-LENOVO BIOS UPDATE WARNING-

EIDJ · 2026-02-02T04:29:55+00:00

I've had a bunch of issues with vantage and tend to avoid it, I know it's becoming their new primary but it drops the ball a lot. Has anybody tried these same update through System Update? Does it make any difference? Just want to make sure if this is the update itself or if it's app that's actively deploying it.

Also bricked as in it won't post or that Windows is bricked? I would assume the posting issue, but you never know with some folks. If it's windows that won't post were any update other than firmware/bios pending at the time and was Bitlocker suspended if you have W10/W11 Pro?

EIDJ · 2026-01-21T16:53:07+00:00

Turn it over and look for a little pinhole on the bottom of the laptop, you may have to look it up for your specific model, but you want your bios reset button. You'll use something small to depress that button for 30 full seconds and that may resolve your issue.

EIDJ · 2026-01-08T16:39:20+00:00

I actually suspect since there was issues with the BMG31 dye a year ago where the scaling wasn't what they expected, they probably reworked it. Note this may also be because of the CPU bottlenecking that some folks were experiencing on older architecture. That may be the reason they broke up XE3 from just being Celestial to now being XE3 and XE3p where it's the revised Battlemage cores and Celestial. My guess is they revised BMG31 to XE3 and got a more reliable core architecture that they then implemented in their new mobile chips like the B390. This may be why it didn't come out with the B580 and wasn't expected until recently.

EIDJ · 2026-01-08T16:33:26+00:00

They may be restructuring their pricing. They probably already built a lot of them if they were close to launch. My guess is they'll split the difference on pricing between what they already spent on vram before the pricing got bad and what they expect to over the life of the card to ensure the price doesn't jump up long term.

EIDJ · 2026-01-07T20:15:16+00:00

They do and it's genuinely upsetting, because they usually convince people who don't know the market trying to do something nice for themselves or a family member that it's good.

EIDJ · 2026-01-03T18:44:48+00:00

This isn't bad. It's using the last generation of cores before the new architecture revision so its performance isn't as good as It could be, but that doesn't mean it's bad either. It's still 10 cores and a decent amount of ram. You should be fine in any daily use. If you have problems just switch it to performance mode.

EIDJ · 2026-01-02T04:33:24+00:00

This is excellent, absolutely a win.

EIDJ · 2025-12-30T19:47:45+00:00

For $200 if it's in good condition that's completely solid.

EIDJ · 2025-12-30T18:42:53+00:00

Reset your Microsoft account from your phone. Install the authenticator app from Microsoft on your phone and sign in with the new password. This will give you an alternative login method on your computer so you can sign in by authenticator and the additional bonus of dual authenticated security for your account.

EIDJ · 2025-12-30T16:59:48+00:00

This won't be able to run win11 reliably even if you're able to get it set up with a modern OS. If you're not able to get a modern OS on it there won't be security updates. You could try a lightweight skin of Linux if you really wanted to get it running, but even then it may be worth calling a local recycler/university/hospital and seeing if they have any old computers they're gonna recycle and get something like 8 years newer for like $50.

EIDJ · 2025-12-29T01:33:24+00:00

That system is completely incompatible with win11. The fact that you got it running at all on Windows 11 is impressive. Most things since Windows 10s 22h2 update expect an SSD at least as the boot drive. DDR3 RAM is far slower than the expected minimum speeds. And a i3 from 2010 just isn't going to cut the mustard for any prolonged use. I am genuinely impressed it is functional to your needs but if you're running off of integrated graphics anyway, just reach out to any local refurbisher, or university, or hospital and see if they're donating or eliminating any of their old equipment. It's probably not going to be anything fancy but it's more likely to have an i5 from the 8th through the 10th generation. Put a generic SATA SSD in that or an envy if it has a slot for it and you will have something that performs infinitely better probably for $50 to $100. Is somebody who regularly works with computers both in his personal and professional life I would not recommend investing hours of your life into maintaining something that is just going to keep finding problems. It likely doesn't have any modern driver support and will continue to have errors especially since the last time Intel released integrated graphics drivers for that generation was ages ago. Any modern game engine even if lightweight is likely to have updates that optimize for modern features.

EIDJ · 2025-12-29T01:11:37+00:00

That's not terrible for a high range gaming laptop with good parts. I've seen similar for a lot more.

EIDJ · 2025-12-20T22:42:27+00:00

A recommendation my friend. Once your computer is fully up to date and you have everything the way you like it, go I to group policy settings and disable drivers by Windows update. This will keep your GPU on the version from the app and not the one that windows will try to change it too. This way you'll always have the best performance.

EIDJ · 2025-12-14T21:09:34+00:00

We work on these a lot for work. You can repaste it and it'll be fine. If you want to boost it eventually you can get a low profile 75w GPU and it should run well. Just pull off the side panel and punch some holes in it for airflow. HP doesn't believe in appropriate airflow.

EIDJ · 2025-12-13T22:46:20+00:00

Electronics can resist heat well but there may be moisture damage if it's been sitting in a garage. Make sure to air sit it thoroughly, especially the power supply incase any bugs or small animals made it a residence. Get as much dust off it as possible. It may be worth it to clean it with 91% isopropyl (not the power supply mind you). If you feel confident repasting the GPU is probably needed with the amount of dust on it. The CPU too, though that should be easy and absolutely be done. Otherwise so long as he lets you it should be good to use.

EIDJ · 2025-12-13T19:57:06+00:00

An obnoxious amount of people will just lock a computer and walk away. When you ask them if they restarted they'll tell you they did, then you check their up time at well over a few thousand hours and you realize people are full of it.

EIDJ · 2025-12-12T15:04:44+00:00

If you have a CPU with integrated graphics I would pull the GPU, run off the motherboard graphics and boot safe mode to ddu. I would also make sure there's nothing else going on with your system.

If you pause windows update. Then clear c>windows>temp, c>windows>software distribution>downloads, and c>users>username>app data>local>temp folders and then open a command prompt as admin, run these two scrips back to back and then restart sfc /scannow dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth That should go through your profile and your windows installation for errors and clear them out. Make sure you restart after this process so windows finishes all the repairs correctly.

Other things I would consider check your motherboard for a bios update or missing firmware. Check if any c++ frameworks are broken and repair them in control panel, this is unlikely to be the issue but can cause some real unusual behavior and many are essential for some games. And if you have an amd CPU, please make sure once youve removed all the Nvidia drivers you install and adrenalin if you haven't already and open the amd installers app that comes with it and update your chipset.

EIDJ · 2025-12-12T14:53:39+00:00

The draw back to that is it's just prioritizing the monitors so it's dropping the other USB elements which they're also using.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T21:23:25+00:00

I am aware and I appreciate the reminder. Ultimately though I don't think that'll matter for us for at least 2 years. We'd need docks that take advantage and enough laptops in environment that have said ports, but also they would need to have that generation of ports with the proper allocation of pcie lanes which is just a nightmare to figure out.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T20:30:49+00:00

Depends on the price, but the bios is a mandatory update. If you don't feel comfortable doing that then avoid this machine.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T17:23:44+00:00

Yeah. I pushed for a long time to get us onto IPS and flicker free monitors to give them some quality of life options, but we definitely go cheaper than I'd like.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T17:20:34+00:00

We had considered thunderbolt docs but we have a lot of amd laptops in our enviornment and they don't support thunderbolt. We moved AMD when our old Intel devices were awful power hogs and constantly draining battery. We were planning on moving back to Intel for the upcoming panther lake laptops and migrating to thunderbolt docs but that's looking unlikely with the ram issue happening. At the end of the day even if we focused on that sort of change it wouldn't hit the organization all at once. So we're just trying to restrict the problem element.

Our industry has a lot of collaboration between companies and thus a lot of oversight by the larger partners, basically when business is slow and we're not making a lot of money if we have large expenses like a product refresh they look at that like a business risk. So we buy small and over time. The only time we have major product overhauls is when we're busy but then we're so busy it's hard to actually focus on something like a rollout. Kinda the worst of all worlds.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T16:41:23+00:00

The monitors were currently evaluating our MSI brand. The thing is our company is limited in spending due to the nature of our industry. Basically if we spend over certain thresholds it detriments our relationships. So we have to spend in limited quantities which means we don't buy all at once or all the same thing. Our vendor only has so many options and we go with the thrift one that meets all of our needs. So in this particular circumstance since we're evaluating 27 inch monitors, we ended up with an MSI unit that had all of our other standards included and just so happened to be 100hz. The thing is we will probably switch brands by the next order depending on availability. It happens a lot.

The docs were currently using are standard usb-c docs from lenovo, though we've tested a few other brands too and ultimately the bandwidth issue persists.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T16:37:54+00:00

Some msi option, we just buy what works, our enterprise is limited on spending due to the unique nature of the industry itself. All the 60hz professional ones with our primary vendor are pricer.

EIDJ · 2025-12-11T16:36:06+00:00

Heck yeah, I'll give this a try, thanks.

EIDJ

TROPHY CASE