Potential data wipe while updating x220 bluetooth driver.

[aceyx]

EDIT:
If the installer fails, when it rolls back to the previous driver is when the wipe occurs.

I wasn't able to duplicate my original issue but simply canceling the install halfway did the trick.

Apparently people are still having a problem with bt drivers on the T series over on lenovo forums.

____original post:
This is going to take several hours for me to verify, but I strongly believe that the bluetooth driver for the x220 and other systems is corrupt. After installation, my drive was wiped almost clean; the only files left were those seemingly necessary for Windows to continue to run.

Driver: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-76986

Systems using driver:
- Edge E220s, Edge E420, Edge E420s, Edge E520
- L420, L421, L520
- T420, T420i, T420s, T420si, T520, T520i
- W520
- X1
- X220, X220i, X220 Tablet, X220i Tablet


I ran the ThinkVantage utility to install the driver. Big red flags should have been shooting fireworks when the install took more than 5 minutes, but I let it run. It ran for maybe 30 minutes.

Data, including restore points were all erased. Factory partition seems okay. I did notify Lenovo but a fix might take a while. 2011/5/16 version is problematic.

Once I can verify this I will notify blogs, other forums, etc. to prevent this from happening to someone else. Right now I need to run my drive through recovery software to get some post-backup files (~3hrs). If anyone wants to image their drive first then test it out, I'm sure the ThinkPad community will appreciate it. Plus you get to make me look like Chicken Little.

[Wiz]

I have read several reports of such a problem where this happened because of the Bluetooth software version 6.2.1.1400. It was related to the uninstaller that wiped the drive and i have seen it happen as well. Lenovo pulled that version and replaced with version 6.2.1.1401 where the release notes said "(Fix) Improved the uninstallation program.". In that case it seems like most people who experienced this problem either uninstalled version 6.2.1.1400 or did a upgrade from this version. I have never heard of any such issues related to other versions of the Bluetooth software from Lenovo.

[aceyx]

Thanks for the info, it sucks this happened to others but good to hear that I'm not losing my mind.

I did however give up last night after recovering my files (used Get Data Back, thumbs up on this program), as I was just too furious to deal with it. Doing product recovery now.

I'll try uninstalling 6.2 before installing 6.4 outside of ThinkVantage to see if I can replicate the problem.

[Wiz]

You are probably not losing your mind

I understand your frustration and this kind of bugs just shouldn't happen. I hope you manage to recover all your data even if it's still annoying that it happened in the first place.

[janne50]

I can confirm this problem. It have happen to me twice. First time I wasn't sure what happened, but second time it was clear what was going on. The Think Vantage tool for updating drivers was downloading and installed the Bluetooth driver. The automatic installation failed, but I was offered an option of manually downloading and installing the driver. During that process I think part of the Think Vantage tool crashed and the download stopped. Windows7 was still functioning and I could restart in a controlled way. When the system booted it went straight in to system repair. That failed and my only option was to do a factory recovery and start over.
Be careful.