Thinkpad T520 Won't Boot -Anything-

[leadacid]

Hello everyone - first time poster, long time visitor.

I recently decided to upgrade my X61 with a refurb T520 that NewEgg Flash was selling for about $270. Seemed a good deal. They advertised it as being a T520 with an i5, 4GB RAM, a 160GB disk, and the 1080p screen. They delivered a T520 with an i7, 8GB of RAM, and a 250GB disk - bonus! The laptop arrived in decent enough shape, they had applied a black matte skin over the palm rest and the top cover - which I'm not wild about - and the fingerprint reader clearly displayed in the ad pictures was absent. However, with the increased horsepower, I couldn't really complain!

So I fired it up on Saturday and it seemed to work okay. Plain-jane install of Win7 Pro, so no complaint there. I powered it off, and didn't look at it until last night. So first thing I do is my typical thing of going through the BIOS and turning on/off the stuff that I normally want. Stuff like making sure Intel Virutalizaiton is turned on, making sure hyperthreading is on, removing network from the boot order, turning on the system passwords, etc. Now, it seems to be stuck in a reboot loop of some kind.

The system won't boot anything, and I do mean anything. Nothing I threw at it works. Not the HD, not a CD/DVD, not a USB disk, not over PXE/TFTP, not even the CTRL-P Intel management thingy. It seems that as soon as it transfers boot control from the BIOS to an OS, it crashes/reboots. If I turn on the "Diagnostic Display" it displays (after doing the NIC messages) something to the effect of "Thinkvantage Active Protection System Starting..." and then promptly reboots. It will keep doing that indefinately.

So at the time I think that perhaps I have a borked HD, and so I attempt to use the F12 button and boot from USB - same thing. I try another USB drive in a different port - same thing. I try booting from a Win 7 install DVD - same thing. I try booting from a Win 8 DVD (thinking it might be a UEFI thing), same thing. I even try to boot from PXE, nothin.

So I tried changing around BIOS settings - like the boot order, UEFI/Legacy, security settings, etc. and I can't seem to find a combination that works. I tried resetting the BIOS back to defaults - nothing. Same symptoms.

I popped out the HD and the CD drive, thinking SATA is borking something up, still wouldn't boot from USB or network.

The BIOS is an older version - 1.36 I believe. Not sure if that matters. I couldn't upgrade it even if I wanted, seeing as I can't boot anything.

So no idea what's going on here. Thoughts? It seems like there's some BIOS setting causing it to go nuts, but I'm at a loss as to what it could be.

[bit_twiddler]

You could try resetting the BIOS to defaults.
If I understand your situation correctly, you
can get to the BIOS, but not your OS.

[RealBlackStuff]

Here's a list of online BIOS settings: http://service.lenovo.partner-managemen ... m?eid=1437
Select the T520 and play around with it, in case you missed something.
I bet UEFI is the culprit.

[leadacid]

Thanks for the replies.

bit_twiddler: I did try resetting the BIOS to defaults, didn't make a difference. And yes, I can get into the BIOS, but I cannot get any OS to boot from any media.

RealBlackStuff: I didn't know they had BIOS simulators like that, interesting. I also suspect that UEFI is the culprit, but I'm not sure what setting could possibly be causing it to behave like this.

I'll keep playing with it tonight and see if I can get anywhere.

[leadacid]

Well, I tried messing around with it more last night and this morning. Nothing. I left the system unplugged and the CMOS battery removed for 16+ hours hoping that would do something. Nope.

Its the craziest thing.

I'm gonna get in touch with the vendor and see if I can get a refund/replacement.

[leadacid]

Well, I dunno what I did, but I got it working on Saturday. As a last-chance shot, I tried mucking about with the BIOS some more. I disabled things, enabled things, all kinds of stuff. And then, suddenly, the blasted thing started working. I assume I changed some Security Chip setting. I believe it was something to do with trusted boot options or memory settings?

Either way, as a warning to those who may come after me, if you get stuck in this situation, it's likely some setting in the BIOS. If I can determine exactly what I did, I'll post it here. Either way, I'm happy I got it working.

[bit_twiddler]

I'd write down every setting for the bios; in fact, now I'm thinking
of doing that for each of my machines now that I see what you've
gone through.

There is some Lenovo BIOS capture/playback utility, but I believe
that it only works with UEFI, which is something I don't want to deal with.