I'm having a frustrating issue with my ThinkPad T420. It refuses to boot from any media, whether it's a Linux or Windows SSD, or any bootable USB sticks. The only thing it seems to boot is Ventoy, from which I can install Linux onto the internal SSD without a problem. However, after that, when I try to boot from the fresh install, it just goes back to the boot menu without any error messages, showing a black screen for a few seconds. I've double-checked that all the drives appear in both the BIOS and the boot menu. I even reset the BIOS to factory settings and tried every possible BIOS option I could think of, but nothing works. I even disassembled the laptop to replace the thermal paste—could that have caused an issue? What diagnostics can I run? I've searched online but haven't found anyone else with this problem, and even the LLM responses haven't been helpful. I could really use some advice!
1 Answer
This sounds like a classic BIOS issue. Since this is a Lenovo, the BIOS might have been installed via a Windows app, so updating it could be tricky. If you have access to a ROM chip writer, you might be able to write a new BIOS directly. That's a bit of a hack though! Good luck!
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