HP Omen 17t-CK2000 Laptop with corrupted Intel ME Region

Special Topics Intel Management Engine
1

Hello everyone!

As the title suggests, HPs failure to properly provide support OR updates for such laptops is outstanding, therefore I am reaching out to this wonderful place.

2 months ago I updated my BIOS from F.11 to F.12 as per update recommendations. A few days later after updating, I was hit with a “Bitlocker recovery” screen. Unsure what caused it, I entered the recovery key and went on. I have some apps for my Engineering that need TPM Modules to be available most of the time. One of them warned that the TPM Module is missing. I went on the check the BIOS configuration and all seems to be clean and working:

  • TPM is set: Available
  • TPM has been: Cleared multiple times
  • Defaults were applied multiple times
  • CMOS has been reset multiple times (Win + V + (3 sec power button)
  • Attempts to downgrade BIOS failed (WIn + B +(3 sec power button) + USB with BIOS files
  • Clean installation: Windows 11 and Linux Ubuntu to verify that it wasn’t some sort of OS issue
  • HP’s own cloud recovery method
  • UEFI and Intel CPU diagnostics found no abnormalities.
  • ME in the BIOS has version: 0.0.0.0 Despite downloading all required drivers

NOTE: This laptop has fTPM module, not a physical one.

At this point I am greatly losing hope of restoring my laptop into it’s OEM bios config. So I am considering either some sort of bypass way to force flash older BIOS firmware (F.11) or get myself a CH341A/CH347 Programmer and just force reflash the entire BIOS chip, hopefully restoring these two pieces.

Peace!


Edit by Fernando: Thread moved into the better matching “Intel Management Engine” Forum Category

2

[Guide] Clean Dumped Intel Engine (CS)ME/(CS)TXE Regions with Data Initialization - Special Topics / Intel Management Engine - Win-Raid Forum

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Intel (CS) Management Engine: Drivers, Firmware and Tools for (CS)ME 16+ - Special Topics / Intel Management Engine - Win-Raid Forum

HP Notebook 15-ay102nf Bios Downgrade - BIOS/UEFI Modding / BIOS Modding Requests - Win-Raid Forum

3

Look like a corrupt ME, indeed. MeatWar gave you the link for the cleaning procedure already. This procedure is described for ME up to version 15, but 16.x will work accordingly.

For the Intel tools search for 16.1r0 in the forum. Try to make a dump with fptw64 -d SPI.bin

Unfortunately anti tampering / recovery features have been introduces widely in these generations notebooks. You should check for redundant information / other large SPI chips when dumping your firmware!

4

Thank you for the response. I am going to attempt to do all in the guide during the weekend. Hopefully all goes well.

5

The HP firmware update contains a complete Intel firmware image, so you could simply use the ME region extracted from this update and replace the ME region in your dump.

Your system might have a firmware TPM, so be sure to have secured the recovery information for every encrypted drive!

And again, make sure to check for recovery SPIs which may have duplicate information and to (cautiously) dump it, too.