Thinkpad T 420 S : Update the BIOS - how to do that!?

General system Newbie
1

​Dear Community,

I want to update my T420 BIOS to the latest version. How would you go about it?

BTW: .i am loving the Thinkpad Notebook for its robustness and awesome mechanic. The keyboard is just outstainding. Well - to be frank; I think the T 420 is one of the most robust notebooks ever. It’s virtually indestructible!

So, can you give some hints how to update the bios. A friend recommended me to go like so:

fwupdmgr refresh --force

fwupdmgr get-updates

fwupdmgr update

any ideas !?

​

2

Well you’ll have to download the bios for your device from the lenovo website and follow the instructions. You’ll probably have to boot into windows.

3

I keep some kind of DOS (FreeDOS I believe) on a bootable USB stick. Most manufacturers still offer DOS-based BIOS upgrades, so it’s mainly downloading, copying to stick, booting stick, executing the .exe, and all is well.

In my experience, there are not too many that offer fwupd-compatible BIOS upgrades. Then again, I’m usually more concerned about bringing older hardware back to life.

Be careful to download the correct BIOS update for your machine or motherboard, though! Not all updaters have checking built in, and you can brick your machine using a wrong BIOS!

4

If your make and model is supported by fwupd then it should work.

For the list of supported devices: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devicelist

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5

Thanks for the pointer, never think of that site. Dell (which I use mostly, historic reasons) have a pretty good record, appreciate that.

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6

Download the “Bootable CD” BIOS from Lenovos support page. This is an .iso you either burn on a CD or flash onto an USB stick. Then boot into it and follow instructions.

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7

Granted this information is dated, but I have a T420 in my stash and I just loaded windows on a spare drive and loaded all the Lenovo utilites on that. You could update the BIOS using those.

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