Post by stefanj on Aug 24, 2022 21:45:04 GMT
One of the systems I have, or had, Linux on is/was a Lenovo Ideapad 110.
It was slowwwwwly running the Fedora distro, and Windows 10. I sprang for a new 1 TB SSD drive, which cloned the old drive partitions onto. Definitely made the system faster! But when I started using gparted to increase the partition sizes, and move them about to take advantage of the room, something terrible happened. The BIOS Menu stopped coming up! There are four ways to bring it up, and all just result in an immediate reboot. (I can see the screen switch to the text mode display mode -- also used by the Novo menu and boot device selection menu -- but after a moment it reboots.)
The other disappointing symptom: I can't boot to a USB! So, I can't just say "frag it!" and turn it into a Linux only system.
The system still boots to Win10, and all the Lenovo diagnostics say things are copacetic. But, no boot menu. So either the BIOS is corrupt in a subtle way, or has settings which put it in this half-ass state.
So, I'm guessing I need to reflash the BIOS, or find a utility that resets the BIOS settings to the defaults.
(This problem exists with the original dual-boot HDD, the new SDD, or no drive at all!)
The system already has the latest BIOS version flashed in, and the Lenovo-supplied BIOS flash utility carefully makes sure I can't RE-flash the new version, or an older one.
While the utility was running, I found the /tmp directory where the Lenovo / Phoenix flash utility stores the BIOS image, the actual Windows-executable binary that flashes the BIOS (WinFlash32.exe), and a text file with defaults settings (command line flags).
There is a /help flag for WinFlash32.exe, but the program runs in a new console window which immedieately shuts down after execution, so I don't have a chance to actually see the help as it flashes past. I tried redirecting output (WinFlash32.exe /help > help.txt) but it results in an empty file.
There are no recent references for this utility online. I found a few old ones which have *some* of the same command flags I can see in the defaults file. Forcing the utility to reflash, or ignore the version and date, or a more subtle "set the variables to the default," would do the trick.
So . . . anyone find themselves in this fix? I won't be heartbroken if the old Ideapad ends up as a really slow Windows machine, but if I can fix it, I'd like to.
Thanks!