Hi all! I encountered a problem with a Lenovo Thinkpad SL500. I first updated it to the latest original Bios Revision: 1.25 using "WINUPTP". Yes, I would've preferred to do it in a DOS environment but as the person was on the phone and wasn't too familiar with entering the BIOS, being at the command prompt it was updated to the latest BIOS from within Windows (yes, I explained the "increased risks" of the Windows BIOS flashing to him). The update tool seemed to have worked without any trouble, at least no error message was shown. Could the BIOS update fail without a notice of the program as the BIOS may have been write protected? The next flash using the modded BIOS *.fl1 ROM file (Bios Revision: 1.25 Bios Date: 2009/09/10 Bios Type: AMI SLIC: Lenovo2.1 (LENOVO-TP-7Y-LTP) SLP: Lenovo Cert: Lenovo Method: SSV3/MMTool. AMITool 1.51) had to be run using "WINUPTP /S" to force the flash as the currently present BIOS is/was the most up-to-date one and "/S" forces the flash process (skipping the version check afaik). This also worked without any apparent trouble. Reboot, no trouble. Then the Uninstaller that came with that Windows Version (BIE release) was run to remove the Windows loader. It appeared to be working just like I read that it would. It removed the loader and on the next reboot the desktop was all black and a nice little "hello" message from MS could be seen at the bottom right corner of the screen - just as expected; no loader-> no or no matching BIOS SLIC info -> activation gone. Then the command prompt with admin rights was launched and "slmgr.vbs -ilc CERTFILENAME" and "slmgr.vbs -ipk LICENSEKEY" were run; both commands resulted in a positive feedback. Reboot. Desktop still black, that nice "hello" message is still there, activation ... negative. So the two commands were re-run at the admin command console, reboot, still the same. Any idea what could have went wrong ? Yes, this method worked more than once with that "BIE" release before. Thank you very very much in advance for your help! rogerwilco
Hi Maru_7711 First of all, thanks for having taken the time to reply and the info shared! The link below is for the SL500 biosmod (v.1.25) Yen made back in late SEP 2009.It is only OA21. What do you mean by OA21? Does this affect running Win7 instead of Vista, which it was originally shipped with? There are two reasons why an upgrade was performed: 1. Battery lasted only around minutes running Win7, Vista didn't show that problem, which was also known to the Lenovo phone tech support and a BIOS upgrade was recommended. 2. Win7 However, since Yen created this biosmod maybe you can ask him to remove the whitelist. Yes, I'm blonde - so here's the next question: what whitelist are you referring to ? Not sure I understand. You mean the one on the 1st page of this thread ? This version can be flashed in Vista or Win 7 32bit. NOTE: A Lenovo driver called "ATK Hotkey Driver" must be installed or the bios will not flash ! Of course Lenovo doesn't tell you about this bios flashing prerequisite driver.Just be aware that without this driver you will get the driver error message ! Alright, already admitted being blonde I have to say, that I can't really tell right off whether I had installed the driver or not. What I remember is, that there was no error message. But yes, defo sounding like being worth another try, as I could well imagine that maybe the WINUPTP tool perhaps wouldn't notice the absence of that driver, would _apparently_ show to do it's updating thing but in fact isn't/wasn't. Recommendation: Since you have v.1.25 installed with possible problems make an original Lenovo bios CD and flash to a lower version than your current installed version, reboot.... As I am more or less bound to go the Windows-flashing way because of the other person's abilities on the phone are quite limited, you mean downloading an older Version and force the update running -> WINUPTP /S <- ? Regards rogerwilco
@rogerwilco75 OA21 means the bios has been modified so that Vista and Win7 can activate. Your choice is Win7. No whitelist means any physical hardware can be used in the Lenovo laptop. For example the SL500 can only accept Intel 5100,5150 & 5350 WiFi cards. If the whitelist is removed from the bios then any WiFi card can be used. In my T60p I use an Intel 5300 because my request was for OA21 and no whitelist. I hope this helps. Also, please read my first post reply to you carefully. If you follow my post carefully and you can not get activation I would suspect that the old Win7 BIE install disk might be using the old Lenovo blacklisted key therefore black screen. I have no idea what BIE was doing in the past. Sincerely, Maru_7711