Uhm, the idea of this mechanism is to prevent flashing of the bios chip. Whenever the bios write enable bit is changed, an SMI is generated, and the SMI code from the bios is executed. Within this code, the original bios vendor can do anything, including preventing the changing of said bit. Normally, this can be used to make sure that the bios chip can only be written through a "bios-vendor-approved" update mechanism.
Looking at the Dell website, it seems that the optiplex includes a feature called "computrace". This is an advance thief protection which includes, among other things, a bios module which helps preventing the removal of the thief protection from the board. This might be the reason that Dell tries to prevent flashing the bios through the means described above. To update this computer's bios through flashrom, the user might first have to contact Dell to disable the Computrace/Lojack mechanism on the board. After that, bios updates through non-dell programs might be possible. Best regards, Ingo Es gelten unsere Allgemeinen Leistungsbedingungen die unter http://www.msc-ge.com/alb abrufbar sind. Our standard terms and conditions apply which are available under http://www.msc-ge.com/alb . MSC Vertriebs GmbH Sitz der Gesellschaft: Industriestrasse 16, 76297 Stutensee Handelsregister: Mannheim, HRB Nr. 10 3631 Geschäftsführung: Manfred Schwarztrauber, Lothar Kümmerlin, Rüdiger Kuhn, Silvano Geissler Umsatzsteuer ID Nr.: DE 143 585 507 WEEE Reg. Nr. : DE 31011852 Gleichmann & Co. Electronics GmbH Sitz der Gesellschaft: Schraderstrasse 44, 67227 Frankenthal Handelsregister: Ludwigshafen, HRB Nr. 21305 Geschäftsführung: Manfred Schwarztrauber, Thomas Klein Umsatzsteuer ID Nr. : DE 148 421 329 WEEE Reg. Nr.: DE 72277043 Diese E-Mail enthält vertrauliche und/ oder rechtlich geschützte Informationen. Wenn Sie nicht der beabsichtigte Empfänger sind, informieren Sie bitte sofort den Absender und löschen Sie diese E-Mail. The information contained in this message is confidential and/ or protected by law. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and delete this message. -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Im Auftrag von Stefan Tauner Gesendet: Freitag, 9. September 2011 14:47 An: Uwe Hermann Cc: [email protected] Betreff: Re: [flashrom] [PATCH] revamp the warning of failing to set BIOS write enable in enable_flash_ich On Fri, 9 Sep 2011 11:47:35 +0200 Uwe Hermann <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jun 20, 2011 at 02:41:44PM +0200, Stefan Tauner wrote: > > - introduce a new variable 'wanted' that is used instead of 'new' > > - use 'new' for the actual value contained in BIOS_CNTL after we tried to > > write it > > - rephrase the warning which now also includes the old and new values > > besides the wanted one > > > > Signed-off-by: Stefan Tauner <[email protected]> > > Acked-by: Uwe Hermann <[email protected]> > > Doesn't apply anymore, but should be easy to forward-port. Not > compile-tested by me. thanks, r1435. someone with smi/smm knowledge should look at the second mail from me in this thread.. please :) -- Kind regards/Mit freundlichen Grüßen, Stefan Tauner _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list [email protected] http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom _______________________________________________ flashrom mailing list [email protected] http://www.flashrom.org/mailman/listinfo/flashrom
