The Mystery of 'Manufacturing Mode' - Dell Motherboards

[CapThatBrass]

Hi,

Firstly sorry if this is the wrong forum for posting this question - please recategorize or move to another part of the forum if necessary.

I've been doing alot of research recently into the world of BIOS editing and building of images, out of curiosity mainly.

Lots of Youtube videos as well as threads in this forum (as well as others) mention the term 'unlocked' bios which generally means the removal of BIOS passwords from a dumped image to allow full access to the BIOS/UEFI menu. However, a handful mention that a prompt for the Service Tag will appear upon boot - this function is brought on by the enabling of 'Manufacturing Mode'.

It would be interesting to know what Manufacturing Mode actually is - is it something specific to Dell or is it a universal property provided by the likes of Intel to allow all laptop manufacturing brands to test their equipment?

Is there a way to invoke or enable Manufacturing Mode within a dumped BIN image, which can then be written back to the chip to be booted from?

Any advise or guidance would be great.

Thanks

[CapThatBrass]

Can anyone help out?

[volinakis]

wow, so you need to learn how to use a search engine on internet, It took 2s ...
"Manufacturing mode is a special BIOS mode designed to decrease the time systems spend on the assembly line. This is done by skipping nonessential boot functions/tests and by prioritizing removable media boot devices over internal hard drive controllers in the boot order. In combination, these changes decrease the boot time significantly which allows more systems to complete the factory processes in less time. When a system successfully completes the factory processes, it is taken out of Manufacturing mode. It is very unlikely a customer would receive a system in Manufacturing mode out of the box. Manufacturing mode is more likely to be seen when a system board is replaced."

Modifying bios to enter in manufacturing mode allows to reset bios to factory defaults, hence removal of passwords, computrace, boot order or removed devices from boot order.

[CapThatBrass]

Thanks for copying and pasting the first paragraph that Google chucks out Volinakis.....

[diif]

It's a Dell thing. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/e...facturing-mode

[volinakis]

Originally Posted by CapThatBrass

Thanks for copying and pasting the first paragraph that Google chucks out Volinakis.....

you are welcome! don't tell me that you need translation from English to English ... otherwise I don't understand why did you ask what is " Manufacturing Mode" and what it wants from you ...

[Ali5914]

Hello Friend, absolutely this is possible to UNLOCK Manufacturing Mode in DELL machines. But there is some limitations. You can not unlock for all models. But whichever models completely rely on bios not on EC bios (Super IO), you can unlock those models by simply replacing EC region of the bios with STOCK EC RGN from downloaded EXE.

[CapThatBrass]

Thanks for the explanation Ali5914, this would make sense, I didn't realise that replacing the machines EC region with stock from an extracted BIOS image would cause the machine to boot into Manufacturing Mode.

[Ali5914]

Originally Posted by CapThatBrass

Thanks for the explanation Ali5914, this would make sense, I didn't realise that replacing the machines EC region with stock from an extracted BIOS image would cause the machine to boot into Manufacturing Mode.

You're Welcome.... Try doing it... If it is not happening then let me know. I will guide you on this.

[vbpablo]

Hi everyone!

May I can find here the help that I need

I have a Dell G3 15 3500 that failed due to a short circuit (also with an expired guaranty), and the guys from the service did awful work, so I had to buy a 2nd-hand motherboard.

Once installed the MB, the notebook didn't turn on. So after we tried unsuccessfully to reprogram the BIOS, we opted to change the BIOS chips with the ones in the old MB (that looked ok and were recognized by the reprogrammed). The notebook turned on again, and we were even able to boot to windows... but as you can expect, it booted in manufacturing mode, and it's annoying (and maybe unsafe) to work with the notebook in that mode.

We found this post googling about the manufacturing mode, but as the notebook is dual BIOS, we don't know where and how we should edit the EC region data.

Also, we found a post on another website (https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/gu...lization/31277) that talk about a conflict involving intel engine (cs)me/cs(txe) regions data. That makes us think that the information contained within the EC chip could be related to the problem, but we're not entirely sure about that.

What do you suggest to fix the issue??

A friend is doing the BIOS magic; I'm just translating him, so feel free to correct me on anything you consider wrong.