Sony Vaio Pro 13 - SVP1321C5E bios issues

Yes, flash BIOS and then test the only the two new settings in “Boot” section, only two settings needed tested, but four ways. Hopefully they show up at least! They are suppressed oddly, so not sure if I made them visible or not, but I think so.
There should be two new settings, with two options each, and I’d like to know outcome of each set both ways, so four ways to test there (combo of each one, set differently)
And, aside from that, do you see any new main BIOS sections across the top?

@Lost_N_BIOS

so i flashed the bios and i booted into it, theres no new menu options at the top.

as i navigate to the boot menu theres a new option but it only says [Disabled] in the middle of the screen and nothing else.

i cant select it as the mouse is stuck to the corner of the screen and everytime i try to select it, it just flashes a box that has enabled and disabled options in it.

Edit: i shutdown and booted back into bios and now the mouse works fine and i can now select the new option in the boot menu. What should i do?

Test the options as mentioned, there should be two new options there now both named MAIN, do you only see one?

@Lost_N_BIOS

See attached, thats the only option i have and if i enable it it greys out all the rest of the bios features and the only option i have is to shutdown in the exit menu. Default its disabled.

20200520_182154.jpg

Does it always look like that, with no visible name? Anyway, OK, thanks, I will rehide that again, and then send you new BIOS with the other setting that wasn’t showing up manually set both ways, so you can see which, if either, shows anything new or what they do etc.
Then we will carry on with a regular mod attempt, but Sony… so we may not make any progress, especially since you already said no new sections currently.

Edit:

@Lost_N_BIOS

yeah it always looks like that everytime i boot into it, no worries will wait for new bios to test.

But yeah, Sony…!

Im just happy i have a working bios, anything else is just a bonus so many thanks again for all the help Lost! :smiley:

P.S. anything i could do to improve performance and/or battery life??

@muteen - Thanks for info. Here is next test. Tell me, do you see different “Main”, I’m talking about the main page not the previous Main in boot area (this is now hidden again)
Additionally, do you see any new menus across top? And, check all sections at a glance, are they same as before, or now different?
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil…774911684251538

Performance/battery life, not sure, maybe lower CPU speed would save battery some, but that’s not ideal It does downclock CPU speed now when at idle, correct? If not, change power plan in windows, reboot and check again.

Unfortunately I’m in a similar situation as the original poster was…In order to get my Sony Vaio Pro SVP132A1CM (which is equivalent to the SVP1321C5E) working with my new Samsung 970 EVO SSD, I tried to follow a guide on Win-Raid and update the BIOS (adding NVMe drivers), this resulted in me bricking the laptop.

In order to fix this I purchased a TL866II programmer and clip to flash the BIOS (Winbond 25q64fvsiq) with a backup (made using AFUWINGUIx64.EXE) I had made. This worked, however now within the BIOS the ME version appears as version 0.0.0.0 and this causes the laptop to shutdown every 30 minutes.

I have tried reflashing the BIOS (original backup and ones found on the internet) with both the TL866II programmer and fptw64.exe on a bootable FreeDOS USB, however the ME within the BIOS still remains at version 0.0.0.0. This is still true if I boot back into Windows and run fptw64.exe -greset from a command prompt (which succeeds and reboots the laptop).

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

@VAIO Please post your own (first) backup of the original bios and the backup of your bricked bios you (hopefully) made with the programmer before flashing anything into the chip.

Windows flash tools do not always backup all regions of the SPI. It’s probably not the bios ‘showing version 0.0.0.0’ that makes your laptop reboot after 30 minutes but a corrupt ME that makes your bios show ME version 0 and lets it reboot.

@lfb6 here is the original copy of my BIOS made with AFUWINGUIx64.EXE, unfortunately I was stupid and forgot to backup the bricked BIOS before overwriting it with my SPI flash programmer.

afuwin.zip (2.66 MB)

@VAIO OK- as expected the AFUWIN** thing didn’t do a complete backup. Structure seems to be OK, but ME is replaced by a placeholder, it’s just FF.

Clipboard03.jpg



Don’t flash something like that without checking the content and without taking a backup of whatever might be left in the chip first. There might’ve been a slight chance of recovering somthing from the bricked bios depending on the way you flashed your mod.

=> You need a complete bios dump of an identical machine to copy ME settings and create a clean ME region

Oh well that doesn’t sound good!

I found another BIOS dump for a similar machine and using UEFITool, replaced the ME region in my dump with the one in the other BIOS. I then flashed my original BIOS with the modification using my FreeDOS USB and once booted into Windows again, performed the reset with fptw64.exe. Unfortunately this had no effect, ME version still appears as 0.0.0.0. Do you have any idea if this would be the correct procedure once I find a more suitable BIOS dump?

@VAIO It would make things easier if you’d explain all the things you did directly from start. Knowing that you did exchange the ME region I could spare writing some explanations where to find the tools and how to use them.

I don’t care too much about the 0.0… in your bios. Check the files you flash with MEA https://github.com/platomav/MEAnalyzer/releases , it should give you a valid answer about found ME version. When having a booting system use ME tools (possibly 9.5) and check MEINFO*.exe -fwsts. Please post the result.

Please post the bios you’re using now, too.


Do/ did you have a program installed that is named VAIO care? What does it say for the model number?

If it says SVP1321C5E: Sony has a bios update for this model which contains the ME region:
https://www.sony.at/electronics/support/…nloads/Z0001381

If this is the correct model: Easiest way would be to try to use this updaet- utility. Maybe it will update the ME region, too.

If this doesn’t work:
Extract the bios (start program, continue until program shows version information and asks to flash. Don’t close, look into %programdata%\Sony… you’ll find a 8MB .cap file. Copy this file to another place (it’ll be deleted when closing the VAIO update program).
Other option would be the extractor from https://github.com/platomav/BIOSUtilities

Open the .cap file in UEFItoolNE (https://github.com/LongSoft/UEFITool/releases), right click on ME region, extract as is.

Open your backed up bios file in UEFItool 025 (https://github.com/LongSoft/UEFITool/releases), right click on ME region, replace as is and choose the ME region extracted from factory bios.

That should give a complete bios dump you could flash back with the programmer.
- You could post the file here before flashing.
- Please do a backup of the chip content before flashing.

Many thanks for your comprehensive response. Please find attached within ZIP:

-Current BIOS (R1045V7) read using my TL866II programmer (when ME Analyzer was ran, Intel Engine firmware not found)
-Image file showing result from MEINFO*.exe -fwsts on above current BIOS

-Modified version of original BIOS upload read using AFUWINGUIx64.EXE (ME has been replaced with Sony provided BIOS update Z0001381)
- Image file showing result from MEA on above modified BIOS


VAIO Care tells me my model number is as you have written (SVP1321C5E), upon downloading the BIOS update, nothing was updated as my system appears to be already up to date.

Thanks

various.zip (2.78 MB)

afuwin(updated).zip (3.77 MB)

@VAIO Thanks for providing the files. What you backed up with your 866 programmer looks interesting, it’s quite impressing that your machine can boot! Regarding output of MEInfo* it’s easier for copy/paste to redirect output into a text file, for example “MEInfo64.exe -fwsts > fwsts.txt” will create a textfiles fwsts.txt in the same drectory containig all the output the programm was generating. You can then copy this text and paste it here (into a spoiler if it’s very long).

Anyway- the image in afuwin(updated).zip looks good so far. Next step would be to flash this bios with your programmer. After programming please read it back to a file and compare this read back image with the original file, they should be bitwise identical. HxD has a compare function (Analysis, data comparison…). On the command line it’d be “fc /b file1 file2”.

This should resolve the 30 min reboot and probably your ME version will be displayed correctly in bios.

Regarding the NVME driver: Afaik this Ultrabook came in two configurations- M2 SATA SSD and M2 NVME SSD. Since your bios doesn’t contain the NVME driver you seem to have the SATA version. Are you sure this M2 slot supports NVME, too?

Anyway, let’s restore your system to stock first, see how/ that it works…

@lfb6 all appears to be working now, my ME has a version within the BIOS and the ME appears in Device Manager, many thanks for your help. It turns out that using fptw64.exe on my bootable FreeDOS USB to flash the working BIOS had no effect and I needed to use a CH341A SPI EEPROM programmer I had (my TL866II unit seemed to fail and would randomly increment the written HEX).

The only problem I had with using the CH341A device is that when the BIOS was read back, there were 6 small difference between it and the version which was flashed. I tried both the writing and reading process numerous time and this always seemed to happed (the read back files were always identical though). I have attached the read back BIOS, do you think these small changes are likely to cause an issue?

With regard to the compatibility of my laptop with the Samsung 970 EVO, operating systems are able to see it, however the BIOS cannot. Using the Clover EFI bootloader on a USB stick I am able to load the SSD drivers and then run Windows. Would be great to add support to the BIOS, but not sure I am quite ready to try any further modifications just yet!

Thanks again.

afuwin(updated)readback.zip (3.77 MB)

@VAIO Good to hear that you’re up and running again

If your NVME disk is recognized in Windows, everything is fine. You should be able to mod the bios according to Fernandos turorial and then be able to boot from this disk. Attach the modded image before flashing!

Since you have a working backup of your complete spi and a programmer there’s not too much that can happen now. How did you flash the bios with the NVME modded bios?


Regarding these small changes: Did you boot the system between flashing and reading back? All differences I can find between content of afuwin(updated)readback.zip and afuwin(updated).zip are in NVRAM and that’s not a static area, it’s partially rewritten at every boot…

(I have a 866 programmer, too, but for flashing with soic clip it’s almost unusable. Using CH341 for everything…)

Hi, someone can help me with issue every 30 minutes my laptop shuts down. I think this is because of ME Region :frowning:

Hi guys,
first I want to thank you for all the support you offer here!

I did a BIOS Dump from my SVP1321C5E and patched the BIOS with the NVMe-Module.

Could you please have a look if the dump is OK and the patch is ready for flash back tot he chip?

PS: remove the ".zip" from the extension, the content is 7z ( I used 7z to the size gets smaller then 6MB )


SVP1321C5E_orig.7z.zip (3.77 MB)

SVP1321C5E+NVMe.7z.zip (3.78 MB)

Seems OK, checked with MMTool and UEFI tool.