T400 BIOS Update gone bad

[bobbarker]

My friend who has a T400 identical to mine in the sig (bigger HDD/smaller battery) but was doing the most recent BIOS update when he says the BIOS finished updating and the computer rebooted (from the way he tells the story it might have just rebooted early), now it's giving the long beep plus two short (system board failure).

Obviously he needs to have it reflashed with an eprom burner, does it make sense to hand it off to some little online site or take it directly to lenovo and fork out a bunch of money.

[Harryc]

I would explain exactly what happenned to Lenovo, he might just get it repaired under warranty. Tell him to take the tack that it was their BIOS utility that was used correctly and bricked my Thinkpad. It's the truth isn't it?

[bobbarker]

Yeah it's exactly the truth but the warranty might be up (only a 90-day I don't think he got any extension). I told him to argue it with them even if it is out of warranty. Biggest issue is we're in college and it's a little rough to have a laptop MIA for two or three weeks while it's repaired. It's a bummer for him

[Harryc]

Any T400 I've ever heard of has a 1 year manufacturers warranty from Lenovo. Tell him to check out the warranty status here.

[bobbarker]

Ah yeah it has a year warranty. Well if he argues correctly he should get the fix for free. It's been a long time since I've had to argue with a computer company (a few years) and it was with Dell (got a free LCD replacement on an Inspiron 8200). No idea if customer service has gone down hill or Lenovo is hard to deal with.