Bought a Thinkpad P1 Type 20MD two days ago. Yesterday I went into the BIOS and changed the graphics from hybrid to discrete (because screen text was blurry and poor performance).

After saving the settings and rebooting, the screen was black/blank. It never even made it to the Lenovo splash screen. I tried all the keys to try to get into BIOS and several reboots had no effect.

I contacted Lenovo support, a day later a tech called me and tried some troubleshooting steps (to no avail). After reading some similar forum posts, I suggested having the motherboard replaced. The tech agreed and several hours later I'm waiting again for another tech to call to schedule a replacement.

This seems to be a very common issue with the P1 and X1 and I'm not seeing Lenovo acknowledge it. I can't recommend the laptop at this point, especially not knowing if I will ever be able to use discrete graphics and have a screen that isn't blurry.

Posting this for others that are struggling with the hope Lenovo might step up and offer some real support.

Thanks for posting this - same problem here with P1 (Type 20MD, 20ME) just after the couple of hours of getting it and setting up the OS. The diagnostic splash screen, which I enabled in BIOS along with said Discrete Graphics, shows System BIOS Shadowed, Video BIOS Shadowed - is it related to the issue? - From what I've read, it is not. May be you have more info regarding that. I didn't call support yet, 'cause I'm almost certain it would be to no avail and will end up sending it for repairs. The only button that works is F12 and I can see all attached devices listed but can boot none. The action of switching to Discrete graphics doesn't and shouldn't suggest any potential threat or harm so to me it looks like BIOS related bug. I didn't try the Linux live USB yet though. Many thanks again for posting this, I'll be following the thread. Cheers.

Thanks for the reply. I did that - connected to the external monitor, pressed F9, F10 to get to default BIOS settings, drained the batteries, detached the CMOS then powered it up from the adapter, pressed the tiny button using the paper clip on the bottom of it for 20 or more seconds - did everything whatever could've been found online including forums - nothing worked. I'm thinking of returning the lap, although I liked it initially. Thanks again. Cheers.

Just in case you haven't already found these threads on your own, you are far from alone:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/Thinkpad-X1-Extreme-Black-Screen-Help/td-p/4286292/highlight/false

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile/ThinkPad-P1-20MD-bricked-after-setting-Display-to-Discrete-in/m-p/4291466/highlight/true#M77357

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile/P52-won-t-start-after-change-to-only-discrete-graphic-card/td-p/4265065

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/a2g0k4/warning_do_not_change_from_hybrid_graphics_to/

Zero input from Lenovo as far as I can tell.

Thanks. I was just reading one of them - problem is persistent and no one came out with any feasible solution yet. Lenovo tech support is outsourced from 3rd country just like HP's one and doesn't offer any help. I read about much better suggestion to contact Lenovo's customer service and just request the replacement or refund depending on your choice. I'd also like to add, that I've tried to boot it up with different memory sticks of different capacities, without sticks at all as I found it somewhere online in which case it didn't boot at all :), with different drives and different bootable USBs from Paragon, Macrium and Hiren Boot CD with Win 10 PE - nothing worked - I could see all devices attached in boot menu but they woudn't boot. I also connected the drives through the each of Thunderbolt ports and they've been present in boot menu - so TB ports work - but couldn't boot either. Thanks again.

I just got my P1 on the 14th. After getting Adobe Premiere installed, I noticed it wasn't using cuda... checked device manager, Quadro p2000 was labeled that it has an issue: Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems. (Code 43). Tried installing new driver direct from nVidia, also through GeForce Experience, also through windows update. Couldn't get it to work. Jumped into the bios and switched to discrete only... luckily I didn't get a brick like you all did. It did boot and installed a bunch of new driver for the card, rebooted and it was working. Switched it back to hybrid mode and both cards working fine in device manager. I spent another few hours getting stuff setup to make this my main work laptop. It does work very nice in Premiere when it's working. But then noticed right before I was done for the night that it was labeled again in device manager with an issue. So tried the same steps again, but this time, the screen was all weird in windows and in the bios (see attached photos). Assuming mine is a bad board too. I love the keyboard, screen and port selection, but seeing how widespread this issues is makes me worry about even attempting to get it fixed.