Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I have bought a TP 10 as second unit (I already have one). The seller sold it as working, but with defective battery that lasted only about half an hour.

But to my (bad) surprise, the battery is 100% OK, it lasts still many hours. The problem is that the tablet keeps shutting itself down after 30 minutes of being powered on. It doesn't matter if it is plugged or working with battery. When the clock in the task manager reaches exactly 30 minutes of use, the unit shuts itself down. You power it on again and become another 30 minutes of normal. If you don't load the OS and only enter in BIOS, there is the same problem.

I think it can't have nothing to do with heating issues, because te problem is there always, no matter if the CPU is under load or if the machine is cold and in suspend mode.

Looking information about this problem, I've read about a weird "security feaure" of modern intel processors, which shut the machine down after 30 minutes of use if they are installed on a not "approved" motherboard, but it would be strange in this case, since the CPU is soldered and not upgradable in this machine.

The OS is the stock W8.1. Once I managed to install W10 and during the whole install the machine worked for a longer time, but after having installed the problem came again.

The tablet had the last BIOS (1.80), which BTW updates the CPU microcode. I've downgraded the BIOS to the 1.63 (older BIOS than this aren't recognized, weird, because my other TP10 has the 1.62), but the problem persists.

Besides, it takes too much time to power on (15-20s blankscreen after pushing the power button, until the "lenovo" screen appears, and it isn't able to find any 5G Wlan, neither in W8.1 nor in W10.

A bad buy. Anyway, it was cheap enough to be used for parts, but it would be a pity to do that.

Check Event Log.

You can thank Intel for that (plus one of your BIOS updates that installed it).
It's their crap Intel Management Engine (ME) that kills off after 30 minutes.
That ME is the perfect spying system, that works even without your machine being switched on!
AFAIK it's part of Intel AMT somewhere in the BIOS, where you should be able to switch it off.
Many laptops have a label with Intel VPro on it, indicating they all have this spy-system on it.

Some info here for tools: http://www.win-raid.com/t596f39-Intel-M ... Tools.html
Rather than me trying to explain the how-to, take the weekend off to read some 223 pages of their forum-posts.

Puppy wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 06, 2017 1:55 am

Check Event Log.

A recurrent error that I get in event log, maybe related with the problem:
Intel(R) Trusted Execution Engine Interface driver has failed to perform handshake with the firmware

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 06, 2017 5:56 am

You can thank Intel for that (plus one of your BIOS updates that installed it).
It's their crap Intel Management Engine (ME) that kills off after 30 minutes.
That ME is the perfect spying system, that works even without your machine being switched on!
AFAIK it's part of Intel AMT somewhere in the BIOS, where you should be able to switch it off.
Many laptops have a label with Intel VPro on it, indicating they all have this spy-system on it.

Some info here for tools: http://www.win-raid.com/t596f39-Intel-M ... Tools.html
Rather than me trying to explain the how-to, take the weekend off to read some 223 pages of their forum-posts.

Thank you for the link!

Yes, the problem must have to do with some crappy Intel "security feature".

Unfortunately, the TP10 hasn't a "normal" BIOS like the one in my X220, where I can enable or disable Intel AMT. The BIOS in TP10 is a nice-graphics-enhanced-user-experience one, that allows only some basic operations. It tells me the intel TXE version installed, but doen't allow me to disable it.

The tools in your link aren't able to communicate with the TXE firmware (just like the error in event log). It's like somebody had made a wrong firmware update in this tablet...

And I don't know why I can't downgrade to anything below 1.63. With lower versions, the update program says that the BIOS isn't for that system. I've tried to flash the fl1 file with winphlash, but whithout success. Btw, I bought it with the last BIOS update (1.80) installed. I'm not a big fan of upgrading BIOS without having a very good reason to do that.

I'm pretty stuck with this tablet now, I don't know what else I can do...

About Intel Vpro... I've readed that the perfect spying machine only is complete when an Intel wlan card is present (I don't know if it is true). But in my X220 I have intel AMT disabled, and an Atheros Wlan card instead of the original Intel 6205, and this TP10 tables come with a Broadcom Wlan card.