EDIT 2018-07-29 02:04:51 UTC:

0. I added newlines for clarity.

1. I solved the USB boot problem simply by changing the BIOS boot setting from "UEFI only" to "both" (see "Third Attempt" of this thread's OP; I was using YUMI all along).

2. The remaining problems are that I still cannot boot he pre-installed Windows 10 on the HDD or use the 16GB SSD Optane PCIe-NVMe.

3. In case it helps, I was able to mount the Windows partition from the live Linux distro on my USB stick, and it looked fine. There was not much info on the 16GB SSD other than the generic "attached SCSI device"

4. The internal bell/system beep is really loud! Any way to make this quieter without completely disabling it? I'm not sure yet whether I like it or not 

ORIGINAL POST:
Hello- this is my first post to the Lenovo community forums.

I just received a brand-new T580, custom ordered directly from Lenovo. If it matters, this was supposed to have a 500GB spinning disk and 16GB SSD (Intel Optane PCIe). Windows 10 was the only option for pre-installed OS (Professional, in this case).

This new machine will not boot and has yet to boot. I received it on a Friday afternoon. Once I unboxed and charged it and tried to boot, tech support conveniently closed for the whole weekend. I opened a ticket in Lenovo's MTSA (yet another account to open), with no response. Now I am turning to the forums.

I installed the battery and charged it, then attempted to boot. My first attempt resulted in INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE, then rebooted. The same thing happened again, then started "Automatic Repair"

Automatic Repair (a/k/a Startup Repair) did nothing, probably because there is no existing image to revert to or older version of Windows to fall back on. I get the following errors: "System Restore: To use System Restore, you must specify which Windows installation to restore. Restart this computer, select an operating system, and then select System Restore." (Of course, that does not happen-this is a brand-new laptop) Then "Re-image Your Computer: An internal error occurred. The following information might help you resolve the error: STATUS_WAIT_2 (0x80070002)" (Good luck!)

I ran all the Lenovo diagnostics, and they all pass with flying colors. I also like that my display has no dead pixels, so I would prefer not to return/ship this somewhere.

Lastly (and oddly), I cannot boot from USB. I have a live Linux USB stick that works great on a modern ThinkPad X1 (UEFI), but nothing happens when I select it at the boot menu, other than flicker and return to the boot menu. The same thing happens when I select the 16GB Optane. I tried this with all the default BIOS settings, and also with secure boot turned off.

Questions at this point:

What should I expect of tech support?

What else can I do on my own to get this to boot anything?

There was a BIOS option to change from AHCI to RST (for Optane), but it tells me that everything stored on the drives will be deleted. I have never dealt with Optane before, but if this is supposed to make things faster, shouldn't the OS be on the SSD rather than the spinning disk? Would any of this effect booting? Why can't I boot from USB, regardless?

I am open to suggestions to try anything else I haven't tried before in hopes of getting this machine up and running-I may need to have it working by next weekend.

Thanks in advance!

So, I opened a ticket with tech support the same day I got this machine that doesn't boot. Without first checking with me, tech support are now sending me a new box to ship the machine back to the depot. This seems to be jumping the gun, and maybe a bit wasteful--I still have the same box I just received it in the same day--I was hoping they could work something out over the phone, maybe give me a USB image to download and boot from to recover.

Is this the norm for tech support these days? I have to be traveling with this soon, Windows or not, and shipping it is not going to resolve the problem any sooner.

Another thought on why the Optane SSD is not being recognized: if UEFI boot is not working for whatever reason, and this is an NVMe device, then maybe it won't be visible to a non-UEFI-booted OS?

EDIT 2018-08-04 22:14:44 UTC

So, I just did get a more helpful update, now that I found out Lenovo does have a 24/7 US-based tech support line (800-426-7378, not MTSA)--this is likely a factory defect that would warrant repairs, but given that this is a brand-new unit, I would be best off just exchanging for another new one and hope that I get no other defects.

Still frustrating, given the timing, but this is at least an answer that seems somewhat reasonable. I will leave the thread open and unsolved (in case anyone else has other thoughts) until I get a working replacement.

ORIGINAL POST:

Still no update from Lenovo--the mailer box has not even arrived. This is infuriating. Has anyone else had a similar experience? I only have flexibility to deal with this on nights and weekends, conveniently when tech support is closed. This should be a simple software fix, nonetheless.

I paid for a premium computer and OS upgrade, but when the OS is not properly installed from the factory, now I have to wait weeks to ship the whole machine back and miss another day of work to sign for the package?

Is there no install media or recovery image to download?

I don't know if this helps you at all, but there is a lenovo recovery. You have to "order" it (zero cost) and then you can go to this crap site and try downloading it. It is 12GiB. I could not get it to download without assistance[1]. But, as it turns out, you might as well just download the official ISO from Microsoft[2]. If you're trying to boot from USB, it's quite fussy about what it will boot [3].

Having said all that, it does sound like you machine has something wrong with it. I also have the SSD+HDD config and it booted up without any problems (in fact, I didn't want it to boot without me booting a USB first, but they're shipped hypernated for Windows "fast startup". But I digress.).

If you do ever get it to boot you can create a recovery USB from within windows (I think it's called "startup repair"). You need a 16GB stick for that.

Wish you well in sorting your problems :)

[1] https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/Unable-to-download-recovery-USB-from-DDRS-stuck-at-99-need/m-p/4136550

[2]https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO

[3]https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T400-T500-and-newer-T/T580-Cannot-boot-USB/m-p/4177009#M127394

Thanks for the reply, @dobbydobbs--this is timely and hopefully helpful. I don't know why tech support could not give me these options, but I may still need them at some point. I asked tech support if there were some recovery image I could just download, but they insisted on me shipping the unit back.

Long story short, I now have a machine that boots Windows out of the box, but it may not do much else. Hopefully, I can use an official ISO or recovery image to reinstall everything more or less in the way I want it.

Here's the back story since my last post:

When I reached out to the 24/7 tech support two weeks ago, they told me I was still in the grace period to return or replace the unit for any reason. I requested a replacement (with RMA), and I just received the replacement last night. The upside of the replacement is that I can get a working machine before shipping back the other partially-working one. The alternative is to go weeks without anything.

I can confirm now that the old unit was not configured the way it was supposed to have been. Apparently, when ordering with SSD+HDD, the factory is supposed to put it them in a stripe with Intel RST. It appears to be partitioned so that the OS loads from the SSD, but I am not sure how to confirm that.

RST mode does seem to limit the boot options further. I was under the impression that the factory could have just loaded the OS in the SSD, then had a separate HDD for storage, all AHCI mode, no RAID. At least, this is how the sales rep and tech support explained it, but that is not what RST does.

Maybe it has something to do with the only SSD option being 16GB for a 36GB OS install? I'm totally new to Windows 10, but that seems huge to me. I would also be curious about why the USA market only offers 16GB when I see people on these forums getting bigger ones from the factory (together with HDD).

Maybe I will have more updates if I can rearrange these things. Stay tuned!

Seems OEM QA failed to test system boot up before shipping the device.  Fortunately, I have two other T580s on prem that are running Win 10 Pro fine and worked out of the box.  I checked the BIOS settings on one and found that the Storage Controller setting was RST.  After changing the BIOS option from AHCI to RST (for Optane), the new T580 booted and Windows setup continued as it should have in the first place.

Hello, and thanks for posting this.

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"" wrote:

Seems OEM QA failed to test system boot up before shipping the device.  Fortunately, I have two other T580s on prem that are running Win 10 Pro fine and worked out of the box.  I checked the BIOS settings on one and found that the Storage Controller setting was RST.  After changing the BIOS option from AHCI to RST (for Optane), the new T580 booted and Windows setup continued as it should have in the first place.

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I thought I had posted a conclusion and solution back in August, but now I am not seeing it here. As it happens, I did the same thing that you did, once I had gotten a replacement T580 from customer service (not technical support). Referring back to my original post:

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"" wrote:

There was a BIOS option to change from AHCI to RST (for Optane), but it tells me that everything stored on the drives will be deleted.

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Seeing that big, scary warning message on a brand-new machine, and not having any other like it, I decided to go for the no-questions-asked replacement unit rather than try to invoke a warranty claim with tech support (or void the warranty just by doing something like that). The replacement unit booted Win10 out of the box (albeit with other weird issues like frequent USB mass storage failures--par for the course in Win10? no problems under other OSes on the same T580).

Once I had the replacement unit that I could verify was not defective, then I finally bit the bullet and flipped the BIOS (UEFI?) setting to change from AHCI to RST. Lo and behold, no data loss, and Win10 booted as it should have from the start. I have no idea why tech support couldn't have just told me that and saved us a lot of added trouble, but I think they were also afraid of the warning and possibly losing the Windows install.

After that, we have the same situation. This replacement T580 has been chugging along for the last 6 months (using it for this post), ironically still running live Linux off a USB drive the whole time. The Windows 10 USB stack seems to be too temperamental for my needs, at least on this T580. I will probably just image and virtualize that Windows install if I ever need it at some point.

Anyway, thanks for reviving the thread and beating me to posting the "solution" :)