Updating a DELL Precision M6800 Laptop - BIOS update hangs on updating IMEI

[Sasqui]

File this under "no one seems to know" - I've posted on Dell Community boards with no response, so I'm hoping someone here may have an answer. And.... by the way, IME = Intel Management Engine

Laptop is an i7-4900MQ 16GB RAM, Quadro M3100 4GB. Beautiful machine, though dated. I'm hoping *someone* here may have some insights. Details of the problem:

Updated to the A26 Bios version on 4+ different Precision mobile workstations with no problems. For this ONE particular unit, the first part of the BIOS update works, then it goes to the screen " Sending Intel(R) Management Engine Firmware Update " then stalls at progress of 0%. The keyboard is unresponsive, and after letting it try for hours (even overnight), it's still stuck on 0%. To restart, have to disconnect the power supply and remove the battery. Other things I've tried:

1. Removing AC Adaptor, the battery and removing the CMOS battery, clearing CMOS. Same result when re-flashing
2. Replaced the CMOS battery. Same result when re-flashing
3. Tried flashing from the F12 startup menu, update by selecting the "M6800A26.EXE" BIOS file on a USB drive. Same result when re-flashing
4. Downgrading all the way back to A06, then trying a few in-between, like A16. Same result when re-flashing

The laptop boots and functions, but the bootup process takes about 5x longer. And there's an error at the top left of the screen right after the first DELL logo, saying "FW Status Recovery Error" The IMEI drivers won't install in windows

Windows 10 Pro. Tried both a windows install on a 1TB SSD and a 500GB HDD

Am I out of luck? I've googled the heck out of those error messages, haven't seen any solutions. Some comments claim that the intel firmware has been corrupted and there's no hope to recover it.

 

[Tropick]

Oof, Dell BIOS update issues... You couldn't ask for a more convoluted, vague, and obfuscated update procedure. I would say a last ditch effort might be to manually flash the ROM chip with the BIOS using a CH341A flash programmer but I'm pretty sure multiple ROM chips on the board are updated during this procedure, also betting many are completely undocumented with no download available.

I might have to agree with those saying the firmware is corrupt and unable to properly reflash. At the risk of sounding dumb have you tried flashing via the emergency BIOS recovery route? Like holding down a key combo on the motherboard during boot with a FAT32 USB drive containing the flash image and having the computer do a dumb flash? Something like this? Not sure if all their laptops support reflashing like this though, could be pretty hit or miss.

Godspeed, soldier.

 

[Sasqui]

Oof, Dell BIOS update issues... You couldn't ask for a more convoluted, vague, and obfuscated update procedure. I would say a last ditch effort might be to manually flash the ROM chip with the BIOS using a CH341A flash programmer but I'm pretty sure multiple ROM chips on the board are updated during this procedure, also betting many are completely undocumented with no download available.

I might have to agree with those saying the firmware is corrupt and unable to properly reflash. At the risk of sounding dumb have you tried flashing via the emergency BIOS recovery route? Like holding down a key combo on the motherboard during boot with a FAT32 USB drive containing the flash image and having the computer do a dumb flash? Something like this? Not sure if all their laptops support reflashing like this though, could be pretty hit or miss.

Godspeed, soldier.

I have a Flashcat USB! I was under the assumption that the IME lived in the intel chipset, not the BIOS.. rendering the flashcat useless in this case. I have another M6800 laptop that was updated, so I could read the BIOS from that.

Does the IME live in the BIOS chip... or is it insidious like microcode in the CPU or intel bridge chipset?

 

[eidairaman1]

@R-T-B @Solaris17 any idea on ime?

 

[Solaris17]

Does the IME live in the BIOS chip... or is it insidious like microcode in the CPU or intel bridge chipset?

YIKES. So a 30k foot view (baring certain systems being designed a bit different of course) The BIOS of any given system be it AMD/Intel has partitions. They are all generally spoken of in the context of "BIOS" but a system "BIOS" actually houses firmware in different partitions that are read into specific memory space during init. This memory space can reside in say RAM, or an LED controller, in the case of IME it is the PCH.

Now, to make it simple you can think of it like a "config" the PCH has the IME inside of it physically (as the IME is actually a micrcontroller) and that chip has firmware on it, but at everyboot some config info is pulled from the "BIOS" to init the IME which in turn init's other things.

That is why some BIOS updates (specifically server ones) that are really verbose will say something like.

Flashing main boot block
Flashing Intel ME
Flashing NVRAM

etc etc. During a main system BIOS flash these "partitions" write to their devices. IME, NIC, VREG, VBIOS, controllers etc etc. So in short; in this case the what to you seem like the "computer BIOS" is actually a package deal.

Now the issue here is that it appears the flash has initially failed. There are two obvious ways I can think of while im eating lunch this happens.

1: The initial flash is corrupt, and the PCH is attempting to read data from the BIOS so it can init (before timing out)
2: The flash was NOT corrupt but the flash sequence is broken because it cannot set the R/W bit to the PCH so it can perform the update

Given these two scenarios, the system is broken and no amount of CMOS clear will fix it.

What we can try is flashing it manually since you have a flashcat. The problem is dumping it from another system still may not work if certain BIOS bits need to be enabled to flag flash mode. You can try it obviously backing up, but you may need to find out if you can extract the BIOS from that exe and flash with that instead. There may be a chance the flags for flash mode are set in the pre flashed rom.


That was a super long explanation for "flash it anyway" but I figure some people are actually interested in the WHY.

 

[Sasqui]

What we can try is flashing it manually since you have a flashcat. The problem is dumping it from another system still may not work if certain BIOS bits need to be enabled to flag flash mode. You can try it obviously backing up, but you may need to find out if you can extract the BIOS from that exe and flash with that instead. There may be a chance the flags for flash mode are set in the pre flashed rom.

Good LORD... remember when things were simple? The hard thing... the laptop still functions well! *, other than the slow bootup, even with an SSD

*I haven't really done much with it!

 

[Solaris17]

Good LORD... remember when things were simple? The hard thing... the laptop still functions well! *, other than the slow bootup, even with an SSD

*I haven't really done much with it!

I hear ya. I actually wrote a ton more but accidentally hit cancel then got mad and left. In either case as long as you dump the current chip you shouldn't really break anything.

 

[Sasqui]

I hear ya. I actually wrote a ton more but accidentally hit cancel then got mad and left. In either case as long as you dump the current chip you shouldn't really break anything.

Yea, I guess if I use the Flashcat (assuming I can find the BIOS chip)... the Flashcat would only flash the BIOS chip. No idea if the DELL BIOS has some checksum or other security measures to keep from messing with it.

 

[Solaris17]

Yea, I guess if I use the Flashcat (assuming I can find the BIOS chip)... the Flashcat would only flash the BIOS chip. No idea if the DELL BIOS has some checksum or other security measures to keep from messing with it.

Thankfully most of that would be in the BIOS itself a raw read shouldnt hurt much. Also thankfully HP/Dell and I think Lenovo? from what I have seen use normal chips, just like the full size soic8 you see on GPUs. In older Dells sometimes they even silhouette the word "BIOS" on the mobo. It shouldnt be crazy hard to find.

Guide: Flashing with a hardware programmer

Lets get physical So; you tried flashing your GPU and you didn't backup. Now you have some dude on the forum linking you a BIOS but you have no way to apply it because you don't have a spare GPU either. Well no worries friend. In this guide we are going to cover the simple procedures of...

www.techpowerup.com

Though im sure you already more or less know what your doing. Remember the key to manual flashing is always backing up, but more importantly, wiping the chip before write.

obv remove all power AC. laptop batt, cmos batt.

 

[Sasqui]

Thankfully most of that would be in the BIOS itself a raw read shouldnt hurt much. Also thankfully HP/Dell and I think Lenovo? from what I have seen use normal chips, just like the full size soic8 you see on GPUs. In older Dells sometimes they even silhouette the word "BIOS" on the mobo. It shouldnt be crazy hard to find.

Guide: Flashing with a hardware programmer

Lets get physical So; you tried flashing your GPU and you didn't backup. Now you have some dude on the forum linking you a BIOS but you have no way to apply it because you don't have a spare GPU either. Well no worries friend. In this guide we are going to cover the simple procedures of...

www.techpowerup.com

Though im sure you already more or less know what your doing. Remember the key to manual flashing is always backing up, but more importantly, wiping the chip before write.

obv remove all power AC. laptop batt, cmos batt.

Yea, no idea where the BIOS chip is... and I'm reluctant to rip apart two of them, to *maybe* fix one.

When did you become a TPU staff member? IIRC, it was only within the past two years... though I've lost a lot of brain cells over the past decade lol

 

[Solaris17]

When did you become a TPU staff member? IIRC, it was only within the past two years... though I've lost a lot of brain cells over the past decade lol

haha yes you would 100% need to take the bottom plate off. As for staff idr. I was way back around 2007 and then again a few years ago. pre 2019 for sure.

 

[Sasqui]

haha yes you would 100% need to take the bottom plate off. As for staff idr. I was way back around 2007 and then again a few years ago. pre 2019 for sure.

Cool... and I just watched a M6800 teardown video and now I want to slit my wrists!

 

[Solaris17]

It's a shame I cant get a board view. Dell biz line machines are actually some of the more simple. Things like HP, Lenovo and toshiba you need to split the chassis and some models you remove the top first.

If there was a good way to see the mobo on that model you might not need to take off or remove a ton to get to the chip.

Dells should have a sub part number.

It should be like Dell precision M6800 then something like GFVBX as the part number. on the sticker on the bottom. Can you see that? @Sasqui

 

[Sasqui]

If there was a good way to see the mobo on that model you might not need to take off or remove a ton to get to the chip.

Yea, that video is SD quality... I couldn't see it. Time to do more homework

 

[_JP_]

I actually had a flash file go corrupt on download from the site, for a Lenovo, making the update process a bust but fortunately the board FW held itself together.
On a second run of download, the file came out fine and I was able to fully flash without issues. Additionally, HP and Lenovo also has ISOs where you just junk a CD with a pair of files to boot straight from it with a custom flash tool. I don't recall if DELL has those, but probably because I didn't went that far with them. Just a couple of ideas, that I thought that might help, before tearing the damn thing apart.
Then again, Precisions were not used where I worked, only Latitudes and XPSes, both finnicky as heck with the first UEFI versions of the model year!

 

[R-T-B]

@R-T-B @Solaris17 any idea on ime?

You might try customizing a firmware with me_cleaner or something and see if it gets rid of that prompt. You'll probably need a hardware flasher yes.

Beyond that, I sadly do not know. Dell machines can be very custom and very weird (proprietary stuff woo!). You may even find it NEEDS the ME stuff to boot.

 

[_JP_]

I also remembered, much like iAMT can be disabled (permanently), IME can too. Unless you're using it actively, why not just disable fully it in the UEFI and then attempt to flash it again?

 

[lexluthermiester]

Oof, Dell BIOS update issues... You couldn't ask for a more convoluted, vague, and obfuscated update procedure.

What?!? Updating Dell firmware couldn't be easier or simpler. The op is having a minor hardware issue that caused an error with the Intel ME.

Am I out of luck?

I hate to say this, but you might be. You might need to find a tech shop that has alot of experience with Dell systems to take a look. They should be able to tell you with just a quick look one way or the other. However, this kind of problem needs hands on.

Good LORD... remember when things were simple? The hard thing... the laptop still functions well! *, other than the slow bootup, even with an SSD

*I haven't really done much with it!

If it's still working, you're not totally borked. If you can get into Windows we might be able to sort things out.

First thing, can you get into the BIOS? If so, what's the BIOS version number? It'll be something like " A07 ".
Second, what's the service tag number? This will help us track down the correct BIOS version and procedure for that system. There might be a step that was skipped and the BIOS didn't flag it.

Dell firmware are built to be as fail-safe as possible. So if the system is booting, there is hope.

 

[Tropick]

What?!? Updating Dell firmware couldn't be easier or simpler. The op is having a minor hardware issue that caused an error with the Intel ME.

Yeah that was bad wording on my part. The update process itself is super easy, isn't it quite literally just clicking an executable? What I meant to say is that it doesn't give you a whole lot of insight into what it's doing besides telling you what module it's currently updating. It'd be nice if there was a kind of verbose mode where you could see which step it's hanging on and potentially an error code for the sake of diagnostics ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't have a whole ton of experience with Dell BIOS updates besides running them on my work laptop, so I'm probably missing a lot of info here.

 

[Sasqui]

If it's still working, you're not totally borked. If you can get into Windows we might be able to sort things out.

First thing, can you get into the BIOS? If so, what's the BIOS version number? It'll be something like " A07 ".
Second, what's the service tag number? This will help us track down the correct BIOS version and procedure for that system. There might be a step that was skipped and the BIOS didn't flag it.

Dell firmware are built to be as fail-safe as possible. So if the system is booting, there is hope.

Yes, it updated the DELL BIOS and shows it as A26 (the latest version), but after the DELL BIOS, it proceeds to the to the IME flash and there's where it got stuck. It boots into Windows, but it's really slow. I ran the DELL diagnostics and everything is A-Okay. But booting into Windows from an SSD being really slow. However (and not surprisingly), it won't install the IME drivers in Windows.

Service tag is 2BGFXZ1

I posted the whole thing to the DELL community with ZERO responses... so here I am on TPU asking the same question. Cuz you guys are awesome

I also remembered, much like iAMT can be disabled (permanently), IME can too. Unless you're using it actively, why not just disable fully it in the UEFI and then attempt to flash it again?

I've looked through the BIOS and can't find anything related to IME... could it be called something else?

 

[_JP_]

Odd that there is no direct entry to toggle it off or on in the UEFI, maybe in yours is jammed in a submenu along with TPM?
I don't remember that well and unfortunately don't have a DELL at hand to check.

@Sasqui can you get to the boot options and see if you have the IME-MEBx option available?
It's worth a shot checking if you also have the option to disable it there.

 

[Sasqui]

Odd that there is no direct entry to toggle it off or on in the UEFI, maybe in yours is jammed in a submenu along with TPM?
I don't remember that well and unfortunately don't have a DELL at hand to check.

@Sasqui can you get to the boot options and see if you have the IME-MEBx option available?
It's worth a shot checking if you also have the option to disable it there.

Nothing in the main menu, and I can't find anything in the BIOS setting related to IME or MEBx. Could it be related to secure boot or "Trusted Execution"?

 

[Solaris17]

I think the issue here is IME isnt entering init so it isnt showing up. You would need to repair the flash for this option to be available.

 

[Sasqui]

I think the issue here is IME isnt entering init so it isnt showing up. You would need to repair the flash for this option to be available.

I snuck one in there on you, this is a different M6800 laptop that flashed to A26 with no problems The menu is identical to the problem unit.

 

[Solaris17]

Oh I see. Do you see it if you enable UEFI only? + secure boot?