Lenovo gaming laptop computer homeowners have run into bother in some reported instances attributable to a freshly launched BIOS replace which went stay in April.
Because it was rolled out a month in the past, increasingly more people have been updating to the BIOS model ‘GKCN53WW’, and there have been rising quantities of complaints on numerous on-line boards (together with Lenovo’s personal platform (opens in new tab)) round severe points which have been encountered post-upgrade. Home windows Newest (opens in new tab), which noticed this, observes that the issues principally have an effect on Lenovo Legion gaming laptops.
The nastiness attributable to the BIOS replace in some instances consists of the likes of Blue Display of Dying crashes with the error ‘DEVICE_POWER_STATE_FAILURE’ (or a driver energy failure (opens in new tab)) and even boot failure, and freezing throughout sport periods, together with body charges dropping badly at occasions.
One Reddit denizen posted (opens in new tab): “I put in this on a Legion 7 16ACHg6 I’ve had for 7 months. After taking part in video games for 10 min or so the laptop computer severely throttles for a few minutes. By way of efficiency, it was unattainable to disregard. Dropping from 75-140fps in FFXIV on-line to round 15-20fps.This throttling would repeat each 10 min or so.
“I reverted to GKCN49WW and the issue is gone. Fairly extreme bug for a gaming laptop computer BIOS replace pushed as ‘essential.’”
Lenovo does certainly charge this BIOS replace as a essential improve to put in, presumably as a result of it incorporates fixes for some nasty BIOS vulnerabilities revealed by the laptop computer maker final month, together with a bunch of tweaking for power-related settings.
Evaluation: Keep away from the replace, then? You may do, however that comes with its personal dangers
First off, we must always observe that there are people on these numerous Reddit (and different) threads who’ve reported putting in the GKCN53WW replace with none issues. So, it would simply be a comparatively small share of Legion homeowners who’ve hit bother with this BIOS replace – we are able to’t know the precise numbers, after all, however the variety of threads on Reddit counsel that this isn’t a uncommon incidence, a minimum of.
Due to this fact one of the best plan of action may very well be to offer the GKCN53WW replace a swerve for now, arguably; however that mentioned, these aforementioned BIOS vulnerabilities will not be one thing you need to go away hanging round. Nonetheless, you do not want GKCN53WW to repair these, as per Lenovo’s safety advisory (opens in new tab) on this matter, these holes are resolved by updating to GKCN51WW (in addition to GKCN53WW). So in the event you’re already on 51WW, you’re protected towards these exploits.
The rub is that if you wish to seize GKCN51WW now, you’ll be able to’t anymore – we’re unsure why, however the one choice for obtain is the brand new GKCN53WW, with its potential crashing and body charge dropping points. Hopefully Lenovo will repair this BIOS replace quickly sufficient, however we haven’t heard something from the producer but – and meantime, you’re left with the difficult alternative of whether or not to improve and probability the crashes, or stick and threat the vulnerabilities as an alternative. (In the event you’re on GKCN51WW and managed to seize this model earlier than it disappeared, we’d counsel very firmly that you just keep it up for now).
In the event you do replace to the newest BIOS and encounter issues, Home windows Newest highlights that you may roll again to the earlier BIOS model, which is now GKCN50WW: it may be downloaded straight as an EXE file right here (opens in new tab) (however after all this doesn’t have these very important safety fixes).
To roll again the BIOS in your Lenovo laptop computer, simply double click on on the EXE file of the earlier model you want to set up, and comply with the directions given by the wizard that pops up. You might have to allow the flashing of the BIOS to a earlier model earlier than you’ll be able to roll it again, although, which is completed within the Lenovo BIOS Setup display screen – to get into that, see the directions right here (opens in new tab).
As soon as in BIOS Setup, there’s an choice which is expounded to rolling again the BIOS model, and it’s essential to allow this (observe that on some Lenovo machines, there could be a rollback prevention choice which is enabled by default – and on this case, to revert to a earlier BIOS model, it’s essential to disable it).
Reverting the BIOS is, nonetheless, a course of that may go improper, so that you accomplish that at your personal threat – and no matter you do, be sure that the laptop computer doesn’t power-down whereas making use of a brand new BIOS (that’s how units can get bricked).
All in all, it’s not an important scenario for the much less tech-savvy Lenovo laptop computer homeowners on the market, who might not need to mess with BIOS rollbacks, however might really feel pressured to take action, if any post-update crashing points are actually unhealthy. And certainly they might properly really feel it’s greatest to sit down tight on an older BIOS to keep away from this situation – understandably – however that’s hardly best from a safety perspective, both. So, hopefully Lenovo might be trying into fixing these reported issues as a matter of precedence…
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