Prompted by complaints, Lenovo updates ThinkPad BIOS

Iria · Dec 2, 2005, 05:36 PM

DECEMBER 01, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Under the heading of laptop computer problems, there are minor issues and major issues. Laptop support engineer Kim Kramaric has identified a third category: annoying issues.

Kramaric, support engineer at 2KDesign in Copenhagen, said this week that he has been trying to fix a problem affecting 50 Lenovo Group Ltd. (formerly IBM ) ThinkPad T43 laptops for nearly five months.

For security reasons, Kramaric needs to provide two hard disk drives for each of the company's T43 laptops. While attempting to add the second drives from Hitachi Ltd., he discovered in June that after booting the machines with the extra drives, a "POST 2010" message would appear, preventing further steps unless the user pressed the Escape key.

Nothing major, he said, just annoying.

"That wasn't very satisfactory for a premium computer," Kramaric said, referring to the T43, which starts at $1,300.

It turns out that hundreds of other T43 users worldwide had noticed the same problem when using additional or replacement drives that Lenovo didn't support, according to user forums. Since May, when the problem was first noticed, about 100 users have posted comments about the problem at the Independent ThinkPad Open Forum site. Other users reported on the problem at different sites.

As a result, Lenovo on Tuesday posted a BIOS update that allows the T43 to start up without the need to press an Escape key when receiving a POST 2010 warning message. A note with the BIOS upgrade says that the 2010 message occurs when "using an unsupported hard drive version. Please use support version as much as you can."
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Read More / Source: Computerworld

Dec 2, 2005, 05:36 PM	#1
Iria DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 7,275 Rep Power: 89	Prompted by complaints, Lenovo updates ThinkPad BIOS DECEMBER 01, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - Under the heading of laptop computer problems, there are minor issues and major issues. Laptop support engineer Kim Kramaric has identified a third category: annoying issues. Kramaric, support engineer at 2KDesign in Copenhagen, said this week that he has been trying to fix a problem affecting 50 Lenovo Group Ltd. (formerly IBM ) ThinkPad T43 laptops for nearly five months. For security reasons, Kramaric needs to provide two hard disk drives for each of the company's T43 laptops. While attempting to add the second drives from Hitachi Ltd., he discovered in June that after booting the machines with the extra drives, a "POST 2010" message would appear, preventing further steps unless the user pressed the Escape key. Nothing major, he said, just annoying. "That wasn't very satisfactory for a premium computer," Kramaric said, referring to the T43, which starts at $1,300. It turns out that hundreds of other T43 users worldwide had noticed the same problem when using additional or replacement drives that Lenovo didn't support, according to user forums. Since May, when the problem was first noticed, about 100 users have posted comments about the problem at the Independent ThinkPad Open Forum site. Other users reported on the problem at different sites. As a result, Lenovo on Tuesday posted a BIOS update that allows the T43 to start up without the need to press an Escape key when receiving a POST 2010 warning message. A note with the BIOS upgrade says that the 2010 message occurs when "using an unsupported hard drive version. Please use support version as much as you can." __________ Read More / Source: Computerworld