Intel Management Engine Firmware Corrupted

[santhamate]

Hello everyone! It is a little bit long story but if you read it all the way I’m really thankful and I hope somebody can help me!

I know there are lots of thread about this but all of them were not helped me identify my problem also it seems that my case is a little bit different!

So I’m using my HP Elitebook 840 G6 for the last 2 years I think, everything was good until somehow my screen turned off for a moment got back then again and again until it became dead. First encounter I just thought its battery died, so I plugged in then everything seemed fine, it could start without any problem. But after this it got more and more often that my laptop suddenly just stopped working in just a blink of an eye. Sometimes it gave me an “Intel ME Corrupted” message, sometimes I was able to press to continue but sometimes it was dead after a sec again during the boot, but most of the time its dead by the time something is displayed on the screen.  Once in a while the problem not showing up for weeks. Of course after I could start the laptop I ran several tests, I manually updated the IME and also updated the BIOS, also the windows itself(tried 10 and 11). Because I thought not so long ago I updated the BIOS through the HP software and that could be the problem. But it doesn’t help, it was the latest update, not so long ago a new version of BIOS came out and it said they fixed some bug which caused similar problems as mine, but after I updated and also updated every other drivers and the IME firmware also later that day it died again, under a moment. 
After all this I took apart the whole thing trying to find the problem, also run every component test during BIOS and after the boot up, once it showed a problem with the battery but did not give it much attention. Later I installed some program to make further test, make some stress test on the CPU, memory everything… Also the HP hardware diagnostics said that everything is fine also the motherboard. I found out that the battery is very worn it was at 60%, yeah thats very bad, also the monitoring app showed that one time it went under 10.5V so undervolt so thought thats it one of the cell must be faulty so when its fails the drop of voltage must be killing the memory or something that stores the IME data and it gets corrupted. To make it obvious that this is the problem I disconnected the battery and ran the laptop for 10+ hours with stress tests etc., nothing happens nothing… So I ordered the right brand new battery, plugged in and voala it can starts right away without any problem. I also calibrated it. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!! After around 1 month Im using it normally using google chrome so nothing stressing no overheating it just stops working, try to boot up the same issue the keyboard light up also the power button and nothing and trying to start up over and over again, not to mention that I can’t stop it, no method working, whether I close the lid down or press the power button for 30 sec nothing works. Now it could boot up again saying the IME corrupted again. Every test shows no hardware error so I don't know what causing to corrupt the IME Firmware no clue… sometimes its kills itself during boot… one last thing that on the side where I plug in the power cable after powering up its flashes 9 times ? There is no such beep led blinking code in the documentation… If anyone has any idea whats happening please help me, I’m trying to solve this problem by myself for almost a half year now but I gave up 😞 

[santhamate · Accepted solution]

I finally solved the problem, after I replaced the battery with a new one the problem still showed up, since there was a problem even when I started to boot and the power on button was also just flashing up then turned off immediately I suspected that it could be the CMOS battery even tho I measured it with multimeter and the voltage was fine it seems that its exhausted. So after REPLACING THE CMOS IT SOLVED THE PROBLEM.