Intel manageability engine firmware recovery agent license agreement

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Intel Management Engine Firmware corrupted or stuck in recovery mode

‎01-08-2020 04:07 PM 28,786 Views

Hello everyone! Sorry if I am posting this on the wrong thread, but I am new to the forum, but hopefully I got it right.

I bought an Lenovo Ideapad 720s-13IKB laptop with an Intel Core i7 processor last summer. I had to reinstall Windows 10 and all the drivers available on the manufacturer's website. In the chipset section, I found an update for the Intel Management Engine Firmware version 11.8. I have downloaded the file and ran it. A command prompt opened and showed that the firmware is upgrading. After it was all done, the laptop shut down and I pressed the power button. Now, it seems like the update managed to break something at BIOS level because it now takes 30 seconds for the computer to POST. After I power it up, it just hangs with the screen turned off, and after then it shows the Lenovo logo and starts booting.

So, I suspect that the Management Engine Firmware might be corrupted, because the Intel Management Engine Interface disappeared from Device Manager, and I cannot install it either because of an error stating that my system is incompatible, and because upon trying to reflash the Intel ME Firmware, I get an error stating that my laptop does not feature Intel ME. On the other hand, HWiNFO shows that Intel ME is enabled, but it runs Version 0.0 Hotfix 0, which is not a good sign.

I've asked on the Lenovo forums as well about my problem but I haven't got an answer so far and, by reading on other forums, my only fix might only be to reprogram the BIOS, which I cannot do at home, since I do not have the tools or knowledge to perform such an operation, and I need this machine daily, so sending it in for repair would be a very big inconvenient for me. However, I hope that it might be possible to fix this issue trough software, since the long boot time is the only problem that affected my laptop.

Thank you very much for your time spent reading my problem, and any help would be much appreciated!