AMT for end-users?

[bernstd4]

I am an end-user of a private home computer that has a Core i5 processor. The computer has AMT, and I notice that the Intel Local Manageability Service (LMS.exe) uses approximately 25% of my CPU at all times. It seems to me that LMS and AMT make no sense for me as an end user. Therefore, I have two questions that I was hoping the community could answer:

1. Does AMT offer any benefit to me as an end-user if the computer is only used for basic home use? If I uninstall AMT, what functionality will I honestly be missing?

2. If I want to uninstall AMT, how do I do it? I tried to go into the BIOS (it's an ASUS motherboard) but couldn't find any relevant menus related to Intel AMT or Intel ME. Can anyone advise me how to remove it, or at minimum stop LMS.exe from auto-executing and using up so much CPU performance?

Thanks!

[inbrian]

AMT could potentially have some benefits for you in the future. However, all of the applications of AMT that I have seen to this point are focused on business use.

I think that you should be able to uninstall the Local Manageability Service, but I am not sure.

[Andrew_S_Intel2]

inbrian's pretty much got it right, vPro is targetted at the business sku's primarily, with an emphasis on remote manageability. There are certainly some potentially useful cases, remotely powering on the system over the internet and KVM come to mind. Historically Ylian has posted about this, I know he previously had a 2008 AMT system in his home and was making use of that, and more recently he's talked about getting power management information through iGoogle here:http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2010/09/09/getting-computer-power-state-on-igoogle/. But those are definitely a subset of the usages that IT shops would be interested in.

You certainly can uninstall the components(how it shows up in the program list depends ongeneration, but it should mention AMT). Also, it tends to vary by OEM system, but every system I've seen does allow you to disable AMT in the BIOS. Actually, could you let me know what model of ASUS motherboard you have? This is something I'd like to feed back to the internal dev teams.

[bernstd4]

Andrew, I have an ASUS P-7H55-M motherboard. I've gone through the BIOS over and over. There is no menu item that seems even remotely related to Intel AMT.

Thus far I have been unable to remove AMT, which is annoying. Any suggestions on how to go about uninstalling it if there are no AMT-related items in the BIOS?

Thanks.

[Andrew_S_Intel2]

Ah, the motherboard you have explains it, if their motherboard naming convention is consistent with the Intel chipsets. That chipset (H55) doesn't support either vPro or AMT, it doesn't have the necessary chipset components to do so. Which would explain why you can't find it in the BIOS.

If it's not in the BIOS, just uninstall the software components. In the installed software packages, you should be able to pick out the one that install the AMT software components.

[bernstd4]

Thank you for clarifying that - I've been searching the internet for an answer for a couple weeks now! I'll bet you're right that the motherboard is the reason Intel AMT doesn't appear in the BIOS.

I am not going to uninstall anything, but rather have use the Windows Computer Management interface to keep LMS.exe from executing at startup. It's amazing - my CPU usage (on a brand new Core i5) has gone from a baseline of 45% to a baseline of 3% just by keeping LMS.exe turned off.

[Lance_A_Intel]

This is an interesting situation. Seems like the increased utilization may be caused by the service trying to communicate with a device that is not present.
BKM will be to keep the LMS off of systems without AMT.

Thanks for the post.

[jacace]

good finding

Javier Andrs Cceres Alvis