Arch Linux

mcloaked

Member

From: Yorkshire, UK

Registered: 2012-02-02

Posts: 1,360

Lenovo Y510p BIOS update - warning

Last night I updated my Lenovo Y510P BIOS - this is a laptop that I have been running as dual boot arch with Windows 8.1.  It has Secure Boot disabled.

I updated the BIOS from the file at:

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/product … s/DS100556

After the BIOS updated the laptop rebooted and went straight into Windows!   After poking around I found that the BIOS update had completely reset the BIOS settings, enabled Secure Boot, and also removed the NVRAM entry that I had for rEFInd that booted arch linux by default.

So it was necessary to go into the BIOS settings and disable Secure Boot, and then boot the current arch install iso on a usb key to use as a rescue system - and then re-write the NVRAM entry for rEFInd using efibootmgr.  After that it booted to rEFInd and into arch linux just fine. 

One other watchpoint is that I initially wanted to boot into UEFI shell V2 from the usbkey with the arch install iso on it - it certainly gave me the menu where the third item was UEFI shell v2 but when selecting that line with the mouse hitting the "Enter" key did not boot that option but moved the selected line back to the top of the list - so the only option I had was to boot the arch install as a rescue disk!

Anyway I thought it was worth reporting in case anyone else has this machine and gets bitten by the same issue.

---

Mike C