Hi!

First of all thank you for this amizing forum. I was able to upgrade nearly all of my devices to the latest firmware (TXE and ME).
Only one Tablet/Slim Notebook is resiting all of my efforts for a firmwareupgrade. It's is using an old 1.0 version and I'm a little bit concernd that it's not safe.
Therefore I have some questions.
According to TXEInfoWin the "Local Firmware Upgrade" is disabled. In the BIOS-Menu I can't find anything regarding "TXE". No "allow BIOS upgrade" or whatsoever. The only option which comes near is "Secure Boot".
Is the "local firmware upgradeability" somehow related to secure boot? So only a "credible" OS can change the firmeware?
Is there a way to switch the "Local Firmware Upgrade" option in the TXE to enabled?

In the first post of this thread there is mentioned a "Upgradeability" for TXE 1.x to as high as 1.2 using the FPT.
Is there a guide how to achieve this?

The device is quite old so there is no newer bios or any other support from the manufacturer. Only some quite old device drivers.

wkr
ADT

Ok, thanks. I will try your suggestions next weekend when I've got some spare time (holidays and so on :) )

@plutomaniac

Now I found some time. As you predicted the SPI chip is not accessible using Flash Programming Tool. The command "fptw -d spi.bin" results in "Error 26: The host CPU does not have read access to the target flash area. To enable read access for this operation you must modify the descriptor settings to give host access to this region.". Therefore I tried to dump the bios with "fptw -bios -d bios.bin" and was able to do so even without an EFI shell. I hope thats´s ok and nothing of value is missing.

No success.
Right after the reboot both values (0x170 and 0x171) are back to being 0x00 instead of 0x01.

This is was GRUB said:
Looking vor Setup variable...
var name: Setup, var size 12, var guid: a04a27f4-df00-4d42 - b5-52-39-51-13-02-11-3d
--> GUID matches expected GUID
successfully obtained "Setup" variable from VSS (got 700 (0x2bc) bytes).
offset 0x170 is: 0x00
setting offset 0x170 to 0x01

I tried the command multiple times to confirm that it is set to 0x01 but after a reboot it's back at 0x00.

Although quite scary (the pc suddenly shutting down) it worked and I was able to dump the SPI chip.
Then I followed your cleanup guide and I've got the outimage.bin but what to do with it? Your guide is missing the "how to actually flash the new bios" part.
I tried with Flash Programming Tool but this gives me "Error 286: Unable to write data to flash with SPI lock enabled."
To check this I tried to flash an older bios from the vendor (using InsydeFlash) but this also fails during boot. So I think I have to enable one more small thing using BootMode or another tool.

A quick update:
I succeeded to disable the BIOS lock and to flash the new image. But now the laptop won't boot anymore, so I asume I did something TERRIBLY wrong. Currently I'm searching for a way to flash the original BIOS without an actually working BIOS. The chip is soldered to the motherboard and the device is quite old so I don't want to go through the hassle of disasamble everything just to find out I made it worse during the process.
I found a guide where it's mentioned that you can use a FAT formatted USB drive containing the BIOS and a special button combination to flash the bios in a kind of emergency mode. Unfortunately the guide only mentions HP, Acer and Asus devices but not Lenovo. You don't happen to know something about Lenovo, do you?

From the test I made with that tool on Lenovo T410 laptop with all commands I try:
/InFactoryMode - Set machine in factory mode
/DisableBIOSLock - Disable BIOS Lock
/UnlockTXE - Set the Flash Descriptor Override strap
/EnableTXEFWU - Enable TXE FW local update

All comands are reported as SUCCESSFUL but it can't disable ME lock region for me to be able to program DESC unlocked or dump ME region.

Maybe you program BIOS with the full flash dump ME+GBE+BIOS... or with TXE firmware ?

@plutomaniac: where's that tool from? (BootMode v2.2.rar)