MEInfo output on the booted L460 with BIOS from another machine with LAN issue
Try this firmware, it’s you old bios recovered. Seems that Lenovo for this machine writes a PEI volume into the large padding between EC firmware and NVRAM for the update, but this process didn’t finish. Original bios is quite old, didn’t find a completely identical firmware and bios region was partly updated already, too. So in the end I put NVRam and EVSA store back in a stock bios and updated and refreshed/cleaned ME (which stores the MAC address after initialisation). In addition the files you used had a difference in ME config, might be relevant.
complete file 16MB:
1_L460_original_rec_nvr_me.zip (6.8 MB)
2 x 8MB:
1_L460_original_rec_nvr_me_2files.zip (6.8 MB)
I will try the fixed BIOS asap, thank you.
Where this discrepancy come from? Is this gbe.region configuration difference b/w original and other L460 instance?
If yes, I would also try to fix the LAN issue by updating the config in the working dump from another machine, does that make sense?
Maybe new board revision, wouldn’t matter since me update doesn’t change when updated.
This isn’t GbE config, it’s ME.
Try the attached file, don’t change anything! There’s no reason to assume that your own GbE or ME config was corrupted!
lfb6
The attached fixed image did the trick - laptop booted just fine with working LAN.
BTW: it’s indeed i219-LM version, no question sign anymore in device manager.
Now I’m trying to catch what you did to fix the original corrupted dump, because I have 2 more L460 in similar state - no boot after BIOS update.
You state, that ME and GBE regions are likely good and that’s BIOS region got corrupted - could you briefly describe steps taken to fix/replace the corrupted region?
Good to hear that this image did work!
Regarding the changes:
- Saved bios region, transferred NVRAM and EVSA store and a padding from original bios
- Looked up the version it was tried to update to
- Download this bios update from Lenovo (this was R08ET70W)
- Extracted bios content from update file
- Exchanged the first 128kB of original bios region with EC firmware from update
- Removed an additional UEFI volume between EC firmware and NVRAM in ioriginal bios region, filled space with ‘FF’
- Exchanged all static EFI volumes of original dump with the one from corresponding update
- Cleaned the ME according to
[Guide] Clean Dumped Intel Engine (CS)ME/(CS)TXE Regions with Data Initialization but used the latest ME firmware from Lenovo site
The latter might not be necesssary, but the ME firmware in the original dump was very old.
Normally the EC firmware will get transfered from it’s place within bios region to the EC controller. Can you check the status screen for EC firmware version and post the result, please?
Dump those other firmwares and post an image of the structure with bios region expanded and parser output visible in the lower tab. This way one might see if it’s the same error for all machines…
Left your corrupted bios region, middle working bios region structure, right update file, bios region has “wrong” size.
There are plenty of steps to recover BIOS region and not that straightforward like ME cleaning procedure.
It does not look like a doable fix for one-off case. But thank you for details, they might help someone in similar situation.
Here is a screen from the good recovered machine/BIOS:
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Here is bios region expanded for other 2 corrupted BIOS:
Actually I already flashed the fixed dump on these 2 machines - they both booted with no LAN issue. AS far as I understand the only drawback of this fast recovery is wrong DMI and other serials?
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Regarding EC firmware you have a state between the versions from your dumps (2016) and the EC firmware in padding corresponding to R08ET70W bios?
I’d recommend updating to R08ET71W - this should update both bios region and EC firmware to latest version.
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Thanks for the images, seems the bios update got stuck at the same point for all three machines!
And yes, it’s correct, that the FD and ME (from the file I did send, meaning not initialized) should work fine for all other machines, too, no machine specific information there.
You should however keep your GbE region (3 times same MAC in a network will give trouble) and you might want to restore at least your Windows OEM license (EVSA store):
Extract as is the GbE and the EfiSystemNvDataFvGuid volume in bios region from the two corrupt dumps- use UEFIToolNE since it gives a better overview over the structure and naming is different in UEFITool:
Then replace as is GbE and first EFI volume in bios region (FFF12B8D-7696-4C8B-A985-2747075B4F50) in (copies of) the fixed dump - such generating machine specific dumps again. That requires UEFITool (0.28 or 0.25 should work both)
Good luck!
Thank you again for the guide!
I managed to update GBE region and EFI volume in other two dumps, and now have fully fixed with correct serials 3 machines!
updated to the latest 1.45 - now both BIOS and EC are up to date!
lfb6 May I ask you to write me a PM, I have a question regarding another dump? Don’t want to ask here, seems to be an off topic.
3 restored, updated and properly working L460 
Congratulations 
Regarding the other item:
I’d say let’s keep knowledge in the forum so that it’s accessible for everyone- just create a new thread with the next issue?!
But I suppose I didn’t disable pms?
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Still magic with BIOS region manipulations, but something has been learned. Thank you!
Here we go - Dell 5580: fix original or clean foreign?
Hi, I’m Working Hard to resolve this problem but I can’t fix my machine. Cold you help me, please?
When I tried change the version to R08ET64W (1.38 ) it’s broken again and don’t show image.
[Bios BL460 - NM-A651 - 2015-10-26 Rev1.0 ]
Mac Address c8 5b 76 a7 31 1e I219-LM (Error 10)
Lets be honest with the content of the post… you’re trying to DOWNGRADE a system bios 7 revisions back, is this correct?
Methods used? Any more useful information about the steps, choices made on this operation, besides being a tricky and risky one, that most OEM systems dont like…
The dump has a different MAC Address (MAC: 54:E1:AD:C1:46:DB)??
I formatted my notebook on 20/02/2025 with Windows 11 and when updating the drivers, the BIOS update became corrupted and the machine wouldn’t turn on anymore. So far, so good?
I took it to be repaired and the technician re-recorded the BIOS with an updated file in version 1.44, but the network card stopped working, with error 10. I tried to fix the problem by reinstalling Windows 10 this time, but the card remained with error 10. So far, so good?
In the last attempt to solve the network card problem, I downgraded the BIOS file to version 1.38 and this caused the machine to not turn on again.
BIOS Update (Utility & Bootable CD) for Windows 10, 8.1 (64-bit), 7 (32-bit, 64-bit) - ThinkPad L460 - Lenovo Support US
In short, I need to record the files in the BIOS that make the machine turn on again and the network card work correctly. In the zip file I sent you are the .bin images of the BIOS. I would like to know if anyone is able to fix them and send them to me so that I can save them and recover the machine.
Yes, I imagine that this was the problem with the card not working when they did the first dump and it caused me to cause the error again now with version 1.38. In the binary you can see other versions that worked but the network card did not work, so I tested 1.38 and lost the machine.
Well, this seems to be the same problem as described and deepend out in the linked badcaps thread.
Take the NVRAM from your original dump, save them
Take the ME region from the firmware posted in #6, save it
Extract a bios region from a Lenovo update, looks like
For this update image: Insert between end of first padding (at 0x20000) and EfiSystemNvDataFvGuid 0x3DA000. This should give the new bios region a size of 0x97A000
Replace the bios region in your own dump with this new bios region.
Replace the EfiSystemNvDataFvGuid volume in this bios region with the one you saved from your own dump.
Replace the ME region with the saved ME region from #7 in your dump.
