since a very long time I am having problems with my laptop.
It takes around 20 seconds to post and when I am trying to suspend it switches off, but after some seconds it cold boots again.
I tested it with a clean Windows install and various Linux images.
I am suspecting it’s and issue with flash chip contents or an broken NVRAM setting?
I already reflashed the latest bios from Dell and reset to factory defaults via the bootloader (poweroff, hold STRG+ESC and plug in ac), but the issues remained.
What’s interesting as well is that I can’t update the bios with this tool at all. When I run it the system reboots as it should, but it’s not flashing anything and just clean boots. I can only do it by renaming it and flash it via the bootloader.
Is there a way to reset the NVRAM and delete all unecessary stuff?
Do you think I could get it working again by flashing an edited dump from an working laptop? A friend of me has the same machine.
How can I dump and flash the whole EEPROM? Can I do it without an external device?
It’s preferable to work on ones own firmware- dump.
Regarding freshly re-configuring ME region to remove corruption see
Dell update contains a bios region, not a complete firmware image. It normally is easier to use a stock bios region and import the machine specific data from the firmware dump.
You may try to update the ME firmware to the latest 11.8 firmware, Intel tools and link to latest 11.8 ME firmware are here (if the update doen’t work it might be a sign of a corrupt ME):
Intel tools (fpt) can be used for a complete dump by software (if not restricted), too.
thank you for your detailed answer. I am back from testing.
I was not able to update the ME firmware with “FWUpdate”, so it’s probably really corrupt as
we assumed. I didn’t even have an ME device in the device manager or one that hasn’t any driver.
This was the error of “FWUpdate”, and “MEInfo”, which I tested too:
Error 8743: Unknown or Unsupported Platform
Cannot locate hardware platform identification
This program cannot be run on the current platform.
“FPT” told me that the ME region is locked:
Error 318: The host CPU does not have read access to the target flash area. To enable read access for this operation you must modify the descriptor settings to give host access to this region. FPT Operation Failed.
So I dumped the BIOS region to look for hidden BIOS variables to allow ME flash. For this I extracted the “Setup PE32 section” and converted it to text. I added this and the variables that I have found so far. See the attachment.
I tried all possible combinations and nothing worked. “Me FW Image Re-Flash” even reset itself to it’s default value directly after I entered “reboot”.
So I digged deeper and looked for the pinmod for my motherboard and found this:
I would really love to see a successful example of a Service Mode Switch operation work on a Dell laptop. This is the 2nd time recently that it didn’t seem to work.
There’s a lot that’s cyan colored (microcodes) in that bios. If you have a desire to update your MC, FPT won’t work, but it would be nice to dump the whole chip.
Maybe you don’t have a solid 1-2 connection or it came loose?
Never say never, but I don’t think it’s a bad connection. I even resoldered it a second time, because I thought perhaps it’s a bad connection. I also checked it with a multimeter and the connection is there.
Can you try it again, and then take a shot at dumping your full bios with fptw64 -d backup.bin in the Flash Programming Tool\WIN64 folder?
Unfortunately that does not work, because of the locked ME region. It instantly stops and the tool doesn’t dump anything at all.
I will proceed, when I have received the hardware programmer.
