Hello!
I own an Aw 17 R5 Engeneering sample.
It has 6 cores 0000 cpu with id 906EA.
The problems are:

Fans spin from 50% to 100% all the time even after repaste. Temps are goog 35-40c idle and 60-70c under load.
The alienfx blinks all the time and it can't be configured by aw command center! It says no alien fx supported devices fiund.
Thunderbolt is not working. Firmware flasher doe not detect it!
The factory bios update says: secure check fail!

So i tried to flash bios by programmer and got no luck with working dump from an non engeneering board.
Regular dump is 16mb engeneering dump is 32mb.

I tried to turn of intel boot guard and cleaned ME region in the regular dump but got no luck it posting.

I need someone to help me to mod the stock dump of this laptop.

Thank You!

Thank You for the reply!

Here it is: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1...0ex?usp=sharing

There are 3 files in the folder
1 32mb spi dump from engeneering board
2 16mb spi dump from regular board
3 Dell's ofical latest bios / hdr file I made.

I understand that this engeneering board will not run on regular bios. The point is to make it more usable at least to inject bios body and EC controller settings from regular board.
I tried to do so but my knowledge in bios modding is to short for such operations. Itried to flash the bios body from regular dump by afudos but it gives an error that bios is write protected. I could only read and dump 8mb bios body from engeneering firmware by afudos. I also tried afuwin etc but no luck. The only way for me to read and write to this IC chip (mx25l25673g) was flashing it by programmer.

Zitat von plutomaniac im Beitrag #4

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Thank you for the files. The system does indeed use Pre-Production firmware. There are no important protections in place such as BootGuard. First, let's try cleaning the CSME firmware, just in case the problem is there. I don't think we can do much at the BIOS region so hopefully that helps at some extend. Use the programmer to flash the "cleaned" SPI image. Reset CMOS as well before first power up after re-flash.

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Zitat von plutomaniac im Beitrag #6

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I'm not sure I understand the question. There are no regular firmware updates for a Pre-Production system. These were meant for testing. The goal here is to get it work better. You flash the "cleaned" SPI image using the programmer and test if that fixes some of the issues. A problematic CSME firmware could be the cause of such issues. You can run download MEInfo tool from CSME System Tools v12 (Section C) to check its health. Another firmware which could cause such issues is PMC (Power Management Controller), which works alongside CSME. We could try to update it just in case the current version is buggy. If none of these work, we will know the problem is at the BIOS.

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No boot on this one. I tried couple times and have a cpu error code blinking. Also absolutely no fan spin. Even before i flashed the laptop always spinned fans for couple times. But this time it was silent and only flashlight blinking.

Zitat von plutomaniac im Beitrag #10

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Thanks for testing. I see, we can't really know how these Pre-Production systems work unless we try. Most people ask for help with Production systems, that's why. Anyway, I don't think the PMC can be updated further. Now that the CSME firmware is cleaned and the PMC cannot be updated, let's focus on the BIOS. I've attached below the latest Production BIOS region, extracted from Dell HDR BIOS v1.7.0. We can base any changes to the previously attached "552read_clean.bin" SPI image. One difference is that the Production BIOS does have BootGuard enabled. The CPU microcodes are compatible. I think we could try a quick & dirty test by replacing the Engineering BIOS with the Production one, after modifying __FIT__ to remove the ACM/BG entries. If that fails, replacing/cleaning the NVRAM of the BIOS region might help. I'll tag @Lost_N_BIOS who might be able to help there. Please wait for his reply.

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@code9523 - That's probably because you didn't wait for my reply, I think plutomaniac meant that several edits need to be done with the linked file because it's not something you would ever be able to straight program and use.
The file attached at post #10 is only a BIOS region (7MB) = part of the BIOS, not a whole BIOS (32MB) - this is why he said to wait for me to make you some test BIOS builds various ways.

First test these two BIOS - Straight stock region swap in - one with latest original included microcode for your CPU, other with 2017 microcode from BIOS at post #4 ACM/BG removed from FIT on ALL
Stock2017
Stock2019

Then if both fail to boot, test these BIOS, same as above but with your original NVRAM in place and old original Setup, AMISTE, AMITSE/SetupData, 2 x StdDefaults outside NVRAM swapped in
This much easier than NVRAM swap of setup entries in NVRAM - other way nearly impossible for me, takes hours to redo all NVRAM especially when there is 100's of entries
Stock2017NV
Stock2019NV

* Edit code9523 - please wait until I get reply back below about the size difference, sorry!

Plutomaniac Which FITc can work on that BIOS, if any? I tried V12 >> from R8, R12, and R17 packages, all fail to open, revert to default
I simply wanted to be sure Bootguard profile was set to profile zero, if you did that already, or that is stock, then nothing I need to do there.

Aside from this, I think I will need to find and use some stock dumped BIOS region as the stock replacement, due to original BIOS region - 8MB and the one you gave above from HDR - 7MB
It doesn't rebuild properly like that, and I don't know proper way to increase that (ie where to pad, if any pad will = fail etc). So, I wait your thoughts, and then I'll find some stock dump instead unless you have known tested method about this issue.

If you want to inspect and see what you can come up with as swap possibility with the size differences, here is stock region redone as you mentioned, ACM/BG removed + FIT Fixed, and then ucodes done as I mentioned above (one OG, one with 2017 906EA)
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?fil...944426009693788

Zitat von Lost_N_BIOS im Beitrag #12

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@code9523 - That's probably because you didn't wait for my reply, I think plutomaniac meant that several edits need to be done with the linked file because it's not something you would ever be able to straight program and use.

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By the way. May be this production dump 16mb is broken? I downloaded it from forum but can only confirm that it's not working on my board. I havent checked it on production board as i dont have such. May be it needs some mods like clean me region and bootguard disable?

What do You think?