of the actual firmware size so don’t pay attention to that. Just make sure you use the correct one (5MB in your case). The 5MB RGN firmware are always larger than the 5MB EXTR because they include some additional/temporary partitions which are used while FIT configures the output SPI image. Specifically, RGN include all possible Languages & Wireless Microcodes but the user selects one for each at the FIT settings so the rest are discarded at the outputted 5MB EXTR image. So everything is normal as FIT will take care of these things by itself once the saved settings are loaded back while following the CleanUp Guide.
Many thanks for your advice. I have restored the Management Engine on this board to its former splendour.
Regards,
Achelon
Hi,
Having done some testing, it is apparent that while functioning perfectly, the ME Engine does not think that manufacturing has closed:
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MEI found: [8086:8c3a] Device 8c3a
ME Status : 0x1e000255
ME Status 2 : 0x69002306
ME: FW Partition Table : OK
ME: Bringup Loader Failure : NO
ME: Firmware Init Complete : YES
ME: Manufacturing Mode : YES
ME: Boot Options Present : NO
ME: Update In Progress : NO
ME: Current Working State : Normal
ME: Current Operation State : M0 with UMA
ME: Current Operation Mode : Normal
ME: Error Code : No Error
ME: Progress Phase : Host Communication
ME: Power Management Event : Non-power cycle reset
ME: Progress Phase State : Host communication established
Can anyone advise what the steps are to close manufacturing? I did a search and it seems that this problem can be caused by an unlocked Flash Descriptor. My descriptor is indeed unlocked. Before I relock the Flash Descriptor, are there any other steps I should take?
Regards,
Achelon
This is not really a problem. If you lock the FD you won’t be able to re-flash the firmware for repair purposes but you system will be more secure. If you choose to lock the FD, you can do it via Flash Programming Tool’s command “fptw -closemnf”.