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s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

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Brian_L
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s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#1 Post by Brian_L » Thu Oct 22, 2015 12:52 am

Good day all. First time poster, long-time occasional lurker.

I recently got my hands on a s230u Twist, but the only reason is that it doesn't boot and the previous owner gave up on it and despite my (admittedly pretty good) general computer knowledge, I haven't figured it out yet. Any help would be appreciated.

The s230u was running Windows 8.1 just fine, until the person decided to update to Windows 10. It failed, and after it attempted to roll back to Windows 8.1, at the first reboot it ended up in the situation it still is in as the moment. The Lenovo screen (To interrupt normal startup, press Enter) will come up and stay. After pressing ENTER for the menu, the BIOS (F1) and Diagnostics (F10) run normally, but any attempt to continue booting (ESC) or load the boot menu (F12) result in a blank screen ("lit up" black screen, not a turned off screen). Pressing F12 shortly after turning on the power will briefly show "Entering boot menu", but it also goes to a blank screen.

I have tried

- resetting the BIOS settings
- disabling (and disconnecting) the main battery and disconnecting the CMOS battery
- running the Diagnostics (the latest BIOS, see below, has many different tests including for the motherboard. Everything passed.)
- booting with neither the SSD and HDD, as well as each by itself (same blank screen every time)
- booting with a Linux USB drive (long shot, I know)
- flashing (successfully) the bios using the BIOS crisis recovery method to the latest version (1.71)

At this point, I am out of (simple) ideas. I am not opposed to replacing the motherboard if it gets to that, but the cost on Ebay starts at over $250 USD, which is a little more than I hoped. I have replaced the board on a T43 (southbridge issue) a few years ago, so I am familiar with that process.

Anyway, this looks like a nice little machine and I would really like to get it up and running again, preferably without spending much, if anything, on it.

Thanks in advance.

RealBlackStuff
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Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#2 Post by RealBlackStuff » Thu Oct 22, 2015 5:41 am

Welcome to the forum.
Go into BIOS: DISable "Secure Boot" and Enable "Legacy Boot".
Also make sure that SECURE BOOT in UEFI is changed to "Legacy Only".
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
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Brian_L
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Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#3 Post by Brian_L » Thu Oct 22, 2015 12:54 pm

Thank you for the welcome and taking the time.

Secure boot has been disabled all along, but I don't have any option for "Legacy". In the Security->Secure Boot menu, the only option I can edit is "Secure Boot", and the options are Enabled/Disabled. But no matter the option selected, no other selectable option (like Legacy) shows up anywhere, even after a reboot.

Also, even if I set the Secure Boot to Enabled and restart, after getting in the BIOS again, the main screen still says "UEFI Secure Boot: Off" even though the option in the Security->Secure Boot still says enabled. :?

RealBlackStuff
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Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#4 Post by RealBlackStuff » Thu Oct 22, 2015 1:13 pm

Sorry, anything newer than Tx20/Wx20/Xx20 or Sx20 holds nothing of interest to me, due to this unwieldy UEFI BIOS.
Maybe someone else knows more?

Brian_L
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Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#5 Post by Brian_L » Thu Oct 22, 2015 1:40 pm

Hear, hear. Although I won't shy away from the newer technology, some of those "enhancements" lately really annoy this old-school PC lover.

RealBlackStuff
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Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#6 Post by RealBlackStuff » Thu Oct 22, 2015 2:29 pm

Check message #6 here: https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-S ... d-p/966377

Or this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=118389

Or this: remove battery, AC adapter, RAM, HD and CD. Hold down the power-button for 20-30 seconds to do a hard reset.
Connect only AC and try to boot. It should beep 1-3-3-1.
If beep, disconnect AC, insert RAM, reconnect AC and try to boot, immediately pressing F1 to go into BIOS.
Press F9, then F10 and reboot.
Better?
Switch completely off, then insert battery, try to boot into BIOS as above.
If OK, insert HD, press power and immediately start hitting F8 a number of times, to try and boot into Save Windows
Let us know what happens.

Brian_L
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Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#7 Post by Brian_L » Thu Oct 22, 2015 10:10 pm

Thanks for the continued help.

The first link doesn't apply here since I can access the BIOS. I have tried hammering other keys hoping to get to the boot menu (in particular F12, the designated key for it, but also F5 and F8, old school DOS/Windows style :) ), but it didn't help.

I will certainly try the third option, but the s230u won't quite work that way, as there's no CD drive and the RAM can't be removed since it's soldered to the motherboard. The second link kinda plays into this one as well... just removing parts and try to boot.

Cheers.

Brian_L
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Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:51 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#8 Post by Brian_L » Fri Oct 23, 2015 1:29 am

Sadly, no luck on the latest attempts either. :(

So unless I can get my hands on a cheap motherboard, this machine is not going to be used. There's no way I'll pay the Ebay prices when I could buy another identical, used s230u for less on Amazon...

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Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#9 Post by RealBlackStuff » Fri Oct 23, 2015 4:47 am

Seems you might be joining the ranks of other dissatisfied S230U Twist owners
(shoulda bought a REAL Thinkpad... AND stay away from W10, see http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=73&t=118416 )

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-S ... -p/2147031
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-S ... d-p/953247
http://www.eightforums.com/general-supp ... stics.html
Lovely day for a Guinness! (The Real Black Stuff)
Lenovo: X240, X250, T440p, T480, M900 Tiny.

PS: the old Boardroom website is still available on the Wayback Machine
.

Brian_L
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:51 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#10 Post by Brian_L » Fri Oct 23, 2015 12:35 pm

Luckily, as I said it was a "gift" from a co-worker and as far as I am concerned, W10 is the plague. My main machine runs Windows 7 and it's never going to get any higher than that.

I will still be keeping an eye out for a cheap motherboard replacement, as I like the premise of this laptop.

Thanks again.

Saucey
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Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#11 Post by Saucey » Sun Oct 25, 2015 11:22 am

I think its best for you to reinstall Windows 8/8.1 with a bootable USB.
I had to enable Legacy boot, because UEFI wouldn't want me to boot from USB. 8)

Let me try to come back and remember, I had an S230 for a bit when I bought one from a local seller.
The S230 I had came with a 500GB HDD and a 16 or 24GB SSD, it was real small.
It had windows 8.1 installed on both drives, but had the boot loader only on the HDD, so if i removed it it wouldn't of worked.
I tried copying and deleting the 500GB install onto the SSD but I ended up with a Windows boot error loop.
I couldn't boot to the Lenovo recovery partition nor was I able to boot the Windows recovery settings either, it would blue screen.
So I had the dirty deed of having to reinstall windows and finding the drivers.
One thing of note, that machine (and the 11e) is very picky detecting the keyboard and mouse.
I had to use a USB keyboard because it wasn't able to use laptop's!

I used Windows 10 for a week as I had gotten tired of a jumping cursor, it peforms poorly.
I used a 1.8GHz CPU 4GB RAM model.
Coffee, ThinkPads & Nikon Fan.

Current: PixelBook & Precision 7730
Old Favorites: A31p, T43p, T430s

Brian_L
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Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#12 Post by Brian_L » Sun Oct 25, 2015 5:03 pm

Saucey wrote:I think its best for you to reinstall Windows 8/8.1 with a bootable USB.
I had to enable Legacy boot, because UEFI wouldn't want me to boot from USB. 8)

Let me try to come back and remember, I had an S230 for a bit when I bought one from a local seller.
The S230 I had came with a 500GB HDD and a 16 or 24GB SSD, it was real small.
It had windows 8.1 installed on both drives, but had the boot loader only on the HDD, so if i removed it it wouldn't of worked.
I tried copying and deleting the 500GB install onto the SSD but I ended up with a Windows boot error loop.
I couldn't boot to the Lenovo recovery partition nor was I able to boot the Windows recovery settings either, it would blue screen.
So I had the dirty deed of having to reinstall windows and finding the drivers.
One thing of note, that machine (and the 11e) is very picky detecting the keyboard and mouse.
I had to use a USB keyboard because it wasn't able to use laptop's!

I used Windows 10 for a week as I had gotten tired of a jumping cursor, it peforms poorly.
I used a 1.8GHz CPU 4GB RAM model.
Good memory. Those are indeed the specs.

Interesting take on the keyboard. I pulled an old USB keyboard out of retirement, and it surprisingly worked better than the laptop's. For instance, when stuck at the blank screen, the whole system seems unresponsive by itself. With the USB keyboard, CTRL-ALT-DEL actually works as it should (which isn't the case with the machine's keyboard) and restarts the system while on the blank screen, which obviously indicates the system isn't frozen/crashed. One thing that did not come with the laptop is the HDD (as it still had data the guy wanted to keep). But so far, the behavior is the same as it was with the HDD still installed.

I tried booting with a Win 8.1 bootable USB stick, with Secure boot both ON and OFF, but no luck. The system sees the USB stick when it starts (brief illumination of the USB stick's light), but never gets to it, no matter what boot option I try.

Something else that was suggested to me, along the same lines as the USB keyboard is to use an external display. However I don't have any adapters or cables but might pickup a cheap mini-HDMI-> HDMI adapter tonight. Let's see how that goes.

Thanks for the help, and if you have any more ideas, I'm more than willing to listen. :)

Brian_L
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Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:51 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#13 Post by Brian_L » Sat Oct 31, 2015 5:59 pm

Just to update my problem, I tried with an external display (mini-HDMI) and changing the video output in the BIOS, and while the display of the BIOS and splash Lenovo screen output properly to the external display, I still get the same blank screen when I try to proceed with the boot.

Saucey
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Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#14 Post by Saucey » Mon Nov 02, 2015 3:29 am

I toggled a lot of options on and off from the bios, UEFI to Legacy, secure boot and a few other options but I didn't take notes when I did it.

However I don't remember a blank screen when it didn't boot from the USB? Bad memory?
Coffee, ThinkPads & Nikon Fan.

Current: PixelBook & Precision 7730
Old Favorites: A31p, T43p, T430s

Brian_L
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:51 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#15 Post by Brian_L » Mon Nov 02, 2015 2:20 pm

I am able to run the diagnostics, and according to the results, there's nothing wrong with the SSD drive, the RAM, or anything else. At this point, I am just about done, to be honest. Sometimes, there's nothing that can be done. :(

Brian_L
Posts: 10
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2010 4:51 am
Location: Ottawa, Canada

Re: s230u Twist stuck at boot screen

#16 Post by Brian_L » Thu Nov 05, 2015 8:56 pm

I just had a chance to try my last gasp idea, but no luck. I decided to buy an external DVD drive (about $25) and so could try the boot disk alternative (as opposed to the USB boot). I tried multiple OS, even a cryptography reset utility (with the secure boot on and off, depending on the OS needs). It's obvious that an attempt is made to proceed with the optical disk (some "key delay" happens while the reading is going on), but the end result is the exact same I described throughout this thread.

So I am officially throwing in the towel. Thank you to those that tried to help.

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