This year I decided that It was time refresh my 4 year old laptop with a newer, fresher faster model, and at the same time get one with a smaller screen.

After making a list of what I wanted it to include, I set about finding one that matched my list.  As my previous one was made by Lenovo and had performed admirable I was hoping to get another Lenovo but had a look at what was out there that matched both my price point and requirement

And I came up with the following:

Processor  –  Intel Core i5-1035G1 Processor (1.00GHz, up to 3.60GHz with Turbo Boost, 4 Cores, 6MB Cache)
Operating System  –  Windows 10 Home 64
Operating System Language  –  Windows 10 Home 64 English
Microsoft Productivity Software  –  Microsoft Office Trial
Memory  –  16GB DDR4 3200MHz Onboard
Hard Drive  –  1TB Solid State Drive, M.2 2280, PCIe-NVMe, TLC
Display  –  14.0″ FHD (1920×1080), IPS, Anti-glare, 3.0mm Thickness, 300nits, Narrow bezel
Graphic Card  –  NVIDIA GeForce MX350 GDDR5 2GB 64bits
Color  –  Graphite Grey
Keyboard  –  Keyboard Backlit Iron Grey English (UK)
Camera  –  720p HD Camera with Array Microphone
Surface Treatment  –  Anodizing
Palmrest  –  Metal
Fingerprint Reader  –  Fingerprint Reader
Battery  –  3 Cell Li-Polymer Internal Battery, 57Wh
Power Cord  –  95W AC Adapter (3pin)-UK (USB Type C)
Wireless  –  Wi-Fi 6 2×2 AX, Bluetooth Version 5.0 or above
Language Pack  –  Publication-English
Warranty  –  1 Year Courier or Carry-in

Given a few ‘delays’ eventually it arrived ( 1 month later than expected, but it was a  ‘custom’ build ) and it ran and operated beautifully, fast, responsive everything I was wanting in a new laptop.  Everything was great for about 2 months and then I get a notification that there was a new BIOS upgrade available and that I should install it as soon as possible …. So I did.

And that’s when the trouble started, all was well for about 1 month and then I noticed that then fan was ramping up quite a lot, especially just after booting when it was doing nothing.  Next it started to crash and ‘blue screen’ at least once a week and then it was once every few days and that’s when I contacted their support staff for help.  I emailed them and heard nothing back and then early on a Saturday morning, I get a phone call from a Belgium number and when I answered I was told that it was Lenovo technical support to help rectify my laptop issue.  Great I thought finally going to get it fixed.

The first that that he said was he would show me how to do a total factory reset and this should resolve the problem. I explained to him the following, firstly I was not ready to do a factory restore and lose all my data and secondly I asked if a factory reset would also revert the bios to a previous setting as I believed the issue was with the last BIOS update that I had installed.  The technician said “no, it would not and there was no way to downgrade a BIOS after it has been updated”. I asked him to call me back the following Saturday to give me time to do a total backup and he agreed.

I spent a few hours thinking about what he had said and when I had some downtime at work, I googled it and found that on some older Lenovo laptops it was possible to downgrade the BIOS to a previous one.  So I wrote down what they had done so I could also try it when I got home and there it was the setting that was disabled in the BIOS to stop people from downgrading the BIOS to a previous version.

So I went to straight to Lenovo’s support site and downloaded all the BIOS revisions, saving them into separate folders.  I also added the term ‘broken’ to the version that I currently had installed.   I changed the BIOS lock option and installed the older BIOS version and everything was back to working like new. When the technician called back I explained what steps I had taken and he seemed a little shocked but was glad that everything was ok and now working.

And a few months later, it’s still working like a dream.

(Photo by shche_ team on Unsplash)