Zitat von SabriLLe im Beitrag #15

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But I wondered out of curiosity and to understant, did you have an idea of what could have caused this problem exactly ?

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Zitat von SabriLLe im Beitrag #15

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I did the update directly with CMD on Windows, do you think if I made it on EFI environement (for example) it will be more safe ?

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Zitat von SabriLLe im Beitrag #15

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And in case I redo the an update, just to be sure, what type of firmware corresponding to my system should I install (EXRGN, RGN, FWU) ?

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Thank you for the detailed answer. Well, it seems that there were 2 issues. First, the CSME+PMC update caused some sort of non-obvious issue (maybe BIOS incompatibility?). Then, the BIOS downgrade caused even more issues. I don't even see that version at Gigabyte's website, maybe it was problematic. Anyway, now you have a working system again. I could provide tests to see what went wrong but for now leave the laptop as it is and update to future official Gigabyte SPI/BIOS only, at least until we have more info from systems which can be recovered more easily in case of problems. CSME 12 updating is new so I haven't had the chance to find people who are trying to update yet so that we figure out the workflow exactly.

By the way, you mentioned earlier that MEA was crashing at your dumped SPI image. It turns out there was a bug in MEA. I will consider that a report so thank you for that. It has now been fixed at the latest version.

Hi @SabriLLe

Another laptop user with a very similar system had the same issue as you and, from what I can tell, the problem was that PMC 300.2.11.1014 was problematic whereas the new 300.2.11.1015 fixes those issues. If you are interested in trying again (no problem at all if you don't), you can find instructions here.

Ah, perfect. So it was definitely a bad PMC firmware by Intel. Thank you for doing the test SabriLLe.

As for your question, the difference is normal. Make sure to read the Firmware Regions (RGN/EXTR) and Firmware Configuration (CODE/DATA) paragraphs at Section B of the CSME thread.

FWUpdate deals only with CODE, not DATA. The DATA which is already flashed on the system remains intact after FWUpdate. Thus FWUpdate does not need an input image which is configured. Whether you input a RGN or EXTR or dirty EXTR (+ PMC for CSME 12) does not matter for FWUpdate. It is all the same to it.

FWUpdate is the easy way to update the CSME firmware. But if someone wants to manually update it then they would need to re-write the Engine region of the SPI chip which requires read/write access there (unlocked Flash Descriptor) and the use of a general flasher such as Flash Programming Tool, flashrom, hardware programmer etc. The same applies when someone wants to repair the firmware or transfer it from another identical model. The CleanUp Guide is normally used for latter. However, you can use it if you want to update the CSME firmware of the SPI/BIOS image proved by the OEM as well (to be flashed via a programmer, FPT, flashrom etc), it works just fine.

In your case, we wanted to downgrade the CSME firmware but the Version Control Number (VCN) was violated so FWUpdate was not an option. However, you have an unlocked FD (rare, should normally be locked per Intel recommendation). So we used FPT to re-flash the Engine region of the SPI/BIOS chip using the one from the OEM's equivalent image file.