Coming from level1techs forum, thought it would be appropriate to post here, as well. I’m using an MSI laptop, Raider GE78HX, and troubled by Intel’s perplexing decision to drop TB1 and 2 support on TB4 chips, despite advertising the contrary. It’s fortunate that Mac users aren’t experiencing any issues. This PC uses a JHL8340 chip, running NVM40.2, and on the other side of the board appears to be a Winbond SPI flash, 8Mb.
I’ve already reached out to MSI to see if they can offer a downgrade path or an earlier NVM like Asus did, but they don’t seem to be very concerned. They simply said they were going to ask someone else.
From my beginner’s perspective, I have a few questions:
I’m wondering if it would be possible to use a dump from another board to flash this one. To rephrase: How standard are these firmwares across machines? Does each manufacturer create their own, or is it simply provided by Intel?
Also, maybe it is possible to extract the original NVM31 roms (whatever older than NV<36 should work) from the original capsule BIOS files? I have tried but have not suceeded yet.
Here are the BIOS files from a Raider 77HX that I also have access to and has the same issue. It is a little older so more likely to have an older NVM version. Tried but could not identify those parts using UEFI Tool. BIOS77HX
If we succeed at this, this will probably help a lot of people who have the same issue, and many electronic devices will be saved from the bin. There are a bunch of online forums already full of frustration from users who have loads of TB1/2 devices.
Started dumping and trying stuff. Got a NVM31 from another machine, flashed it and as expected, it did not work, had to come back to the original dump.
I found the NVM firmware inside the Intel ME firmware. If you downgrade the ME firmware the NVM firmware will downgrade too. Did it on two MSI laptops a few days ago.
Also the required NVM firmwares might be brand or board specific. One laptop went from 48.1 to 42 and had Thunderbolt 2 devices working again. Another went from 31.1 to 24 with the same effect.
Did this to an MSI Stealth 15m and an MSI stealth GS66. Do you remember if it was an ME update or a BIOS update that did it. You can use UEFITool on a fresh BIOS and check its ME to see if it is different from your current one.
In my case, the firmwares came with the machines, there were not updated. Not sure I could downgrade to an older ME. Do you think it could be possible?
Nvm are brand specific so the number might not matter as much. You can try rolling back the Bios and the ME and see if it works. One of my Msi laptops (stealth. 15m) has an nvm of 42 and it reads thunderbolt 2 devices no problem. It blocks it at nvm 48