Intel (Converged Security) Management Engine: Drivers, Firmware and Tools (2-15)

Never heard of a difference between “update” or “full firmware”? I didn’t ever mess around with region settings in the CSME FW updates.
In all these years I always proceeded as explained at page 1 to get the systems CSME updated. In this case with fit v15 - which worked well with my LP chipsets.
Just with the v15 H chipset I noticed IUP SAMF as something new which I haven’t found anywhere explained or documented.
You can take a look at the CSME v15 from Lenovo 11MY - it’s a “M70q Gen2”, which is the one I am trying to upgrade from 15.0.41 to 15.0.42

Maybe you didn’t but there’s the possibility and how would I know what you did or didn’t?

Latest firmware update for your Lenovo (Consumer H) did indeed contain a SAMF module, if you look into the 15.0.42 firmware update from for example ASUS there the same SAMF IUP module included as in the 15.0.41 Lenovo update. So I’d just stitch the update file as earlier, the SAMF IUP isn’t necessary to stitch a proper ME update file.

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Thank you :slight_smile: your hint gave me the needed file - as the prestitched one from Asus fitted perfectly for the FW upgrade. Now my Lenovos have 15.0.42 with SAMF.
As this question will rise again when having to prestitch newer FWs, do you know where to get the repositories for IUPs like SAMF? So to be integrated into the FIT procedure? There has to be a way to extract these? I mean, I do not even know what SAMF stands for.

Yes, if the the type of the CSME is correct, the update files aren’t machiine-type or vendor specific since it’s just code, no settings. So the ASUS file will work as well as the one you stitched together.

Regarding SAMF- afaik it got introduced together with the PHY IUP for RKL Thunderbolt 4 support. It’s not required in an update image but might be added.

For ME 14 there isn’t even a version number, for ME 15 there is, but I can’t find updates since even bioses from 01/2021 have version 1.17 and there seems to be no difference for Consumer or Corporate versions either. It’s about 0x4000 of static code- and since there are no changes there’s no repository.

Maybe plutomaniac can translate the name or has information about the function.

Address and size in ME 15 update file (here 0x310000, 0x004000):

Version (here 1.17)
13

So if it makes you happy just stitch it into the firmware update, but as long as it’s still 1.17 it doesn’t really matter…

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╔═══════════════════════════════════════════╗
║         ME Analyzer v1.283.3 r321         ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════════════╝

╔════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║             R440-021701C (1/1)             ║
╟─────────────────────────────┬──────────────╢
║            Family           │   CSE SPS    ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║           Version           │ 04.01.04.901 ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║           Release           │  Production  ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║             Type            │  Extracted   ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║             SKU             │    Server    ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║           Chipset           │  LBG-H B,A   ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║ TCB Security Version Number │      3       ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║ ARB Security Version Number │      0       ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║    Version Control Number   │      0       ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║       Production Ready      │     Yes      ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║      OEM Configuration      │      No      ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║             Date            │  2022-11-02  ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║      File System State      │  Configured  ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║             Size            │   0x37E000   ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║       Flash Image Tool      │ 04.01.04.901 ║
╟─────────────────────────────┼──────────────╢
║       Chipset Support       │    Purley    ║
╚═════════════════════════════╧══════════════╝

Do we have CSME tools for this?

Wrong thread…

[C. Intel (Converged Security) Server Platform Services (SPS)]( Intel (CS)ME, (CS)TXE, (CS)SPS, GSC, PMC, PCHC, PHY & OROM Firmware Repositories - Special Topics / Intel Management Engine - Win-Raid Forum (level1techs.com)

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@MeatWar I’ve had a chance to look at that thread and I don’t see any link to download the (SPS) ME System Tools posted there. Do you know where I can find v4 of those by chance? There are a few links around the forum where random people have posted download links for them, but those are all dead :-/

The tool can be in this forum, user shared around other threads but ill not loose time searching for it, but mainly thats the statement from Plutomanic

Hello everyone, I am new here. I have a Gigabyte GA-H55M-S2 motherboard that I removed the ME_BIOS chip and copied, then deleted it and tried to write again however now the board is stuck in an on and off cycle. Is there any way to recover the Intel ME image? I know there are some very skilled people here, I would appreciate any tips to give me some direction.

Anyone?

That motherboard has dual bios so you probably can recover it by forcing the second BIOS. If not, you can download the full bios directly from the gigabyte website and flash it using an external programmer.

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What did you want to achieve with this action / did you make changes to the image you flashed back?

Post / attach the content of your dump(s).

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Hello, TigTex. My problem is in BIOS_ME, the other bios I know are fine, because before I modified BIOS_ME the motherboard showed video. The bios writes were done externally via programmer removing the chips from the board.

Then you have a backup right?
Perform an ME reinitialization/Clean: [Guide] Clean Dumped Intel Engine (CS)ME/(CS)TXE Regions with Data Initialization - Special Topics / Intel Management Engine - Win-Raid Forum (level1techs.com)
Write it back to the 3rd chip

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Hi lfb6.

I decided to modify the board to try to solve a reset and shutdown problem that this board presents, I followed the instructions from the following link: The system does not shut down properly and has ME error....need an urgent solution, everything worked as user plutomaniac quoted, however my mistake was not paying attention that my board model was actually GA-H55M-S2 without the V, after doing the flash with the Intel FPT tool the board stopped showing video.

Before doing anything I had removed all the bios chips from the board and copied via external programmer (TL866II), as the board was without video after the flash of Intel FPT I removed the chips again and redo the flash, however the board was stuck in the loop on and off, I suspect the cause is the BIOS_ME because the plutomaniac itself had previously warned that the flash can not be done by other ways than by intel utility.

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I believe that will solve it :grinning:. Thank you very much for pointing me in a direction, I will give it a try as soon as possible and post the result.

Well, it’d be interesting to see what you did flash to which chip, since the file provided by Plutomaniac is a complete firmware image.
Did you flash both chips with Plutomaniacs firmware? The ME configuration seems not to be too different, the relevant parts may be identical, that could work, but the bios region is different. The flash descriptor isn’tcorrect regarding region size and start address, in addition Gigabyte did hide a bios in the last MB of the 8MB chip. One might easily get confused.
So again, be careful what you flash to which chip

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Hi guys!

The board was repaired, well… at least it shows video now.

About 2 days ago I bought a defective board (does not turn on), a GA-H55M-S2V in hopes of reusing her bios chips on this board that corrupted the ME_BIOS, when the board arrived I put the bios chips in GA-H55M-S2 but it did not work, as I have some electronics equipment here, I ended up repairing this board that does not turn on, now it turns on and displays video.

I decided to do an experiment, removed the BIOS_ME of this board and put wires to an SOP adapter, my idea was to boot the board with all the original BIOS and enter DOS to use the Intel FPT utility, but when doing the flash I remove the BIOS_ME and put the one that is corrupted in place, as I mentioned earlier I have the backup when the board still worked.

The procedure worked perfectly, I even thought that Intel FPT would do some sort of check on the chipset or BIOS chip, apparently not.

Now that the previous card worked again, I started looking for a correction bios for the problem of reset and shutdown that I mentioned, this time the right model “GA-H55M-S2” without the V, I found on this forum’s own Gigabyte a BIOS_ME for this card “https://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=11590.0”, did the flash following the instructions from the link “https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/the-system-does-not-shut-down-properly-and-has-me-error-need-an-urgent-solution/32276/6”, after the flash the card starts immediately (before it took more than 30 seconds) and the reset button that before did not work, now works normally.

But there is still a problem, although the board shows video, it only displays with an external video card, if I try to boot from the onboard video it gives one long and two short beeps, I suspect this is still related to the BIOS_ME because with the previous version of flash the onboard video worked normally, now I do not know exactly what to do, because with the old BIOS_ME I had the reset and shutdown problems, but functional video onboard, with this BIOS_ME of the Gigabyte forum I eliminate the problems of shutdown and reset but the video onboard does not work.

Following MeatWar’s tips I will try to create my own BIOS_ME image to try to fix this last detail of the board.

I attached the photos and BIOS of the board, before and after modifications.




Bios Dump

Hi, see there in my post that I posted the copy of the images from the board bios. Thanks for trying to help :grinning:.

The problem is probably not in the ME region but the bios region…

Try:
BG_clean_F4_300.zip (3.0 MB)

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