Framework Laptop 13 - 12th Gen Intel Core BIOS 3.17 Release Stable

Framework Laptop 13
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I finally took a change and tried an update to the 3.17 BETA here. (I was still on 3.04). Here’s my long and frightening journey:

  • I tried the EFI update on a USB stick. The CSME updated worked, but the rest didn’t. The laptop restarted into Linux, and I was still on 3.04. (I didn’t get a chance to look at the screen before the reboot, so I missed any error messages.)
  • When I tried it again, I got “Full FW update using same version is not allowed” from the CSME updater, which confirmed that the CSME update worked. I also got the “cannot find a valid file system on boot devices” message. I googled this and found the 3.08 thread (12th Gen Intel Core BIOS 3.08 Release - #497 by NF117).
  • I tried various suggestions found in this thread. First, I checked if there’s enough free space on the EFI partition. I have > 800 MB, so this should be fine. Then, I tried CapsuleApp.efi -F, which correctly showed the NVME drive as fs1:. Following 12th Gen Intel Core BIOS 3.08 Release - #509 by Kieran_Levin, I switched manually to fs0: and run CapsuleApp.efi winux.bin firmwarehdr.cap -OD FS1. Okay, it couldn’t find firmwarehdr.cap. Tried again with CapsuleApp.efi winux.bin Framework_Laptop_13_12th_Gen_Intel_Core_capsule_signed_allsku_3.17.cap -OD FS1. This brought me a step further, but the laptop just rebooted into Linux.
  • After figuring out that others had the same problem when updating from 3.04 to 3.08, I tried to update to 3.06 first (12th Gen Intel Core BIOS 3.08 Release - #596 by dormando) This didn’t really work, and I got the same shell redirect error as in the post. Then charging didn’t work anymore, and so I went to the BIOS setup, soft-disconnected the battery, let it sit for a few seconds, and charging worked again. Puh…
  • I decided to try the LVFS method because CSME was already updated. I tried to be careful and trigger the updates one by one: first FW, then one retimer, then the other retimer. This worked fine. (I should have done this instead of 3.06).

tl;dr: If you’re on Linux, and the EFI method fails with “Full FW update using same version is not allowed” and “cannot find a valid file system on boot devices” after retrying, I recommend switching to the LVFS method to finish the update.

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