@dj-dave

Normally, I would have told you to follow the guide yourself but since FITC is not currently available at the ME thread, I have created the cleaned SPI image for you. It's attached.

The ME is cleaned properly and the image looks just fine. Why did you want the ME region cleaned in the first place? After the new SPI image is flashed with cleaned ME region, remove power from the laptop (cord + battery), press the power button a few times (nothing visible should happen) and leave it for 1 minute. Then plug the battery and cord again and try again.

I suppose you noticed as well that one ICC setting was "Unknown" and had to set it to "Default", right? Well to see it seems like you followed the cleanup guide properly. Do you use a programmer to flash? After having reflashed the ME with the cleaned one, try performing a ME reset manually by removing all power (cord + batteries) for 1 minute before plugging everything back again. Also, if you want to use FPT to dump/flash until the problem is resolved, you might want to disable the Flash Descriptor locks from FITC > Descriptor Region > Master Access Section (0xFF six times).

ICC stands for Integrated Clock Controller and no, it's not secure boot related. I mean this setting:



During the cleanup guide, you must have set this to Deafult (from the initial wrong "Unknown" value) as FITC does not build any image like that. That's what I meant. I even see it at your "after clear but not success" image, that option set to "Deafult" instead of "Unknown".

I don't know where the problem you are facing lies because I don't have secure boot knowledge. I imagine it's BIOS related as this is a dump from another system.

As far as the ME is concerned, all you can do is clean it and reflash it's Region but the problem may not be there. And I don't think that something is disabled at it's settings, the other ASUS laptop dump should have had it enabled as well if that was the case. The only option that could possibly be relevant (not sure), is this "Intel Platform Trust Technology" (PTT) or "Boot Guard" (BG) which can both be adjusted from the "ME Region > Configuration > Features Supported" tab of FITC.

So, try to flash the attached file with "fptw -f X554L_fix.bin" followed by "fptw -greset" command and check if the problem is gone after the reset. If not, you might want to try playing around with the aforementioned settings (BG and PTT) after loading the file I have attached to FITC and adjust accordingly (use the attached because it has a cleaned ME as a basis).

The pre-Skylake section got updated today:

a) Steps 9-12 were rewritten to use FITC xml file import/export for setting transferring like it's done at post-Skylake. The previous method failed to transfer some 5MB SKU specific settings like WCOD & LOCL options.

b) Added a warning at Step 8 regarding the FITC v8.1.40.1456 settings identification bug which affects all ME8 firmware configured as C600/Patsburg like X79 etc.

Also, the guide title is more understandable now and some typos got fixed.

If you are looking to clean a dumped image then the Pre-Skylake procedure does work for TXE1 as seen at the first post.

@ Socrates:

Read the "Firmware Regions (RGN/EXTR)" paragraph from Section B of the ME thread and that should answer your question.