IdeaPad S series Netbooks

[#1]

DISCLAIMER: The solution below worked for me, it may or may not work for you. Lenovo has never expressed any support for it. Use it at your own risk. I disclaim any responsibility for the possible damage it may cause to your system.

This all applies to S10-2 only, which has InsydeH2O BIOS.  It has a built-in recovery procedure which works as follows:

1. obtain the working BIOS image from Lenovo site. Usually BIOS is shipped in a self-extracting windows binary; if you're on Linux you can use 7z to extract it. You only need the BIOS image itself, which is exactly 1MB in size and is typically called KIUN0XXX.ROM
2. format a USB flash drive or an SD card to FAT filesystem.  (Both FAT16 and FAT32 should do.) Do not partition it, just make the whole drive a single filesystem. No boot sector is neccessary.
3. put the BIOS image at the root directory of the flash drive under name KIUN0IA32.FD.
4. turn off the netbook
5. unplug the power cord
6. pull out the battery
7. insert the flash drive / SD card in the corresponding slot
8. press and hold Fn-B key combination
9. while holding Fn-B, plug in the power cord
10. still holding Fn-B, press Power button
11. the computer will spin up the fan but the screen will remain black
12. the computer will beep
13. if it finds the appropriate file, it'll beep again, read it in, and will start flashing the BIOS beeping every few seconds
14. once complete (under 1 min), it'll reboot itself
15. voila, verify that it now boots correctly, shut it down, assemble the battery and start hacking anew

For the curious, similar procedure (with different key combo and file name) is used on other notebooks equipped with InsydeH2O BIOS, including some models from Acer, Sony, HP, etc.

HTH

[#2]

BTW, do you know if file KIUN0XXX.ROM encrypted or scrambled in some way?

I don't see any strings in this file that BIOS prints.

[#3]

Yes, the help strings as well as the setup binary itself are stored in LZMA-compressed blocks within the BIOS image.

The most detailed description I've seen is at http://marcansoft.com/blog/2009/06/enabling-intel-vt-on-the-aspire-8930g/.

I used the scripts posted there with a few mods to dump the settings available; I'll post the list if I figure out how make attachments (it's 108 lines long).

[#4]

Can you post the summary of script modifications?

I found that vtenable.py should have VSS_OFFSET = 0x00126048. But then Checksum error is triggered. When I disable checksum checks vtenable.py finishes but resulting image doesn't look right. Some aa 55 signatures are destroyed. Looks like all checksums are missing (=0xffff).

I am interested in disabling the wireless card check, or at least finding the list of "authorized" cards.  Lenovo only allows certain cards to be plugged in and my card doesn't work in linux.

[#5]

Cancel verification difficult. Should look for a place with ID and replaced with yours.

[#6]

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jerrry94087 wrote:

Can you post the summary of script modifications?

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Well actually I took the code at http://thechaw.com/insydecodr referred to from the original blog. It's somewhat more adaptive to different BIOS variants.

Then all the mods that I did consisted of teaching that code to print everything, not only the stuff related to VTX.

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I am interested in disabling the wireless card check, or at least finding the list of "authorized" cards.  Lenovo only allows certain cards to be plugged in and my card doesn't work in linux.

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I don't see anything obviously related to this in my dump. You'll have to dig yourself.

[#7]

How would one know if a laptop supports InsydeH2O BIOS?

This is my last resort before selling my broken laptop, for those that care here is my thread

I'm particularly interested in finding out how you knew what to name the BIOS file or what it should be called for a Lenovo 3000 n200 0769 brg.

Holding Fn + B does work for me and the flash drive is accessed, but the laptop keeps running regardless of the file.

Thanks

[#8]

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Brett_cawley wrote:

How would one know if a laptop supports InsydeH2O BIOS?

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That's easy: if BIOS flash program for your model is called InsydeFlash.exe then you're on InsydeH2O.

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I'm particularly interested in finding out how you knew what to name the BIOS file or what it should be called for a Lenovo 3000 n200 0769 brg.

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That's mostly guesswork. First, you need to find out the model name as BIOS sees it. For that, locate $BVDT$ string in the BIOS image, and seek 38 bytes forward from the beginning of it. You should see $STRING, where STRING is the name you need.

Then you may or may not need to append ia32 to it, and add .fd suffix at the end.

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Holding Fn + B does work for me and the flash drive is accessed, but the laptop keeps running regardless of the file.

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In my case it beeped and started to access all available storage media in an endless loop (hard drive and flash drive). Every time it wasn't happy with the content of the media, it beeped thrice and went on to the next iteration, so I could experiment with the file name until succeeded

[#9]

how could we  determine file name?i try too much file name.

but it doesnt search for file usb sd or usb cd no activity

when fn+b combination used netbook starting disnormal activity.

so fn+b combination is right.

but KIUN0IA32.FD KIUN0IA32.BIN KIUN0.FD KIUN0.BIN isnt correct for my netbook.

my board is KIN0  L04(s10-2)

my bios is totally take down.so what can i do?

is bios problem under warranty?

[#10]

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kotukoylu wrote:

how could we determine file name?

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Only guessing. However, your case should be the same as mine.

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but it doesnt search for file usb sd or usb cd no activity

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No activity at all???

If your computer doesn't power up the USB port you're out of luck. Did you try another port? SD slot?

Did you see hard disk light blink?

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when fn+b combination used netbook starting disnormal activity.

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What was it?

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my bios is totally take down.

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More detail might help.

What doesn't work? Did it ever work?

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is bios problem under warranty?

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I guess it depends on how exactly the notebook arrived at this state.