Intel ME completely offline

its the chip near the 2 ssd ports on an alienware 15 r2

 

i followed all the steps and did it twice. i used this one 11.8.50.3426_CON_H_DA_PRD_RGN.bin cause its the closest too mine.

 

Having read back through the last few pages, it looks like its the right chip for the Bios
I know it sounds like I am sounding stupid, but are you doing every step in the process, including the overwrite process at step 12 - and you then check the ME analyser check after you have completed the overwrite?
You must copy the ME region.bin file from the FIT folder and overwrite the same bin file in the decomp subfolder.

I only ask as you are saying the Bios chip is near the 2 SSD slots - those slots are surely the Ram slots?
I have looked at a few images of the motherboard you have and your image and it does look like that's your bios.

As others have done the steps and were successful then I would suggest that you start fresh and go through each step - one by one, not assuming that you know any step.

Oh, final question - what is your current bios on the laptop - is it 1.4.1 or earlier/or later

Edit - I see why you called them SSD slots - Mofoist called them SSD in error - the two slots are Ram Memory slots.

 

Try a higher version and see if it works?
I hope you're using SPI flash component number set to 1 instead of 2 FITC tool.

 

its for the m.2 ssd slots. i did check and verify after i wiped it clean and after i overwrite it. the current bios is 1.4.1.

sorry its my first time doing this. so im not familiar it.. but im confident i followed all the steps. maybe i used the wrong version?

 

which one? i thought i have to follow the one closest to my bios.

 

I have no clue what could be going wrong. Perhaps provide your original bios .bin file you pulled and one of us could just repair it.

 

@Rol Think I have found your issue - Get off the 1.4.1 bios.
You need to download one of the older 1.3 bios - I think its 1.3.9 and try again.
I am sure the 1.4.1 is the borked bios or its one of the two that Dell messed up

Do a roll back on the bios to 1.3.9 -
Yep just checked - Dell do not list the 1.4.1 bios at all in the older bios list - They deleted it as it was the one that deleted the ME.
Roll back to 1.3.9 or 1.3.12 and try the whole process again from step 1

https://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/product-support/product/alienware-15-r2/drivers

The 1.4.1 bios isn't there - so you are trying to fix an obvious corrupt bios so the ME part just isn't there - so it cannot initialize properly.


The usb memory stick method,

Download the required bios on to your memory stick, reboot and push f12 before the computer boots up, select bios upgrade from that menu, navigate using the tab key to the update, then push enter then use tab to select the correct options. I think theres a YouTube vid explaining better than i am.

You should be able to update to 1.6.1 and try the clean method - but most here have done the older bios route - then upgraded to 1.6.1 after the fix


---------

The bios recovery rollback solution -

Restart the computer.
Press and hold the CTRL key + ESC key on the keyboard until the BIOS Recovery page appears.
On the BIOS Recovery screen, Choose the older bios version which you put on a usb stick.

 

@Rol - Once you have come off the 1.4.1 bios try the whole process again
Let me know how it goes

 

If MEI FW is newer won't it flash w/o DATA init part? The latest MEIFW fixes SPI Write bug that corrupted many PCs. Looks like it was an exploit.

 

The 1.4.1 bios has the issues, as does the 1.4.4 bios - that’s why Dell deleted them and denied they ever existed.
Others have successfully repaired their laptops when on other bios versions. This says to me that the 1.4.1 bios has corrupted code which breaks things.
Best to get away from that bios version and try the repair with known Bios versions that don’t have issues.

 

The user can flash modded BIOS to brick it and then recover it if 1.4.4 faulty BIOS has locked writing accidentally.

 

@Mofoist I managed to save my current BIOS as bin file. Its a PITA to disassemble it. BTW, I saw 3 1MB/8Mbit SPI chip. One near TB3 and 2 next to main SPI BIOS 16MB/128Mbit. I managed to take a dump of one possibly Intel vBIOS and another one must be nvidia.

 

Yes there’s a few Bios chips on the board, one is Definitely the GPU Nvidia chip.
The Chip nearest the CPU is the main bios that most have issues with.
What is known is Dell released a broken code in Bios 1.4.1 - they then tried to fix it is 1.4.4 and made matters worse.
Personally I would highly recommend that any Bios repair should not be done on either of these two Bios versions as it’s certain the Bios ME Clean won’t work as both of the Dell bios releases don’t have the code to allow the Intel ME to work.

Easiest option is to downgrade the Bios to a 1.3 release - any should be fine and then do the clean. Once clean, skip the 1.4 releases completely and go straight to 1.6.1

You could try and do a ME clean on 1.6.1 but this is untested so far.
Any work on Bios 1.4.1 or 1.4.4 in my eyes is asking for trouble.

 

Yeah I reverted to 1.31 before the fix

 

I did it again with the reverted bios 1.3.9 but its still the same.

 

@Vasudev so I used 11.8.50.3426_CON_H_DA_PRD_RGN.bin, by higher version you mean going to 11.9 and so on?

I did it like this. is this right?

​

 

the original bin image and the new image I made is still the same....

should it be configured instead of initialized in the new bin?

 

11.8 versions only! I'm using 3561.
You need to update BIOS using Dell Flash update utility by outting the BIOS EXE file in USB which can be accessed by continuously hitting f12 at startup.

 

Thanks for replying. Ill try the 3561. I reverted it back to 1.3.1
@Vasudev i have attached a picture of the bios programmer, did i set it up correctly?

 

I hope you connected the red wire to the chip with a notch. The first pin should be connected to red wire otherwise it won't work.

 

I did that too... in the picture i shorted 2 pins with the yellow connector, is that right?

@Vasudev Can you please give me a screenshot of the working bios bin in the me analayzer?so that i know what to look for to know that it worked...

 

@Rol How about you upload your original bios bin and I can clean it for you. Should only take a couple of minutes.

Your USB programmer is set up correctly in the pictures you uploaded, I just compared it to mine.

 

I would agree your programmer has to be correct as its read a bios off the motherboard.
That says its all wired up correctly.

 

@Rol sent me his image and I cleaned it. Let me know if you're good now!

 

@Mofoist did it show as cleared once you cleaned it?
Maybe one step was not followed as others were successful. Hopefully he’s sorted now though.

 

Yeah, I reread the posts and noticed he was still showing "initialized" instead of "configured" after inserting the fresh ME Region. I suspect he was misunderstanding a step somewhere while using the FIT tool? I showed "configured" with no issue after inserting the new region.

My only concern is I think this was his original file which may have been the 1.4.1 BIOS...so we will see if it will work. If not, I'm gonna need him to confirm hes on 1.3.1 and grab a fresh image from that.

 

Yes! I just finished putting everything together and turned it on, its WORKING good now! 10.5 secs startup and shuts down perfectly fine. I cant believe it would still be fix after a year.

like what you guys said, i made a mistake using the corrupted bios and not doing the FIT tool properly because i always end up with the bios as "initialized" when it should be "configured". Thank you everyone for your help even though im a random person, thank you to @Mofoist who cleaned my bios because i wasnt able to get it right after 4 tries.

The guide was well thought, its my first time doing it and understood most of it. thanks again everyone for helping me. i hope this forum can help more people with the same problem

 

Glad you are up and running @Rol ! You can go ahead and download the 1.6.1 bios from dell and install that one. We are all on it and it installs/works great.

 

Sorry I didn't see your post. Well, its good that you got it sorted!

 

So I had similar issues but not the exact same thing. After going through and updating my laptop to the bad BIOS versions Dell put out (1.4.1, 1.4.4) I noticed extremely slow boot up times (5 mins+ with just the status lights on and nothing else) But I never experienced any shutdown issues, it always turned off as expected. Later i had upgraded to 1.6.1 but it didn't resolve the issue.

Last night I downgraded to 1.3.12 in order to prepare to do all the ME updates in this thread. But I noticed that after I downgraded the BIOS, the boot up time instantly changed back to under 10 seconds.

So I guess my question is, has anyone else experienced this and should I bother trying to upgrade back to 1.6.1 or just stay at 1.3.12. Is there any benefit of 1.6.1 over 1.3.12?

 

Your ME section is fine if you're shutting down/sleeping correctly. The long boots are caused by TPM conflicts. 1.6.1 is good to go as far as I know, but you may need to 1)After flashing back to 1.6.1 go to BIOS and select secure boot disabled, load legacy rom disabled, save and exit. Then reenable secure boot after a successful startup shutdown 2) Do a CLRP1 reset.

 

Thanks for the info.

But one more question. In the notion of "it it ain't broke don't fix it". Is there any reason why I should even bother to upgrade to 1.6.1 if everything is working on 1.3.12 right now?

 

Here's the thing: As long as 1.3.12 is installing the old ME section when you rolled back, it's placing the old vulnerability back on your computer. 1.4 was the attempt to fix that vulnerability that screwed a lot of people up and totally bricked our ME section.

You'd have to look into the details of exactly how the vulnerability works and if you're ok with it.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3...hat-they-are-how-they-work-whats-at-risk.html

 

Ok that helps. I tried looking around, but couldn't specifically find what the updated BIOS versions were fixing. I didn't know it was related to Spectre and Meltdown. I'll attempt to update to 1.6.1 tonight and report back

 

I disabled TPM altogether, its a issue with win 10 v1803 and above. Its present on 19H1 and it nags me every damn time.

 

How do I go about doing that? Is it just as simple as selecting TPM Y/N in the BIOS?

 

Yes.

 

So how come when I try to disable secure boot I get a warning saying that I might need to reinstall my operating system if I disable it?

Also what exactly does Tpm do? Im unable to login to my computer using a pin after disabling Tpm. Even after renabling Tpm my pin won't work properly.

 

Its scare tactics and I did that almost millions times and never I had to reinstall any OS for just disabling secure boot.

 

Yes you get the warning but it's not accurate. You will not screw up the contents of your hard drive by changing BIOS settings around, it may just not boot until you put some settings in that work. I've done about every possible combo in the BIOS while trying to work out the ME fix/TPM problems.

Speaking from experience, I was able to clear the TPM error (code 10) in device manager that was causing the long load times via steps 1 and 2 (either, or) mentioned above on separate occasions.

If those steps don't work, I'd recommend creating a new thread and we can troubleshoot there because it's looking like this is not an ME problem.

 

Hi everyone, I'm Francesco.
I also have the problem caused by the bios 1.4.4, twice sent the pc in assistance they asked me for an absurd amount to change the motherboard! I forgot I have an alienware 15 r2.
I read this guide by chance and before trying this solution I wanted to know if someone had photos of how to connect the bios to the instrument. I would not like to worsen the situation thanks a lot

 

I don't think anybody snapped any pics of our actual motherboards. There are some pictures of the clip assembled correctly on page 17. As far as how to clip on to the bios chip, find some YouTube videos of people using the bios flasher and you will see the dot or notch on the corner of they bios chip that they see/use to identify pin1

 

I just used SPI flasher for the fourth after attempting my modded BIOS update w/ only uCode fixes. It seems I get 7 beeps of death every time. Not to mention, the BIOS passes secure flash status. I'm done with AW garbage and once Ryzen thinkpads are available I'll moving to them after initial GP is done.

 

Can't say that I blame you. I have become a little too familiar with the inside of a laptop thanks to Dell. I'll also be looking elsewhere for my next one

 

I opened the whole thing four times when CLRP reset should have done the trick.

 

Hello.i am new in this forum.i want to try this but i have no experience tearing up a laptop.i'm afraid i could break my alienware 15 r2.do i need other computer to do this method? And can you upload some video how to clip bios..and also thre is new releases bios 1.7,can it not fix it?

 

USB Programmer CH341A Series Burner Chip 24 EEPROM BIOS Writer 25 SPI Flash AE1185
and
SOP8 Flash Chip IC Test Clips Socket Adpter Programmer BIOS
Do i really need to buy this tools from amazon?

 

Yes you will need a second PC to do this process.
As for stripping down the laptop, I am sure I added a video in my how to guide.
What you are doing is copying the Bios from the laptop, then you are injecting the repair (this is done on another pc).
Once you have a repaired Bios you are replacing the laptop bios with a working Bios.

You will need a Usb Programmer as you cannot get the bios off the motherboard chip without it.
No you don't have to buy from amazon but you do need one.
No need for video of how the programmer works - just google USB Programmer and you can see how it clips on easily enough.

 

it's too risky.but a new update bios 1.7 came up.i did not yet installed.can't it fix it?
(Intel CSME System Tools v11 r18 .rar) link is dead by the way.other links