[Request]Dell Inspiron 15-7559 BIOS corrupted, need to Enable ME

BIOS/UEFI Modding BIOS Modding Requests
1

Hello everyone,

My laptop have a 30 minutes shutdown problem because of ME disabled. Followed ME clean guide re-flash ME region don’t work. I get a reply from plutomaniac it’s probably BIOS corrupted caused ME ‘Temporary disable mode’, I tried servel different edition BIOSes(.exe) from Dell, nothing changed. I’m stuck, have no idea how to mod the BIOS to make ‘Temporary disable mode’ disappear.

Guess someone knows well about BIOS may help me about it. Thank you in advance!
I’m not sure if information from ‘fpt -i’ is needed, maybe, pls refer. Attached SPI image too.

C:\Users\Wangs\Desktop\ME\Intel CSME System Tools v11 r29\Flash Programming Tool\WIN64>FPTW64.exe -i

Intel (R) Flash Programming Tool. Version: 11.8.70.3626
Copyright (c) 2007 - 2019, Intel Corporation. All rights reserved.

Reading HSFSTS register… Flash Descriptor: Valid

— Flash Devices Found —
GD25B32B ID:0xC84016 Size: 4096KB (32768Kb)

W25Q64FV ID:0xEF4017 Size: 8192KB (65536Kb)

— Flash Image Information –
Signature: VALID
Number of Flash Components: 2
Component 1 - 4096KB (32768Kb)
Component 2 - 8192KB (65536Kb)
Regions:
DESC - Base: 0x00000000, Limit: 0x00000FFF
BIOS - Base: 0x00400000, Limit: 0x00BFFFFF
CSME - Base: 0x00001000, Limit: 0x003FFFFF
GbE - Not present
PDR - Not present
EC - Not present
Master Region Access:
CPU/BIOS - ID: 0x00, Read: 0x00B, Write: 0x00A
ME - ID: 0x00, Read: 0x00D, Write: 0x00C
GbE - ID: 0x00, Read: 0x008, Write: 0x008
EC - ID: 0x00, Read: 0xFFF, Write: 0xFFF

Total Accessible SPI Memory: 12288KB, Total Installed SPI Memory: 12288KB

FPT Operation Successful.

spi_dump.zip (4.85 MB)

2

Dont know how the system will react to a programming with an SPI flasher with extracted original files or other user dumps, anyway you can use AMIUCP tool to extract the EXE container.
You’ll get bios and me BIN files.
Just presenting an option, you should wait for other opinions.

3

Download a Dell bios, unpack it as described. From BIOS_00.bin cut the last volume with GUID 9F8B1DEF-B62B-45F3-8282-BFD7EA19801B. Save the first part, should be precisely 8MB, a stock bios region. Take your dump and open in UEFITool, “exchange as is” bios region, check that the resulting file is exactly 12 MB, flash it with a programmer. You dont have machine specific information now, but if this error doesn’t disappear with a stock bios it’s not bios related.

4

@lfb6
I have no a AMIUCP tool available, but use wirteromfile get a .rom file, I’m not sure if it’s OK, but worth a try, I think. Split it with HxD get an precisely 8MB .bin file, checked with UEFITool GUID 9F8B1DEF-B62B-45F3-8282-BFD7EA19801B is gone as you mentioned, seems everyting is correct. As there’s 2 SPI chip, one is BIOS, another is FD&ME, I flashed BIOS chip with this 8MB bios .bin file directly, then boot. Run MEInfo -verbose, get a ‘Temporary disable mode’ again. Seems attempt failed again.

Then I prepare flash the original BIOS back, connet programmer, read, save. Open it with UEFITool to check if read correctly, find something different. The dump one have one more EfiFirmwareFileSystem2Guid. I’m not if it’s normal, or if it’s the problem located?
Thanks.

before.PNG

after.PNG

BIOS_extract from EXE.zip (3.51 MB)

BIOS_read after boot.zip (3.52 MB)

5

OK, good work! The file you get with /hdrfile is the bios region. The additional volume is normal, many stock bios regions have just one NVRAM volume and a second one gets cereated afterwards. Since there are some regions like NVRAM which don’t get updated in a normal bios process flashing a stock bios with “empty” NVRAM by programmer is one way to exclude corruption in NVRAM. The static volumes in your dump are identical to stock bios.

Since this didn’t have any effect on your problem and all main firmware regions are checked out good (ME and bios region) this is no longer related to the main firmware. Might be a problem with EC firmware (but this firmware is hidden in padding after 2nd NVRAM and should get updated automatically) or probably hardware- Sorry!

(Didn’t mention ‘load default values’ in bios settings and ‘clear cmos’ after flashin stock bios region, but normally this won’t do anything)