Need to Flash my BIOS

[Zuke]

My BIOS are very old, and evidently still have some issues that were ironed out in later releases. I'm running Windows 7 x64, so I need to boot from CD. I burned the CD and tried to boot from it, but it told me it was unable to load the CD-Rom drivers. I did some research and it seems the leading culprit is the fact that I don't have the official IBM slim-drive that fits into the X6 UltraDock. Instead, I'm using a normal USB DVD-Rom.

Any ideas?

[RealBlackStuff]

Shouldn't there be an option in your BIOS to boot from USB-drive?
Or press F12 when booting up.

[K0LO]

RBS:
That's not the issue. Lenovo specifically says in the README:

You should have an Ultrabay Slim optical drive for ThinkPad X6 Tablet UltraBase to boot the computer from the BIOS Update CD. Any types of USB, PC Card, CardBus PC Card or ExpressCard optical drive are not supported.

Zuke:
I will have to face this same issue myself soon since I too no longer have any x86 operating systems. Here's what I was thinking of trying. Grub4Dos is capable of directly booting ISO images. So I would download the Lenovo BIOS update ISO, copy it to a USB flash drive, and boot it with Grub4Dos.

Grub4Dos is great; especially its ability to boot ISO image files. I've switched to using it as a boot manager on all of my PCs and flash drives. A friend of mine has written a tutorial on USB flash drive booting from Grub4Dos here. If you try the BIOS update this way, let me know if it works.

[Zender]

Recommended reading:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade/X_Series

[K0LO]

Great article, Zender. Thanks!

[Zuke]

That's a great article! I used approach 4 and it seemed to work. But I get to the "Update System Program" and it tells me "The system program file was not found on the CD. Insert the correct CD in the drive."

If I go back out to the prompt, I can type dir and clearly see the BIOS. Any other thoughts?

[Zender]

Did you really use BIOS update for X61T and not X61 non-tablet?

[Zuke]

Oops. I used the ones you linked me to in the PM, without ever telling you I have a tablet, not the 's'. New BIOS imaged worked like a treat! Thanks for the help!

[dfumento]

I have an small external USB 2.0 Toshiba DVD drive that I picked up at Best Buy for about $80 that works great for BIOS updates for an x64 system. I think the Samsung drives such as those on Newegg.com work fine as well.

[Zender]

Last generation (X200, T400 etc.) BIOS updates use different way of booting CDs, which means USB drives finally work. No USB optical drive will work with original updates from Lenovo for X60/X61 etc.