1.30 BIOS Screwed Up Windows Install

Question

I'm the owner of a W520 (system specs at the bottom). I finally decided to jump on the BIOS 1.30 train amid news of better power management and forsake my 1.16 BIOS that allowed me to use TurboBoost on battery. After I plugged in my laptop and finished with the BIOS Update Utility from Lenovo's website, the computer rebooted and the message about a chip being flashed was displayed in the lower-left (100% fan speed and all). I was at work at the time and was called away by a customer. When I got back, the power was on and the fans were at normal levels, but the screen was entirely black except for a slowly blinking underscore in the top-left corner. The hard drive activity light blinks extremely faintly, rapidly, and at a consistent pace. I let this be for about 20-25 minutes to be sure it wasn't part of the BIOS flashing process and then decided to troubleshoot. This activity persists every reboot.
Here is what I've done so far:
-Checked BIOS for version (displayed as ver. 1.30 w/ ECP at ver. 1.17)
-Booted into Windows PE and ran MbrFix's "restoreMBR" command on the affected drive
Tomorrow is my one day off a week and I'd like to have at least some of it for leisure, which is why I'm coming to you for help. Has anyone seen this before? Suggestions would be very helpful! Right now I'm wondering whether I should A) Format a flash drive and put my Windows install back on so I can do a Startup Repair or B) Investigate restoring/replacing the MBR or C)  Run some kind of hard drive diagnostic or D) Replace the CMOS/Remove Battery/Invoke voodoo magic
ThinkPad W520
Core i7 2720QM | 120GB OWC Extreme Pro 6G | (2x2GB) 1333MHz DDR3 RAM | 1600x900 Display | Quadro 1000M | Win 7 Pro | ThinkPad b/g/n | 3 Yr Depot Warranty
ThinkPads and SSDs: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Solved!
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Answer 1

Here are the unsuccessful things I've done so far:
-Checked BIOS for version (displayed as ver. 1.30 w/ ECP at ver. 1.17)
-Booted into Windows PE and ran MbrFix's "restoreMBR" command on the affected drive
-Tried pointing Windows repair image running off my USB drive to the drive controller (RST) files, iaStor.inf and iaAHCI.inf. It thinks the files are unrelated to my system hardware.
-From cmd prompt, bootrec.exe/ScanOS sees my installationon the D: drive. Startup Repair claims it has successfully repaired the installation, but reboot produces same problem.
-Built a custom Windows 7 image using RT7 Lite integrating iaStor.inf and iaAHCI.inf into the Drivers section and repeated last step.
-Ran the familiar bootrec.exe /fixmbr then /fixboot then /rebuildBCD commands. They failed, giving the message "the requested system device cannot be found".
-Manually marked partition 1 active on my system drive. Startup Repair failed again and gives me the following error:
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: StartupRepairOffline
Problem Sig 1: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Sig 2: 6.1.7600.16385
Problem Sig 3: unknown
Problem Sig 4: -1
Problem Sig 5: ExternalMedia
Problem Sig 6: 1
Problem Sig 7: NoOsInstalled
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
-I finally got sick of troubleshooting and restored my C drive from a backup I ran a few days ago via my Macrium Reflect rescue ISO. Sadly, I'm still greeted by the black screen and continuously flickering disk activity LED. Booting to the hard disk from inside a multiboot menu (Xboot) reveals the message: "Error Loading OS". What should I do now?!
ThinkPads and SSDs: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3