Thinkpads Forum

Hello
I have a friend with a X1 6th gen, recently purchased,( 8Th gen i7), type 20KH-CTO1WW, everything was working perfectly until windows 10 started to offer updates.
he said NO always, and eventually updates got installed by force by microsoft.

after that, the machine died.
it is bootlooping at bios level.

I removed NVME, battery, and even BIOS battery, i did press the rear button with everything disconnected, no dice, it's dead.

is there is any way to recover the original bios of the machine to make it work again?, it's a 6-7 months old machine!, and a very expensive one!.

any ideas greatly appreciated
thanks!

Indkt.

6-7 months old? Should be covered by warranty.

Hi!
thanks for answer!, it is, but i purchased this machine in the US and i am in Argentina now, but i just found out that this machine has international warranty so i can send it locally, awesome!.
anyway i would prefer to fix it myself but if it's not possible at least i can send it to the local warranty

induktor wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 12, 2019 2:59 pm

Hi!
thanks for answer!, it is, but i purchased this machine in the US and i am in Argentina now, but i just found out that this machine has international warranty so i can send it locally, awesome!.
anyway i would prefer to fix it myself but if it's not possible at least i can send it to the local warranty

Honestly that kind of stuff even I don't risk doing if a warranty covers it just send it away and don't touch it.

I REPEAT: PUT THE MACHINE BACK TOGETHER AND SEND IT TO LENOVO. it's not worth doing some hackjob UEFI/BIOS crap to try and revive it when 99% chance it will be an out of warranty brick.

Thinkpad4by3 wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 12, 2019 4:26 pm

Honestly that kind of stuff even I don't risk doing if a warranty covers it just send it away and don't touch it.

I REPEAT: PUT THE MACHINE BACK TOGETHER AND SEND IT TO LENOVO. it's not worth doing some hackjob UEFI/BIOS crap to try and revive it when 99% chance it will be an out of warranty brick.

You are right, it is a better idea to take it to the warranty, i just talk to lenovo international and this machine has international warranty, they ask me a ton of questions and give me a case code and a local phone number to call.
I contact the local warranty facility in my area, and they told me to take the machine there, they will take care of it, great!!!!!.

now i wonder, why lenovo ship machines with bios programming unlocked, this is pretty serious, specially allowing the microsoft morons to do it without your consent, update the bios is a high risk operation IMHO, it should be blocked by default (bios update by en user option right?) i remember seen that in my T450 and T460 at least.

once i get the machine back i will post here, thanks!
indkt

I’ve never heard of a Windows update making any changes to the bios. How do you know that’s what happened?

induktor wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:27 am

why lenovo ship machines with bios programming unlocked, this is pretty serious, specially allowing the microsoft morons to do it without your consent, update the bios is a high risk operation IMHO, it should be blocked by default (bios update by en user option right?)

I'm not actually sure Win10 can force a BIOS update. But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft that at some point it could, due to some bizarre bug.

i have seen that before, what bugs me more than anything is that thinkpads should be blocked to allow bios update by the OS by default, that's something pretty serious!,
thknkpads are not regular user's notebooks, they are professional machines, we expect them to be safer than others
now I'm going to every notebook and set supervisor password and BIOS update to require bios supervisor password, geez!.
we are going backwards instead of forward.

dr_st wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 8:32 am

induktor wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:27 am

why lenovo ship machines with bios programming unlocked, this is pretty serious, specially allowing the microsoft morons to do it without your consent, update the bios is a high risk operation IMHO, it should be blocked by default (bios update by en user option right?)

I'm not actually sure Win10 can force a BIOS update. But I wouldn't put it past Microsoft that at some point it could, due to some bizarre bug.

I've never heard of that either, unless now, with Win 10 they have system updates from manufacturers. I still have never heard of an update through Windows Update in any version.

They are professional machines but they aren't always used by IT or even business professionals that know anything about computers or software.

MikalE wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 16, 2019 5:17 pm

I've never heard of that either, unless now, with Win 10 they have system updates from manufacturers.

Oh, I know for sure that Windows 10 is able to download and install BIOS updates. However I have never heard of them doing it forcefully, like they do with "Critical/High Priority" Windows updates.