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Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

T60/T61 Series
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Olwe
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Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#1 Post by Olwe » Sat Feb 28, 2015 6:20 pm

I can't seem to figure out how to get the Middleton BIOS upgrade on a USB stick. I've been trying for a while now, but nothing seems to work. I've been to this site http://t61.wikispaces.com/, and I try to put the .iso onto the stick, but nothing doing. I'm on Ubuntu 14.10. Tried many different things on Win7 this afternoon. UltraISO is the latest failure. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong, what to do right?

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#2 Post by dr_st » Sun Mar 01, 2015 12:36 am

You need to first make the USB stick bootable with a special app. Google it...
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#3 Post by Qing Dao » Sun Mar 01, 2015 1:55 am

I know your pain. I gave up trying and installed XP onto an old 60GB hard drive just for situations like this. Have you tried the Rufus USB tool? That might work.

It is the one thing that grinds my grears about the middleton BIOS mods. After all that work, neither middleton nor his collaborators had the bright idea to use a better way to update the BIOS than the garbage they got from Lenovo. Supplying the BIOS as a single .ROM file and then posting links to both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Winphlash would have been too easy, I guess.

If I didn't want to risk a bad flash, I would try 64-bit Winphlash with those files. Theoretically it should work.
Four 15" T61 Frankenpads collecting dust and one X62 that sees no use, but X201 and X230 in service.

Olwe
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#4 Post by Olwe » Sun Mar 01, 2015 9:52 am

When I google for "make a bootable USB" they all assume I want to boot into an operating system and use it a-la "OS on a stick." For example, the Ubuntu "Startup Disk Creator" app simply won't take an iso that is not an Ubuntu OS iso. Another app will acknowledge the Middleton iso, but insists on a CD to burn it to. And as I said, all attempts on the Windows side have likewise failed. So I'm still at square-one: I need to have a bootable USB that goes ahead and does the Middleton BIOS upgrade. This shouldn't be rocket science. . . BTW, is there a way to upgrade while running Ubuntu? I tried WINE, but it barfs.
Last edited by Olwe on Sun Mar 01, 2015 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#5 Post by ajkula66 » Sun Mar 01, 2015 10:06 am

Qing Dao wrote: Have you tried the Rufus USB tool? That might work.
I believe that Rufus should work as well, although I've never used it for this purpose.
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Olwe
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#6 Post by Olwe » Sun Mar 01, 2015 10:45 am

I tried Rufus, but, again, I think it supposes (like all the rest) that I want to load up a USB with an OS and then run the OS from the stick. In reality, I simply need a minimalist MS DOS command line OS with which to run the BIOS upgrade (I think it's a .bat file). The Middleton iso comes with a Windows app that supposedly will do the upgrade while you're in Windows, but I'm on Linux.

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#7 Post by Qing Dao » Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:26 am

Olwe wrote:I tried Rufus, but, again, I think it supposes (like all the rest) that I want to load up a USB with an OS and then run the OS from the stick. In reality, I simply need a minimalist MS DOS command line OS with which to run the BIOS upgrade (I think it's a .bat file). The Middleton iso comes with a Windows app that supposedly will do the upgrade while you're in Windows, but I'm on Linux.
The one program that comes with the BIOS update will only run on 32-bit Windows, although there is a 64-bit version of that program as well.

Look here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... os.549378/

I think I used that a while ago and it was the only way to do it cleanly on Win 7 64-bit. Not sure if wine will get it done for you, but maybe.
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Olwe
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#8 Post by Olwe » Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:51 am

Thanks, Qing Dao, this is probably the way to go. I'll try it out on my loaner Windows machine -- or inside my VirtualBox Win 8.1.

Olwe
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#9 Post by Olwe » Mon Mar 02, 2015 9:49 pm

So, to make a long short, I broke down and bought blank CDs -- from an antique store -- and the iso (#1 ctl fn swap) went on to the CD without a hitch. Put it in the T61, and it seemed to do the update just fine. BIOS now has 2011-03-18 for a date, 2.29 (7LETC9WW) for a version. Does that sound right?

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#10 Post by verachen » Thu Mar 05, 2015 3:15 am

dr_st wrote:You need to first make the USB stick bootable with a special app. Google it...
Yes, create a bootable media is very important for data recovery. If you want to create a bootable USB, here is one tool can be recommended to you, aomei backupper, you can use it to create a bootable USB, DVD/CD effectively. Hope you like it. Also you can search in google to find some more. :D

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#11 Post by paulgj2 » Sat Jan 16, 2016 3:31 am

This is how I created a bootable USB drive to apply the Middleton BIOS for my X61:

1. Insert your USB drive

2. Download and run the Rufus program from https://rufus.akeo.ie/

3. Take default options to create a bootable disk

4. Download the Middleton ISO

5. Extract the ISO to a folder using 7-zip

6. copy the contents of the folder to the USB drive, when prompted to replace the command.com file say yes

7. Boot from the USB drive and update the BIOS
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#12 Post by thinkpadcollection » Sat Jan 16, 2016 8:01 pm

rufus software is constantly updated, The latest version fixed the problems you had.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection.

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#13 Post by paulgj2 » Sat Jan 16, 2016 11:53 pm

I think Rufus always had the ability to make a basic bootable drive with freedos.
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#14 Post by Wasnksfer » Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:52 pm

Qing Dao wrote:
Sun Mar 01, 2015 11:26 am
Olwe wrote:To make a bootable USB or burn ISO to USB , I tried Rufus, but, again, I think it supposes (like all the rest) that I want to load up a USB with an OS and then run the OS from the stick. In reality, I simply need a minimalist MS DOS command line OS with which to run the BIOS upgrade (I think it's a .bat file). The Middleton iso comes with a Windows app that supposedly will do the upgrade while you're in Windows, but I'm on Linux.
The one program that comes with the BIOS update will only run on 32-bit Windows, although there is a 64-bit version of that program as well.

I think I used that a while ago and it was the only way to do it cleanly on Win 7 64-bit. Not sure if wine will get it done for you, but maybe.
I know this thread is very old.but this method doesn't seem to work for me (Windows 10 , 64-bit )
Last edited by Wasnksfer on Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#15 Post by jaspen-meyer » Wed Jan 10, 2018 7:05 am

Wasnksfer wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2018 10:52 pm
I know this thread is very old.but this method doesn't seem to work for me (Windows 10 , 64-bit )
What error do you get? When do you get the error?
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#16 Post by TheAuldMan76 » Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:10 am

I previously used this guide to get a bootable USB stick sorted out - http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads ... ost8257028 - and I did it on a system running with W7 Pro x64 OS.
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#17 Post by portsample » Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:34 pm

Good luck w/this. I spent way too much time trying to do this w/an X61 a few months ago. Finally kludged it by installing 32-bit WinXP then using the DOS exe.
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Re: Make bootable USB with Middleton BIOS upgrade?

#18 Post by jaspen-meyer » Sun Jan 21, 2018 2:56 am

portsample wrote:
Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:34 pm
Good luck w/this. I spent way too much time trying to do this w/an X61 a few months ago. Finally kludged it by installing 32-bit WinXP then using the DOS exe.
On Linux you can add the ISO to grub2's boot menu using grub-imageboot:
grub-imageboot - boot iso, harddisk and floppy images with grub2 and syslinux memdisk

an easy way to update bios is adding the iso to your grub menu:
apt-get install grub-imageboot;
mkdir /boot/images;
cp yourbios.iso /boot/images;
update-grub
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