Re: E540 bios update to 2.17 fails, the system program file was not found

Question

Unfortunately all versions of the BIOS available from Lenovo's site have a bug that doesn't play well with linux. The workaround is to turn OFF USB 3.0 in the BIOS settings. (You can still use the USB ports, just not as USB 3.0.)
Here's a posting with more links if you would like to learn more. 
As for updating the BIOS, maybe one could get the updater to work using FreeDOS bootable image, or more likely a linux image with WINE on it... ?
On my new E540 I "cheated" by keeping Windows 7 cluttering up my hard drive for awhile. I have booted Windows only twice, and I NEVER let it connect to the Internet, but I downloaded the .exe version of the BIOS updater and ran it from a USB stick. (It runs as a Windows software installer, which is odd to me.)
2/23/15 EDIT: Message moved to front of discussion for escalation purposes. Amy_Lenovo
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

joonasr wrote:
I bought this laptop without any system and now the Bootable CD fails to update terribly buggy BIOS. Well done Lenovo. Could be my last Lenovo comp
@conwaytwt How could FreeDOS be used for updating BIOS? I don't think wine will work.
By the way, I tried extracting bios files from the .exe according to different advice in http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/BIOS_Upgrade but they failed.
@joonsar, I made that comment without thinking too much ... I have other (older) systems where the BIOS upgrades were always released as DOS executables... because they would run in Windows but also if your system had a floppy disk drive... :-) (obviously very old information nowadays).
Here is a link describing what I was imagining -- a bootable FreeDOS image: http://pingtool.org/bootable-dos-iso-bios-upgrade/ -- note this person combined FreeDOS and some Windows utility to make a bootable disc image. I suspect you could cobble together something similar using linux utilities, too.
--> HOWEVER I do not know if the bios upgrade .exe provided by Lenovo can run in DOS mode... I haven't tried it. 
ANOTHER option (I haven't tried!!!) would be to create a bootable Windows PE image. I believe there are some around, but now that I look, all the procedures involve creating the image from within a Windows environment (a Google search points to several options). Oh and of course Windows PE technically requires an existing Windows license, though I don't think it checks. 
Making a DOS image...
Today I realized the Ubuntu USB "Startup Disc Creator" only seems to work with linux images (maybe only Ubuntu). To create a FreeDOS USB you'll need to install unetbootin and use that utility. As it turns out it can make a bootable USB from (an older version of) FreeDOS on its own, but I just used it to create a FreeDOS 1.1 image. (just to see if I could)
UPDATE: I installed FreeDOS 1.1 to the USB stick with unetbootin. I couldn't get it to boot. SO I had unetbootin create a FreeDOS 1.0 image. It booted, but I didn't play with it long. The next step would be to try copying the Lenovo BIOS update .exe to it to see if it runs, but I don't want to run it again on MY system....
I did notice unetbootin knows how to create all sorts of images on its own, including some other kinds of rescue images, but I haven't read about them.... you might have a look?
Here's what I did (a week or two ago) to update my BIOS:
I still have Windows cluttering my hard drive for just this reason (based on sad experience with a Dell). I downloaded the .exe file and copied it to a USB stick, booted into Windows, and opened the .exe file. The software ran as a Windows installer. It asked me to approve it, installed something somewhere, and then asked me to reboot Windows to do the actual install. BY THE WAY, the actual install looked sortof like a DOS installer, so it's POSSIBLE the .exe might run under FreeDOS.
P.S.: Lenovo seems to have done something odd to their own bootable disc image to make it look "empty" to some linux  software -- I confirmed there IS an image in the file (you can dump it and see things in it) but the Image Mounter and other linux utilities think it's an "empty" file. I suspect you could modify a character or two somewhere and make it easier to burn or make a USB stick in linux.