How to upgrade mei on my ga-x79-ud3

[xplode]

Re: How to upgrade mei on my ga-x79-ud3

Hello,

I am not sure anymore. It must have been the standard V7 driver tho and the V8 flasher from the 8.1.40.1416 ME package....Not every build of the ME firmware works however, you should use this package from Station-drivers. Other flashers/versions have failed on me too that weren't suitable for X79 boards. My BIOS back then was the F13s for X79-UD5, not UD3!

intel drivers pour chipsets
Scroll down to:
Firmware Version 8.1.40.1416(1.5Mo)
Alternate link: ME_8.1.40.1416 Firmware.7z (Taken from Virtualfred's signature)

I flashed it with the FPT flasher for Win64 version 8.1.10.1286 included in the ME package, same version number as the ME after the flashing will have despite build no. 1416 in the file name. I copied the ME binary file over tot he flasher directory, renamed it to me.bin and used the meupdate.bat to flash.

... hope that helps. Let me know!

On a side note:

The ME and GBE areas of the BIOS are SKIPPED by the flasher built into the BIOS and the Windows flasher. This is to have the GBE and ME persist across BIOS updates.

The restore.bat of that package CAN be used to overwrite both, but a bit of a warning here: Using a regular BIOS file with restore.bat WILL overwrite the MAC adress of your onboard LAN and set it to 88-88-88-88-87-88. The only way to fix this is to change the MAC adress of the GBE firmware within the BIOS editor to your board's original MAC (search for 8888888788 in your BIOS file with a hex editor, should be at offset 1000h and replace it with the original MAC) and then use restore.bat with that mac-modified BIOS file!

I wish i saw this post earlier. I had to learn few things for my board the hard way (from X79 Intel GBit LAN GBE firmware update HOWTO (...also socket 1155/1150?) thread):

-- Gigabyte's BIOS flashers don't overwrite the entire flash ROM, they skip the ME and GBe regions and more. It is really a BAD JOKE the unmodded F13t BIOS for the X79-UD5 even contains the ME firmware 8.1.10.1286, but it just NEVER GETS FLASHED! I checked this with the Intel's FITS tool. So flashing the original Gigabyte BIOS via ex. 'fpt -bios X79_UD5_mod.f13t' would actually update your ME!

-- Intel's FPT flashtool overwrites the ME region with the -me parameter, however not the GBe region using fpt -gbe -f . fpt -i still states that there is no write protection active.

There is no way to update ME firmware with posted tools in this thread if someone is using 7.X version, it only works for 8.X firmware so i had to look for alternative ways, which led me to the above thread. I found out that latest X79-UP4 bios already contain 8.X ME firmware but @BIOS do not flash it. I upgraded GBE firmware, which also upgraded ME firmware to 8.X. After that method in this thread worked for upgrading to latest firmware. Anyway i sucessfully updated both GBE and ME firmwares.

[Amurtigress]

Re: How to upgrade mei on my ga-x79-ud3

xplode: Congrats for getting this to work. Sorry for the late reply, was on holidays.

I have to make one tiny correction to my initial post: I COULD NOT VERIFY that the MEI update in the F13t firmware would not be flashed. All earlier ones had no MEI in it whatsoever. And the MEI 8 in F13t was the same that I had already flashed so.... but anyways, doesn't really matter to us does it?