Hi folks, long time no type. I recently bought myself a new Ideapad Z580, and while I know that Ideapads are not Thinkpads, I was hoping that someone here may be able to help before I have to send the thing back to Lenovo for service.
This machine came with Windows 8 preinstalled, along with a new-fangled UEFI BIOS, and it appears that all is not well. UEFI includes the new Secure Boot technology which is designed to prevent booting other operating systems or external media, and unfortunately it's doing that too well. I've managed to screw up the OS and I want to restore from my True Image backup, but whenever I try to boot from the True Image CD - or any external media, for that matter - I get a Secure Boot ACCESS DENIED message, and my only option is to continue to boot Win8 from the HD. Simple, you might think - just enter the BIOS and turn off Secure Boot. Aha, but there's the rub! I can't enter the BIOS, nor can I bring up a Boot Menu. Neither the F2/F12 hot keys, nor the Win8 menu option to enter the BIOS, works - they simply cause the boot process to pause on a blank screen for a couple of seconds before it proceeds into Win8 again. I'm pretty sure this is going to have to go back to Lenovo to be reflashed, but I thought I'd ask in case anyone knows of a hidden key sequence or other means to force entry to a UEFI BIOS. I have read of a similar problem from a Dell user, but apparently the Dell BIOS "ACCESS DENIED* message gives an option to disable Secure Boot and try again, but the Lenovo message does not. There is no user or supervisor password set, nor am I even getting as far as being prompted for a password even if there was one. Thanks in advance, and Happy Thanksgiving! Cheers, Jon. ________________________________________________________________________ Delivered using the Free Personal edition of Mailtraq (www.mailtraq.com) _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
