Shit can happen at any time. This was just proven once again by my PiPo W1 tablet PC. Out of a sudden it started to shut itself down every 30 minutes. Forget about issues with the operating system – it is something totally different. A look into the Windows device managed did uncover a device called “Intel Trusted Execution Management Interface” showing a yellow warning sign. A double click showed a device status “STATUS_DEVICE_POWER_FAILURE”. A look into the BIOS unveiled the source of the problem: The fields “SEC RC Version” and “TXE FW Version” were showing “N/A”.
To understand what this means you have to understand that the BIOS of these tablets is consisting of two parts. One part is the boot ROM, setup interface and UEFI stuff that most advanced PC users should be familiar with. But nowadays Intel processors have some more stuff in them than just GPU and CPU. There als is something called a Management Engine. This is controlling several processor parts and also offers security features such as the Trusted Execution Engine or support for TPM modules. Now of course this part of the CPU needs its own Firmware as it is running independently from the operating system and the UEFI / BIOS. And exactly this is the second part of the BIOS which is called “ME Region” or “ME Ignition FW”. Now this is the part that was broken in my PiPo W1.
A quick Google session unveils that I was not the first one to have this issue. A lot of tablets based on the Intel Atom Z3740D from different manufacturers including popular brands like Acer, Asus and Dell have had these issues already. All the guys I was able to find simply returned it and got a new one. But as I am someone who does not give up as fast as others do, I tried to fix it myself. And after over 30 hours of work I found a solution which is very easy to do and doe not take more than 12 minutes to do. In this tutorial I want to tell you how you can fix this issue, in case you have it as well.
Everything within the following tutorial is done at your own risk! Neither me or anyone else at ChinaMobileMag can be held responsible for any possible damage caused to your tablet while modifying its system firmware.
- Step 1: Download this package which is containing all the needed tools and images. Save it directly onto your tablet PC, as all the steps have to be done on it. Extract it into a folder of your choice.
- Step 2: Now you will have to create a backup of your existing BIOS. This will be needed later on. For this purpose enter the folder you have extracted the archive to. You will see three sub-folders. One of them is called “AFUWIN”. Enter this folder and execute the tool “AFUWINGUI.EXE”. Now a window will appear on which you will see a few buttons on the bottom. Click the “Save” button and save the image to some external media, so it is safe. Once the process has been completed you can close the tool again.
- Step 3: Now we already start recovering the Intel Management Engine Firmware. For this purpose we are using a BIOS image file for the Onda V975i. As this is a modding BIOS used for porting Windows 8.1 onto this tablet PC, it contains a full copy of the BIOS chip, including the ME area. Yes, this BIOS is not compatible with our device – but this does not matter as long as the tablet does not shut down, as we have created a backup in the previous step. So PLEASE SHUT DOWN your tablet before you continue and boot it up again, just to make sure that it does not shut down in the middle of the process. After you did that, open up a new command line by opening up the Charms Bar, tapping on search and entering “CMD” in there. Then right click on the command line entry and open it with admin rights. Now the command line has opened. Type “cd” followed by a space and then drag and drop the folder “BIOS + TOOL” into the command line and hit enter. Now you are directly inside this folder and can execute commands inside of there. Enter “fptw -f M97_Win_Bios_0714.bin” and hit enter. The flash process will be executed now and this will take a few minutes. Wait for it to finish and don’t touch the tab!
- Step 4: Now we have flashed the image, but as said before the BIOS might not be fully compatible with your tablet (only the ME part is, as it is the same for all tabs using this processor). So you basically have just bricked it. If you would reboot it now it might be broken. So hurry up before it is shutting down again. We now flash the BIOS image back that we previously created a backup from in step 2. Change back into the AFUWIN folder and execute “AFUWINGUI.EXE” again. This time click on the button “Load” and choose the BIOS image that you have saved to some external media previously. Switch to the “Setup” tab and activate the following check boxes: Programm All Blocks, Main BIOS Image, Boot Block and NVRAM. Now click on the “Flash” button and wait for the process to finish. If some message is popping up, click on “OK”.
- Step 5: Now we are almost done. We only need to reset the Intel Management Engine / Trusted Execution Engine Chip inside the processor. For this purpose please hold the on / off switch of the tablet until it is powering off (appr. 30 seconds). Now put the type cover on, press the on / off switch to power it on and immediately start hitting the “Del” key until you see the BIOS menu of the tab. Scroll down on the screen you see and check the “SEC RC Version” and “TXE FW Version”. The N/A should have disappeared now and a version number should be shown. If this is the case, our flashing process has been successful and you can exit the BIOS and boot up Windows. Here you open up the device managed and the warning sign next to the Intel Trusted Execution Management Engine Interface should have disappeared as well. Congratulations! Your tablet will work normally again now. This method should work on ANY tablet featuring an Intel Z3740D processor and an AMI Aptio BIOS. This included the Pipo W1, Cube iWork 10 / U100GT, Voyo Winpad A1, Asus Transformer Book T100 and a lot more devices.
Have fun with your working tablet!
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