Hello,

I am having trouble with a X79 MB, ASRock X79Extreme6. The BIOS says that the ME Subsystem is not available.
I did fiddle around with updating the ME-FW quite some time ago and failed big time. My recovery solution back then was a CH341A-programmer and a spare BIOS chip. I did manage to bring the board back to life.
Now, I was in the mood to touch the BIOS again by using the UBU tool. Everything worked just fine. I was able to update all parts of the BIOS, like OROMs for LAN, Chipsets, USB and CPU Code. Update routine within UBU worked flawless, BIOS flash worked, rebooting the board ok -> kudos to those who put the UBU together.
So, now why am I here in this section of the forum? The answer is simple - the ME is gone. I found a yellow explanation mark in the device manager right on the ME device. After some investigation I did find out that there is no ME Subsystem at all available in my BIOS. No idea whats going on. I tend to assume that this could be a leftover from my first attempt to update the FW one or two years ago. At the other hand I doubt that because I have never seen a conflict in the device manager.
Anyways, investigation and researching my issue brought me back to this section of the win-raid forum. Only problem is: it does not work.
I assume chapter D3. ME 7 - 10 & TXE 1 - 2 applies for me. If I keep reading in this section then I end up at chapter 5, 2nd sub chapter that starts with: "If you are working on FITC v8.1.40.1456 with ME 8 firmware which is configured as any "Intel (R) C600 Series Chipset" (Patsburg SKU), then you must use a ME region only .... "
What does it tell me? This information given over there seems not complete. What am I doing with the screen shot provided in this chapter? I do not have a full.bin. What is it and where is the full.bin coming from?
I literally do not understand this single statement that seems to apply for X79 chipset and ME version 8.xxx
How do I proceed with this so called full.bin? Follow up is missing, at least for me.
What have I done in order to recover?
- I tried to flash last BIOS from ASRock. Flash worked, booting up worked, ME missing
- Used my CH341A programmer with spare BIOS chip, erased chip, programmed last ASRock BIOS, swapped chip on MB. Board is booting up, ME is missing
- tried to send last ASRock BIOS to the chip by using fptw64 tool. Programming went through, booting up worked, ME missing
- Extracted ME Region form latest ASRock and send it to the BIOS chip by using fptw64 tool. flash worked, reboot worked, ME missing
- fptw64 -greset never works. It always errors out by saying that the ME is messed up

Can someone enlight me with some ideas what to do? Is there a chance to get this ME back to work or is this now the time for the garbage bin?

Thanks and cheers, F.

Thanks for answering.
I did the steps you recommended. I tried with Windows7 running by using fptw64 and with booting from USB into DOS console by using fpt. The actual programming procedure always runs, fpt -greset never works. It always says that the system needs a manual power cycle due to ME not running.
What possible BIOS problems can prevent the ME for being active/present? I mean, the board seems to work just fine beside the ME not avalaible. Anything else I can check/try?

Unfortunately no change at all. ME Subsystem remains n/a.
I did use the UBU 1.77 to update. I did not made any manual changes. But this does not apply since I replaced the BIOS chip with my spare chip. I did program the stock BIOS by using a CH341A programmer. So, whatever modification UBU did to the other BIOS chip does not apply to the one which is in use at the moment.
For my understanding: isnt the programming by using a CH341A the ultimative recovery?

Yes, identically. Both chips are Winbond 25Q64FVAIG. I specifically purchased the chip for this board.

Here are some screenshots.
This is how it looks when sending the ME.bin to the board. I do have two yellow warnings.


This is the error I get when typing the reset command.


I assume this is how I do have to extract the ME Reg from the BIOS


and then this is the BIOS Reg


Here is my update with the UBU tool:
before
after

and finally the CPU codes
before
after

MEInfo returned with something interesting. It says Unsecured mode due to H/W jumper. Now I am confused. What jumper is that supposed to be? This board has, beside the CMOS CLEAR, no jumper and the CLEAR CMOS is of course in the default position. I just double checked that with users manual and whats actually going on with the jumper on the board -> jumper has to be on pins 1 and 2.



I already did what you recommended. I tried to flash stock BIOS by using the onboard update within the BIOS as well as have it programmed on the chip. And I did the very same with the modded BIOS.
I am running out of ideas unless there is another way to flash the BIOS image to the board that I am not aware of.
When doing the research to find help in Internet I also found what the user coderush wrote on the hardforum. Unfortunatelly not everything seems to work on my side since I am dealing with ASRock and some of the tools and bat files are looking for ASUS files.

And yes, I fully agree that UBU wont mess with the ME. I only attached the screenshots to provide a more complete picture of the situation with my board.

I am afraid that this mainboard now comes with a new negative feature - no more ME Subsystem.
I did as you recommended with both chips. The result is the same for both.

Here is a screenshot from the programming tool just for information purposes

It is the same for both chips.

MEinfo returns with the same result as described in previous post.

I am out of ideas. I could try to shoot a support request over to the ASRock folks but I doubt that this old board will raise a lot of happines on their side.

Seems that you have set somthing like a 'ME jumper'? You checked the board for any possible undocumented switches/ jumpers you might have used in your first attempt?

Checking the freeform section of Setup with Universal IFR Extractor gives some ME related settings. I'm not sure if these could be stored in a place which isn't in bios/spi and which isn't deleted/reset by the CMOS jumper/switch. Maybe worth to check the values of these variables in the corresponding Var Store...

Thanks for bearing with me.
Ok, the way you recommended to perform the programming is actually the way I did. basically it is a four step procedure. Erase, Blank test, Program and verify.
However, the newly attempt to start all over led to the very same result, however with a little bit of change.
Booting up works, ME Subsystem is still n/a.

Here is the result what MEINfo answered:


Then this is MEManuf:


This time I found a device in the device manager with yellow exclamation mark:


Copied the PCI Ven into google and it returned with the result that seems to be the missing ME.
Even though the BIOS section says that is not available Windows found something. And something must be somewhere since the unknown device was not greyed out.

I gave it a try and installed the ME driver for Win7 I did download from ASRock.
Here is the result:


I am thinking to purchase another BIOS chip just for the sake of testing and the chip is cheap. On the other hand - it seems doubtable that two chips have an issue. But it could be.


@lfb6: thanks for your input. However, I am not sure how to obtain that information here from my machine.