Lenovo P52

[Achim Patzner]

I just tried installing Qubes 4.0 on a Lenovo P52 (out of the box, no
firmware updates) and it didn't even boot the distribution media off
USB (after trying several USB ports; there are at least three separate
controllers in this thing). I'm getting exactly 4 lines of mesages
during boot and as it is a 4k display I would have had to take a photo
of it to enlarge whatever was written there (so I can't really tell you
what I saw).

My first suspicion is the RAM; I ordered it with 128GB to keep it from
even thinking about swapping. Is there a limit on in the current
distribution?

The firmware has old bugs I encountered on P70 already; I turned off
secure boot and reordered the EFI boot entries resulting in a machine
that is not even displaying the Lenovo banner after turning it on so I
have enough time to think about the errors of my ways (kids, don't try
this at home -- there aren't any replacement mainboards in Europe and a
"repair" will take 6 weeks so you have to force IBM UK into calling it
a late DOA if it happens).

Does anyone have an idea how to convince it to boot?


Achim

[brenda...@gmail.com]

Ha ha ha, ouch. I am SOOO jealous of you right now ...but also feel so much pain for you as well. That's a very expensive doorstop.

There should be 4 SODIMMS. Remove two to try booting with 64GB of RAM?

Can you not get to the BIOS by vigorously tapping F1 after power on, then reset it to factory config?

-Brendan

[Achim Patzner]

Am Freitag, den 05.10.2018, 03:21 -0700 schrieb brenda...@gmail.com:

On Thursday, October 4, 2018 at 3:05:00 PM UTC-4, Achim Patzner wrote:

Does anyone have an idea how to convince it to boot?

Ha ha ha, ouch. I am SOOO jealous of you right now ...but also feel so much pain for you as well. That's a very expensive doorstop.

After IBM UK had to admit the _earliest_ possible date for a mainboard replacement was December 15th it was surprisingly easy to get them to accept "either DOA or I just return it and take my money to Apple". 8-)

There should be 4 SODIMMS. Remove two to try booting with 64GB of RAM?

I was hoping for some boot command magic to get things done. Removing/adding memory on current P series triggers 7 kind of demonic things on the next boot (including ComuTrace if it was turned on).

Can you not get to the BIOS by vigorously tapping F1 after power on, then reset it to factory config?

No. It's deader than Spock was as it is not even initializing the boot process (it is never leaving the ME's initialization stage). (Just in case anyone wants to try it at home: In the EFI boot variables you will find a _lot_ of strange stuff like "Lenovo Diagnostics" and similar things as disabled boot entries. Removing them caused the same kind of lock ups on my P70 (which got 9 replacement mainboards due to this nonsense)).

Achim