W510, black screen after BIOS Update.

[Rashomon]

Hi all!

I got a new W510 and decided to update the BIOS via the Windows 7 executable supplied by Lenovo from their Support-web. The program ran fine (all green checkmarks), the machine was restarted and then stopped and started again - but it never stopped showing the "ThinkPad" POST screen. The machine started to fire up it's fans after a while and the machine felt quite warm on it's top right side. I waited a bit (say 4-5 minutes) if there was some extra BIOS update that was being done but nothing happened so after a while I decided to shut it down. Now when I start it up, the screen is all black.

Will this be covered in the included warranty? It has to be, right?

Are there some other options I might have missed? I've tried booting with the BIOS Update CD in the drive, and with the same BIOS update CD but on a USB Stick - nothing works. External VGA gives no screen either.

[Marin85]

It seems like you have bricked your laptop. The BIOS update must have gone wrong somewhere. Is your system 32-bit or 64-bit? Did you first try to update the BIOS from within the OS via running the BIOS update .exe or did you try to update the BIOS from BIOS update CD (.iso image)? Regardless, AFAIK, that kind of damage is covered by the warrenty.

BTW, welcome to the forum!

[Rashomon]

Thank you!

The update was run by itself from the installer. it's a 64-bit Windows 7.

It's quite strange, I have done probably hundreds of BIOS updates (I've used to wok with IT-Support some years back) - I've never bricked a computer, this is my first if so. I took great care in choosing the exact right model from the Lenovo site, and made sure the OS was freshly booted and everything.

[billp117]

I believe you must create a bootable ISO disk for your bios update when using Windows 7 64 bit. You might do that on another computer and try flashing the bios again. If that does not work you need to contact Lenovo service.

[Rashomon]

The site said that 64-bit Win7 is supported. I also tried (afterwards) burning the Bootable ISO to a CD but it does not start the CD. While the screen is black it starts reading the CD, then after some 30 seconds it stops. And nothing happens.

Once again, thank you all for you help.

[Marin85]

I have just read through the Readme file for that BIOS update. It seems it is no long necessary to update BIOS on Windows x64 systems via bootable CD or at least there is nothing mentioned there about performing such steps. In other words, the BIOS update went wrong for some mysterios reason... I would call Lenovo service to replace the mobo.

[hondalee]

Me too, my W510 also black screen after BIOS Update.
Win7 64 pro
maybe the update BIOS have some bug ?

[GrandMasterKhan]

Are you sure Lenovo covers it under warranty. With Dell, they will cover if you are doing with tech support online so they have ownership over the process. If you brick it yourself, they wont cover it. Let us know the outcome. BIOS update failing is like the Armagodden of PC computing. Worse possible scenario. Yikes but hang in there.

[Greg Gebhardt]

I got the message to update my bios this last weekend.

I accepted and it did the upgrade without a glitch.

There is no doubt that Lenovo will fix the problem. You will need to call them.

Sorry to hear about your problems.

[GrandMasterKhan]

Still the smart thing to do is when you do a BIOS update is to get telephone support on the line step by step even if just through the ThinkVantage System update. If it bricks they were part of the process and directed it.

[Greg Gebhardt]

Still the smart thing to do is when you do a BIOS update is to get telephone support on the line step by step even if just through the ThinkVantage System update. If it bricks they were part of the process and directed it.

From my past experience, with Lenovo, they will fix it even if YOU mess it up. Never had a problem with their covering anything.

This ain't no Dell!

[RonS]

Sorry to hear that you're having problems. I just upgraded my W510 with the same BIOS, Windows 7 64-bit, with no problems.

This is a long shot, but still worth trying. Undock your Thinkpad, remove the battery and anything else that may be connected to it, including USB devices, power, etc. Now, press and hold the power-on button for a full 30 seconds. Replace the battery, plug in power, and re-boot. See if it comes up. I've used this little magic trick to bring back several systems from the dead that people thought were bricked.

[martijndeluxe]

If only i red this before...

Flashed the 1.17-1.10 bios yesterday on my new W510 from within Windows7 64 after the reboot the start screen for a second and than black screen, no more boot.

tried the battery remove / unplug / hold power button for 30 sec several times and no sigar...

Called the helpdesk they put me on hold for 30 minutes and will send me a box for repairing / boardswap or so...

BTW: my Dell died a few month ago after 3 years. The blower stoped and so the GPU overheated and fried the entire system. Anyways i went online in there chat help. They picked it up the next day fixed it for free (board and screen replace) droped it back on my doorstep and apologized...

Lets see how this goes...

BTW2: I'd recomand to lenovo they do some online chat help also. A it saves me the irritation of listen to realy cheazy crap music for 30 minutes + Spelling out my name addres post code product ID and serial number email addres phone number etc... where is a chat ya can type/paste this kinda info so no need for spelling etc...

Well bummer i hope they fix it soon!

Cheerz,

-M-

[Rashomon]

Hi all!

My computer was sent one week ago to the repair center. Apparently they are out of mother boards. IN EUROPE! It's absolutely insane. I had the computer 3-4 days, and then this happens. During my time as a support tech I did probably hundreds of BIOS updates on a lot of Think Pads and never had one brick on me.

Oh well, hopefully it's getting fixed soon. Too bad there's no ETA on the motherboard though :/

[Rashomon]

...

From my past experience, with Lenovo, they will fix it even if YOU mess it up. Never had a problem with their covering anything.

This ain't no Dell!

True Greg. This is why I loved IBM, and now Lenovo. Plus, let's just say the keyboards are awesome... And build quality... And easy access to HW... and the list goes on.

[martijndeluxe]

Well it has been 2 weeks at the Memphis Repair Center and it says: "Hold for Parts - Service call is on hold until parts arrive. 06/01/2010 01:00:00", for the third time in a row now...

Does the lenovo repair always takes so long?

Unimpressed!

-M-

[Crunch]

I remember that there was one BIOS update last year for the W700 line which mandated that one use a CD if you had a 64-bit version of Windows.

I think I'll stick to the CD method from now on. This is the 2nd time in as many months that someone bricked their ThinkPad by way of attempting to upgrade the BIOS with the desktop installer that we know of on this forum alone. We had another one in the T6x section very recently. Do we have a consensus as to which method is "the safest", i.e. even though the desktop installer may be available for most BIOS updates, is it still safer to do use the bootable CD method?

[Rashomon]

After some new calls to the service center (yes, the computer is still there after nearly three weeks). Two days ago they got a new motherboard, this one they say was DOA so now they have ordered another one. How often are spare parts DOA? I mean really? Should I buy a lottery ticket?

It'll be interesting to see if the new, second, motherboard will be DOA too - if so I'm guessing there's some problem with the electrical wiring in the machine.

[Rashomon]

My baby is back home after some 3-4 weeks at the repair center. Motherboard replaced twice. Seems to work fine so far, I haven't inserted the HD and RAM yet though - that's for this evening.

I'm happy. Finally a proper keyboard and computer to work on.

[AMATX]

Well, while this thread is still FRESH , could someone fill me in a bit on the general procedure? I haven't had to do much in the way of bios updates for probably 20+ years. Since I usually didn't need to do so, I typically avoided updates, as I didn't wanna hose up the box. So:

* I take it there's a bootable CD method for bios update, in addition to updating it while the laptop has Windows running? If so, I think I'd probably wanna use the CD; less stuff in the way...

* Most importantly, these days, is there a way to backup the current bios, in a manner that would allow using the CD to restore it later, if needed?

Thanks...

[Rashomon]

Hi!

Well, I'd go for the Bootable CD version. I dunno what happened with my update, but i'll stick to bootable CD's from here on.

Sorry, but there's no way to backup and resinstall BIOS if you fail to correctly update the BIOS. Some manufacturers seem to have option an option similar to this (it provides it's own backup), but Lenovo does not provide this.

So yeah, my bet is on the Bootable CD.


Good luck!

[martijndeluxe]

My baby is back home after some 3-4 weeks at the repair center. Motherboard replaced twice. Seems to work fine so far, I haven't inserted the HD and RAM yet though - that's for this evening.

I'm happy. Finally a proper keyboard and computer to work on.

good to hear yours got fixed

Mine is still in the repear...

So hey,

Did you experience any weirdness during the update process? Because i did not... I can imagine that if during the bios flash update anything goes wrong or when it crashes the flash gets corrupted. But non of that here. It all seemed fine until the reboot...

So maybe if all whent right but the bios got corrupted anyways than maybe Lenovo should take this bios update offline and offer the CDRom update only to save m a lot of repairs....

Just an idear

Cheerz,

-M-

[Rashomon]

Nope, no weirdness at all. I got all green "check marks" (?) when the application ran and then it rebooted. The tech support people upgraded my BIOS to 1.19 I think (don't have the version numbers in my head at the moment).

For me, i'm going to completely revert to _always_ using CD-Rom BIOS updates, nothing else.

Hope you get your machine back soon!

[Harryc]

There's a sticky in the Windows 7 forum due to threads like this one and others. It says "I have seen several reports of users trashing their motherboards by updating the BIOS under Windows 7. The update starts normally, then hangs, leaving the machine in a state where it cannot ever start again. I suggest downloading the .iso file and doing a stand-alone update"

[Mark@Lenovo]

All,

Sorry to hear about this problem - glad service is taking care of you.

No need to call and update BIOS while on the phone - it should work and we definitely want our customers to feel confident applying updates.

I've not heard of any issues with the ISO on CD, so that may be a safer approach. I've heard a number of comments in the Lenovo forum about flashing bios updates on various models, and it seems that almost all are under 64 bit. As this spans a number of different systems - Idea and Think, and there are different BIOS versions, it doesn't seem to be an issue with a specific BIOS or specific system.

There could be multiple causes.

One question - when you applied the BIOS updates via flash, had the system been hibernated or suspended during power on cycle in which you applied the flash? Said another way, did you start up the computer and use it normally that day, possibly suspending it, resuming, going about normal activities and then apply the flash?

In some cases we've found this could be a contributing factor, so while we look into these further, I would recommend everyone download their updates, and do a shutdown / restart just to make sure everything is clean, and then apply the updates. This won't resolve a bricked system, but may well help avoid one.


FWIW this doesn't seem to be a high incident rate so I still encourage everyone to take advantage of updates that come along.

I'll check back to see what other thoughts you might have, and feel free to shoot me a PM if you want.

Best regards,
Mark

[ckotan]

All,

Sorry to hear about this problem - glad service is taking care of you.

FWIW this doesn't seem to be a high incident rate so I still encourage everyone to take advantage of updates that come along.

Best regards,
Mark

Mark, I was a skosh edgy about some of the W510 probs reported when my new 4318CTO HD+ arrived this week. It crashed when resumed with an external monitor (VGA port on new DockPlus), and thresholds didn't exist in power manager. I installed all updates using thinkvantage tools, and updated BIOS using the ISO. Everything is now prefect and I encountered no troubles - the tools are great.

Jeeeeeez, what a beautiful machine! It's as good or better than any of the half-dozen other TPs I've had in the last 15 years. Keyboard, Display, etc - all is top shelf. I've disliked & disabled the touchpad on other TPs, but I want to play with this one - much better than in past.

I was kinda Jonesing for the Lenovo fingerprint reader USB keyboard, but it doesn't have a pointing stick, which I love to keep my hands on the ivories. And I wish it was wireless, but I know encryption for print xmission would require more horsepower in the kbd... Still, I yearn for all that.

Thanks to everyone in support, engineering and manufacturing. This machine was worth the long wait! You guys Rock! The same to the folks on this site and Lenovo Community.

FYI my A31p finally fried after 7-1/2 years of daily use - what an incredible machine THAT was! If this goes five years and more, I'll be pickled tink.

Charlie

[jnhill]

Add me to the list -- bricked my W510 last Thursday running the BIOS update through ThinkVantage Update -- Win7 x64, of course.

And today? "Hold for Parts - Service call is on hold until parts arrive."

Back to the old T40 for a while.

Can anybody confirm that when these things come back from depot they have the latest BIOS installed?

[martijndeluxe]

Add me to the list -- bricked my W510 last Thursday running the BIOS update through ThinkVantage Update -- Win7 x64, of course.

And today? "Hold for Parts - Service call is on hold until parts arrive."

Back to the old T40 for a while.

Can anybody confirm that when these things come back from depot they have the latest BIOS installed?

Well,

I got mine back after 4 weeks today with BIOS 1.09. This is a not verry recent bios...

So i now have the following problems:

1: the USB port on the back randomly stops working and does not come back after a restart. The only solution here is to remove the battery and pop it back in. I think by switching Always Power On in the USP preferences of the BIOS made this problem go away sofar...

2: This is a verry dangerous bug!!! when i have one of my audio boxes connected to one of the USB3 ports, the system freezes in the Thinkpad Start Screen. After about 3 minuits in this freeze the system gets extremly hot. I dont mean verry warm but burn youre youre fingers hot!!! Also during this getting verry hot the processor blower does not spin at all. When Unplugging the Audio box and force restarting the blower starts spinning like a Yet Engine as soon as windows starts booting. So apearently thats when the system realizes how hot it is...

I'm convinced the system would have been melted if i made a coffie instead of having returned after 3 minuits...

BTW the soundcards i tested this with are: Edirol UA-101 and M-Audio Fast Track Pro.

Anywayz, i conected the soundbox to the 1 USB2 port on the left side and that works fine.

BTW2: I tried disabling USB BIOS Support and making shore the machine did not try to boot from a USB device. Neither had any positive effect...

Considering upgrading the BIOS with the Bootable CD method to see if that helps... but A i'm scared to death that it bricks that machine again and B what bios should i try to upgrade to? Seems that 1.20 is a disaster if i might beleave this:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-Th ... d-p/237959

Well, if i'll have some good or bad luck with my next step i'll let ya all know

-Martijn-

[martijndeluxe]

made a typo...

"I think by switching Always Power On in the USP preferences of the BIOS made this problem go away sofar..."

should have been:

"I think by switching Always Power On in the USB preferences of the BIOS TO OFF made this problem go away sofar..."

Happy Think Padding

-M-

[martijndeluxe]

OK i did the CD BIOS Update to 1.19 with sucsess

The above problems disapeard and the system seems happy and so am i !!!

Greetings,

-M-