I am not sure where to post it, but, kindly transfer it accordingly to the right place.
i have a Lenovo ideapad Gaming 3 15IHU6 and I have accidentally disabled the integrated intel iGPU via advanced BIOS options (planned to disable IRIS Xe and leave nvidia as primary and only gpu).
After saving and rebooting it, I don’t have display on either my laptop screen or via HDMI.
It can still display externally via usb-C which only works once windows OS running and I am not able to access BIOS settings since the internal LCD and external displays won’t ‘display’ anything.
I have not set the BIOS to flash to an older build as well, so, I have limited options…
I am not sure about taking this to the Official Service Center as I might violated by accessing advanced settings.
I have disconnected both CMOS battery & laptop battery. I held the power button for minute or so to fully drain it, but it didn’t display still after turning it back on. I was wondering if there is another battery inside the board similar to CMOS, it might be responsible of not resetting the bios even though the CMOS battery is removed.
I had a problem with multiple efivars which didn’t got reset with regular bios settings
I did chattr -i /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/* and rm /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/* under linux and everything got reseted after reboot
I guess something like that can be done under windows since you stuck with it for now
another approach is to use Dell PFS Extractor → UEFITool → IFRExtractor to find that variable you set to disabled state and modify that uefi variable somehow (I saw the powershell module for modifying UEFI variables, or maybe there are some other fancy windows approach)
can those efi vars can be read as well?
as far as we did with his laptop, it was with the igpu settings that was turned off.
does folders under “/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/*” also represents those found in the advanced bios?
but i agree that deleting the whole thing would be better…, if it works, we’ll not touch those particular advanced settings ever
thank you for the insights, we will try & i hope this will work in this scenario…
I strongly recommend a complete and valid backup of the firmware. Try Intel ME tools 15, flash programming tool
fptw64 -d spi.bin
If that gives an error message try dumping the different regions separately:
fptw64 -DESC -d fd.bin
fptw64 -ME -d me.bin
fptw64 -BIOS -d biosreg.bin
After confirming a valid backup (at least of the bios region and flash descriptor) it’s either finding the corresponding store / setting in NVRAM and changing it back or emptying the complete NVRAM.
Similar problem, fixed by rewriting one corresponding byte in NVRAM:
And be careful with the syntax, fpt will write without checking for content! Just use it for reading / backup! It needs to be run in console with admin rights.
(And don’t use the addresses from the mentioned thread, those are machine specific!)
Yes, Lenovo wont even offer you reprogramming the firmware, only thing they offer is a new board.
This machine would’ve been savable with a high probability, maybe one would have to start with an completely empty NVRAM and maybe one would’ve needed a CH341 programmer in the end. A little sad, but of course the most safe way if you feel unsure (and can afford the money).