Hello,
I’ve read through the other threads regarding the 30 minute poweroffs and ME corruption, but I’m looking for some information on actually re-patching the ME.
I have an Intel desktop board with a mobile processor, and there are sadly no BIOS images available for it. After some power issues with a failing UPS, the system started the 30 minute power cycles.
The board has two WINBOND W25Q64.V 8Mb chips which I have dumped both. I did try the me_cleaner, as the ME was clearly corrupt anyways, and as expected, it did nothing. According to UEFITool, the ME is 9.0.3.1347 (In MEA, 9.0.3.1347 5MB). Is there any method to easily inject a new ME into the image? Thanks!
@XBrav - all the threads you read about 30 minute power off surely all have fixes in each one, that’s what we do here for this issue. ME Cleaner is not for what you want, ME Cleaner is meant for testing purposes, or people that want to disable ME for various reasons.
What you need to do is Fix ME not break if further than it already was 
I know you got that, just kidding.
The process to fix this will be like the many other threads you read, there’s some easy ways to do it if you have the right tools, otherwise it’s a battle dance until we help you find which method is possible for your situation.
Do you have a flash programmer? Sounds like it since you said you dumped the BIOS chips, but you could mean software dump so we need to know what your recovery situation is, software dumped or flash programmer?
First, you need to find which chip holds the ME and make sure that is all that’s on that chip, if not then you need to make sure you put it all back same way it’s meant to be. If you are unsure, upload both the dumps and I will let you know
Here is how you actually clean, correct, update and transfer your ME settings into a new working ME
ME FW Repo downloads - Intel Engine: Firmware Repositories
ME System Tools thread and ME version info/rules etc (you need ME System Tools V9-9.1 package, for Flash Image Tool and Flash Programming tool
Intel Management Engine: Drivers, Firmware & System Tools
And finally, how to use FITc to use your dump and a new clean ME FW file to transfer your settings and rebuild a new ME/BIOS image
[Guide] Clean Dumped Intel Engine (CS)ME/(CS)TXE Regions with Data Initialization
Thanks for the guide. I did follow those instructions (which required me to merge the two BIOS dumps), but flashing it didn’t seem to work (I was stuck at 0x0000).
The dumps were made with my Raspberry Pi as an SPI programmer (I had to dump another machine’s BIOS recently) with no pullup resistors or filtering caps. The secondary chip dumped happily multiple times, but the primary seemed to always have a few errors. Still, the image appears in-tact: https://mega.nz/#F!woJDFQpZ!jyw3HlDIG7ECvklYmbG32g
The above directory contains both halves and the merged one I was able to open in FITc. Can you see if anything looks awry?
I would’ve dumped through software, but apart from the jumpers being extremely cryptic, the BIOS is EDK II.
Thanks for the help!
Flashing mod BIOS may not work, and flashing a merged BIOS via programmer is more difficult. I would merge the image to create/fix it, then split again and program back as it should be one at a time to each bios chip
A few errors is no good, I would not use at all, an single byte error can cause drastic issues that you’d never know what was the cause. It looks OK, but looks means nothing other than it’s at least semi-OK and not trashed BIOS.
Do you know which dump goes to which chip? And which chip is the one that dumped with errors always? If you know which is which, you can use some other dump that is known working, then create a new fixed BIOS, split it and program per chip as originally setup.
SECROM is BIOS
PRIMROM is FD, GbE and ME
Is the merged one after you fixed ME or no and it’s just this image merged to the other one with no other changes?
What is this systems full exact model name, so I can try to find a good dump source for use to use. Also, do you have any stock images at all, even if only BIOS region partial update types, in case BIOS region was the chip that kept failing to dump error free on you.
I don’t think we’re likely to find a good image for this machine, but it’s a SHARK BAY MOBILE PLATFORM BASKING RIDGE FAB 2, product code MBSB3SPEQ. I picked up the system from a local e-Recycler as it’s incredibly unique.
As for the chip order, I labelled it according to the orientation on the board, going left-to-right. SECROM (AKA BIOS) dumped successfully and matched each time. The PRIMROM wasn’t dumping correctly. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with this chip, but it may explain why my system decided to go wonky.
I’m ordering some replacement chips from DigiKey just to have on hand. As the write verifies seem to fail in the same position 80% of the time, I’m gambling there’s been a failure in the EEPROM. The offsets (0x00400121 at SPI 10MHz, 0x00401e95 at SPI 5MHz, 0x00402195 at SPI 2MHz, etc) all seem to be in the same region, and from what I can see, are right in the middle of the ME blob.
The merged one SHOULD be just PRIM and SEC concat’d, and all files should be before I ran me_cleaner. I can’t confirm which order the chips are in unfortunately.
maybe the PRIMROM can be replaced and then be OK as it is, without changing anything to the BIOS files? Do you solder, if yes, may be worth a test before doing anything else BIOS-wise, in case that chip is going bad.
Since you’re ordering I assume you can, so I suggest you test that contents as-is before we redo me, but we can redo if it still does it.
Can you boot to windows, if yes, what does CPU-z show for the motherboard Model ID?
As for chip order, I asked because you need to know what was where in order to program them back same way, you can’t switch contents I mean. For the full image, I can split it, don’t need to know which is where in that.