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

Yes, use UBU Tool to update the UNDI module.

Hello :slight_smile:

Here is ME FW 11.0.0.1180_COR_X_PRD_EXTR.

Intel ME Firmware 11.0.0.1180_COR_X_PRD_EXTR.zip (3.42 MB)

Intel ME 11.0 Corporate PCH-H Firmware v11.0.0.1180



@ Pacman:

Thank you for the firmware. Some notes:

1. There is no X SKU, only H and LP. When MEA does not know if the firmware is H or LP, it sets a placeholder SKU of X instead.
2. The 20-bytes (160-bits or 40 characters) at the end of the name are important for MEA as thatā€™s the way I differentiate between H and LP at the moment. Itā€™s actually the SHA-1 of a part of the firmware which is unique no matter CON/COR,H,LP,Stepping etc. I have a pre-defined table of SHA-1 hashes and thatā€™s how new Skylake firmware become ā€œknownā€ with new MEA releases. Until an actual detection is implemented (not up to me, UnHuffMe needs to be updated with ME11 support first as the SKU is found at the compressed Kernel subsection of FTPR region), you could leave that hash at the end of the file name when uploaded here. Not that I canā€™t re-calculate it, but why not? For the ME Thread or SD, the X needs to be replaced with either H or LP and the SHA-1 at the end is not needed.

Nope, error 1 with 1180 on my Z170ā€¦


Yes we know that. As before, only RGN images will work with FWUpdate. Not EXTR and not UPD. Not until Intel or the OEMā€™s fix the issue wherever it lies.

Here is 11.0.0.1180 Consumer & Corporate Stock Regions.

Intel ME 11.0 Consumer PCH-H Firmware v11.0.0.1180 (EXTR ā†’ RGN)
Intel ME 11.0 Corporate PCH-H Firmware v11.0.0.1180 (EXTR ā†’ RGN)


Thanks to Pacman for the clean regions. These are usable with FWUpdate for anyone interested.

So I updated MEI FW in the system in my signature to v8.1.65.1586. It went well.

About the driver, Intel MEI Driver v11.0.0.1166 INF for manual installation, on x64 it went well, but on x86 the file HECI.sys I had on my system was newer than one in the package. On the system I had 10.0.30.1054, while in the package the version is 10.0.27.1012.

Is it recommended to overwrite the older version? Is it known why the version number is so illogical?

@ GrofLuigi:

Check the .inf file to see the correct driver version. Otherwise, check the TeeDriverW8x64.sys and not HECI.sys driver.

Capture.PNG



TeeDriver is not installed on Win2003. By binary comparison of HECI.sys I found that the 10.xx (the old one I had, installed from the package with the same name, probably from here) is indeed newer.

It says:

Compiled at %s on %s Šœ13:01:30 ŠœSep 23 2014

While the one from the 11.xx says:

Compiled at %s on %s Šœ13:57:28 ŠœAug 5 2014

So there is no discrepancy in version numbers. They are correct.

I chanced upon this site because I was looking for possibility of modding ME regionā€¦

There was recent news about Intel Xeon E3 v5 being region locked to C236 chipset and speculation that it was due to Intel ME FW blocking bootup of these processors in mainstream 100 series motherboards. I have no knowledge about this kind of ME FW extraction or updating, but I managed to find one BIOS based on C236 chipset and used ME Analyser v1.3.8 to look at its ME FW. The ME FW is outdated and is labelled Corporate H, though it does state itā€™s for C236. Do you guys think transferring this C236 ME FW to a consumer 100 series BIOS will make it work with Xeon E3 v5?

|addpics|1tf-1-a5d2.png|/addpics|

@ GrofLuigi:

That would explain why they also include the older HECI.sys driver nowadays: for older operating systems such as XP/2003. So if you have such an OS then thatā€™s the driver that gets installed.

@ Scamperor:

As far as I can see you donā€™t rally need to mod anything for an LGA (not BGA) C236 board to work with Xeon chips. Intel has stated that it is compatible. From what I can see from Gigabyte MW31-SP0 (which is where I assume you found the image.bin file you showcased) the only difference is that C236 uses ME 11 firmware whereas C232 uses SPS 4 firmware (support for SPS 4 is ready and will be available at the next MEA version). So if you have an LGA C236 workstation board you should be able to use Xeon chips just fine. Here are some interesting articles that address that concern:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9730/intelā€¦e31200-v5-xeons
http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-xeon-eā€¦sktop-chipsets/

Regarding the non-workstation/server SKUs, they are not supported. It may very possibly be a restriction at ME firmware but I doubt Intel would allow changing that via tools such as FIT. I suppose itā€™s embedded into the firmware and just taking one from a C236 wonā€™t change anything. The ā€œPlatformā€ value that you see at MEA is the platform for which the firmware was built for at FIT. Itā€™s basically the drop-down menu at the top of the FIT window which is OEM/user adjustable. Also, as far as I know C236 only works with Corporate ME 11 firmware and not Consumer. In that case only H170, B150, Q150 & Q170 SKUs are the only remotely viable solutions either way.

Thanks plutomaniac.

I have a spare Gigabyte B150M-D3H in hand, so I donā€™t mind trying out a transfer of ME FW from C236 to the B150M to see if the Xeons will work. If the BIOS doesnā€™t work or gets corrupted / crashes, Iā€™ll just use the backup BIOS to restore things back. The unfortunate thing is I have no knowledge on how to extract or paste over ME FWā€¦

@ Scamperor:

Before you do the things below, can you do me a small favor? You have a Corporate SKU and I have been looking for a Corporate ME UPD image for some unrelated (to this issue) testing. Can you run FWUpdate tool with -save me.bin command and attach the output me.bin file? The actual command would be FWUpdLcl64 -save me.bin . Do you have any other 5MB/Corporate SKUs by any chance?

Now, the fact that you have a B150 SKU is a good first step even though Iā€™m fairly certain it wonā€™t work either way. But if you have the capability of restoring a bad flash then why not test it? I know Gigabyte prefers Dual-BIOS implementations and they sometimes leave the Flash Descriptor unlocked which are both good for what you are trying to do. Letā€™s test the latter, that your flash descriptor is unlocked. Run FPT with the command fptw64 -d spi.bin and check the result. If a full 16MB file called spi.bin got dumped then you are good to go. However, if you see Error 26 then your flash descriptor is locked and only by using a hardware programmer will you be able to restore the ME after a bad flash (and that may actually be a bad flash). If your flash descriptor is unlocked, keep that 16MB spi.bin dump of your chip in order to be able to restore it to the exact way it was before via the 2nd BIOS chip (verify it is working/booting properly before any of the above/below tests).

Now that we are certain the system can be restored in case things go wrong, I have created a new F4 ā€œBIOSā€ for you with the ME region from the C236 Gigabyte workstation. I need to emphasize this: itā€™s completely wrong to take the ME firmware of one machine and blindly transfer it to another without adjusting settings with FIT based on the already existing ME region of your own BIOS provided by the manufacturer. But, in this case, we are taking the most direct rout to see quickly and dirty if this method will even work at all and allow Xeon chips to work with a non-workstation board. The board will probably lose overclocking capabilities and stuff like that with that ME firmware but we can restore back in such case. What Iā€™m trying to say is that a) there will most probably be problems after doing that and b) even if it works and Xeon cpus are accepted, that firmware cannot stay at the system. In the latter case, after being happy that it works, we will have to track down the exact option that enabled Xeon chips on non-workstation SKUs. My belief is that if Intel know what they are doing, they will have locked the usage of Xeon chips on consumer SKUs at the silicon level or non-modifiable settings at the ā€œlocked/protectedā€ sections of the ME firmware. Still, letā€™s try it. The modded ā€œBIOSā€/SPI image is attached.

B150MD3H_C236.rar (6.42 MB)

Intel ME 11.0 Corporate PCH-LP Firmware v11.0.0.1180
Intel ME 11.0 Consumer PCH-LP Firmware v11.0.0.1173
Intel ME 11.0 Corporate PCH-H Firmware v11.0.0.1180 Re-Upload
Intel ME 11.0 Consumer PCH-H Firmware v11.0.0.1180 Re-Upload
Intel MEI Driver Installer v11.0.0.1169
Intel MEI Driver INF v11.0.0.1166 Re-Upload

Intel ME System Tools v11.0 r8:

Flash Image Tool v11.0.0.1180
Flash Programming Tool(DOS) v11.0.0.1180
Flash Programming Tool(EFI64) v11.0.0.1180
Flash Programming Tool(Windows) v11.0.0.1180
Flash Programming Tool(Windows64) v11.0.0.1180
FWUpdate(DOS) v11.0.0.1180
FWUpdate(EFI64) v11.0.0.1180
FWUpdate(Win) v11.0.0.1180
FWUpdate(Win64) v11.0.0.1180
MEInfo(DOS) v11.0.0.1180
MEInfo(EFI64) v11.0.0.1180
MEInfo(Windows) v11.0.0.1180
MEInfo(Windows64) v11.0.0.1180
MEManuf(DOS) v11.0.0.1180
MEManuf(EFI64) v11.0.0.1180
MEManuf(Windows) v11.0.0.1180
MEManuf(Windows64) v11.0.0.1180
CCT(DOS) v11.0.0.1180
CCT(EFI) v11.0.0.1180
CCT(Windows) v11.0.0.1180
Manifest Extension Utility v11.0.0.1180
Consumer FW Release Notes v11.0.0.1173
Corporate FW Release Notes v11.0.0.1168
SPT Consumer FW Bring Up Guide v1.0 PV
SPT Corporate FW Bring Up Guide v1.1 PV
SKL SPT BIOS Release Notes v95.2

Please i need help about firmware update,

Screenshot_1.png

Screenshot_2.png




I recently flash bios but my firmware is still 9.0.30.1482ā€¦after reading first page the latest firmware i can use is
Intel ME 9.0 Consumer 1.5MB Firmware v9.0.31.1487ā€¦am I right?

Iā€™m a little worried about ,is it safe updating firmware?

thx

@ all:

Has anyone tried the 11.0.0.1180 FWUpdate tool with an EXTR ME region to see if the bug is fixed already? Of course only people with Skylake systems can test that. Meanwhile, Pacman and I have figured out where the problem is exactly and in case 1180 still doesnā€™t solve it, we are looking for some testers. It has been verified to work at one Skylake system.

@ allee:

Yes, latest for your system is 1.5MB 9.0.31.1487 firmware. By the way, thank you for using MEA.

I just tried flashing an extracted 1180 image while on FW 1178, using FWUpdate 1180, but sadly same error 1 as before.

why get this when try to use ME Analyzer v1.3.8

Screenshot_1.png



i use windows 7- 64 uefi

@ allee:

There is no point in running MEA without a filename afterwards. What is it going to analyze then? I have added a help screen at the next version of MEA: