HP EliteBook 840 G8 ME firmware corrupted

Special Topics Intel Management Engine
1

Hello,

Windows decided to do a BIOS update on my computer and something got messed up with the Intel ME. It shows an error that says something along the lines of:

”Full Recovery of the Intel Management Engine Firmware failed, because the system was unable to find a valid firmware image file. Intel Management Engine related functionality will be unavailable. Please install the latest version of Intel Management Engine Firmware to complete full recovery. (continue button)”

If I press continue then the computer mostly works, but I have no fingerprint sensor (in Windows, works in Linux) and bad sound (works with only the basic HD audio driver).

I have tried reinstalling the BIOS in both Windows and Linux to no avail. HP also released a BIOS update recently which I hoped would fix things, but when I try to install it, it simply doesn’t install, even after leaving it for multiple hours.

Next, I attempted to do the cleaning ME guide that’s pinned in the Intel ME section, but it keeps giving me errors parsing the BIOS dump that I made in Intel Flash Image Tool (15.0.35.1951 also from the tutorial).

Serial number is 5CG11717WF. I have attached the dumps that I made of the BIOS and what I think is the EC. If someone could give me some guidance as to how to proceed from here, that’d be great. And if any of you need more information, let me know.

Dumps: https://files.catbox.moe/1c67fx.zip (If you need me to upload to a different file sharing platform I can do that)

2

Make dumps of the fowling:

Botside

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Topside

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3

Here are the three chips:

https://files.catbox.moe/i15p3i.zip

If you need any other information then let me know. Thanks!

edit: only uploaded the one with two dumps originally but this one should be good

4

Here’s 3 CSME regions from 3 working dumps of this system

5

I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it properly because now that I flashed it my laptop doesn’t turn on (blinking caps lock light 5 times). I think there might be some ME rollback protection but I’m not the expert on this. I have yet to flash my BIOS back to the original backup but could you tell me maybe where I went wrong? I’m a total noob at this so I apologize if I messed something simple up.

  1. Downloaded the files attached and picked the latest version (Region_ME_ME_region_15.0.41.2158.rgn)
  2. Used UEFITool to replace the ME region from my BIOS dump with that one
  3. It now allows me to import it in Intel Flash Tool so I did that and then followed the rest of the pinned guide about cleaning the ME.
    1. As a side note to that, I used an older version of ME (15.0.35.1951) that was found in the repository because there were no more recent ones that were RGN and not EXTR. The guide says to not use EXTR but there is one that matched my existing 15.0.55
  4. Then I flashed the BIOS and verified it flashed correctly
  5. I definitely did something wrong because upon reconnecting the battery and plugging in the power adapter, the caps lock now blinks 5 times

Hopefully I messed up the process and not my computer. I appreciate the help a lot.

7

My motherboard model is 6050A3217501-MB-A01, and the dump seems to be from a different motherboard model (6050A3419601-MB-A01). Is it still safe to flash? If not, do you happen to have a dump of the ICs from the same/a compatible motherboard? I’m so sorry for asking this many questions.

8

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