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Thread: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

  1. #11
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    Has anyone had any luck installing the HD firmware upgrade below? The file is FWSH20.iso.

    http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...cid=MIGR-63685

    I mounted the image within Linux but could still not see any files, nor could I open them within Windows. The format of the image is such that it cannot be viewed, thus it cannot be copied to a USB stick with 'cp' command or otherwise.

    Any ideas?
    Okay... I looked into this / thought about it some more. I'm sure it's possible, but it may require parsing the CD-ROM binary data (which follows the El Torito Specification and extracting the files manually.

    A software engineer named Michael Kennett seems to have written a program to do something like this, and talks about it on his blog here. However, his webserver that held the program seems to be down, now. I've e-mailed him... we'll see if he responds.

    It's not clear how much work it would take to make this work... Why (if you don't mind me asking) are you interested in the hard drive firmware update utility? What's it do? From the Lenovo page, it looks like it's mostly applicable for Vista users...

    Mike

  2. #12
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    Quote Originally Posted by mbsullivan View Post

    It's not clear how much work it would take to make this work... Why (if you don't mind me asking) are you interested in the hard drive firmware update utility? What's it do? From the Lenovo page, it looks like it's mostly applicable for Vista users...

    Mike
    In my particular case the HDD on my X61 is not listed as those included (HTS542516K9SA00), though similar models are. I was going to run it just in case due to a common freeze problem while on battery, running Vista x64 Business. This seems to be corrected with an updated turbo mem driver from Intel, not repackaged from Lenovo. Some people have reported better performance in Vista and XP after the firmware upgrade, but then they do that all the time! It is made to correct errors on these OS.

    My question, then, is more out of curiosity than out of necessity and is open-ended. I see noone else talking about it so I would not waste time on it unless it affects your own laptop.

    That said, opening the ISO with 7Zip shows a [BOOT] folder containing "Bootable_HardDisk.img". It is 512 bytes while the ISO is 30MB. No luck finding the rest of the contents.

  3. #13
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    hi I'm trying to download BIOS (2.07) & BIOS (2.14) from lenovo.com uk support downloads & drivers

    I keep getting a "504 Gateway Time-out"

    I've trying your link & going to the site & using wget I can't seem to get those files.

    Does anyone have them? Could someone send me them?

    bios@TempEMail.net

    Thanks

  4. #14
    Join Date
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    hi I'm trying to download BIOS (2.07) & BIOS (2.14) from lenovo.com uk support downloads & drivers

    I keep getting a "504 Gateway Time-out"

    I've trying your link & going to the site & using wget I can't seem to get those files.

    Does anyone have them? Could someone send me them?

    bios@TempEMail.net

    Thanks
    Right you are... Lenovo's support site (hosted on IBM servers) appears to be down right now. I've still got the 2.14 ISO on my machine, I'll send it your way.

    Mike

    PS: I've bzip2'ed it in a tarball, such that the proper way to extract it is:

    Code:
    tar -xjf 7nuj14uc.iso.tar.bz

  5. #15
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    That said, opening the ISO with 7Zip shows a [BOOT] folder containing "Bootable_HardDisk.img". It is 512 bytes while the ISO is 30MB. No luck finding the rest of the contents.
    I'm not positive, but I think it's extracting the boot image. A Perl app named geltorito gave me the same thing, as I recall.

    I won't have much time to work on this right now, but I'll keep it in the back of my mind. We may figure a way to make it work.

    Mike

    PS: Michael Kennett, who wrote the rip3 program I mentioned earlier, got back to me by e-mail. He's looking for the source code (which is a couple of years old). Maybe we can hack his project to work for our purposes.

  6. #16
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    Cheers for the reply mbsullivan I've sent you a private message with my gmail email could you send the file to me there. Temp mail doesn't seem to be working.

    Thanks again

    wow just checked my mail the file is already there many thanks

  7. #17
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    Cheers for the reply mbsullivan I've sent you a private message with my gmail email could you send the file to me there. Temp mail doesn't seem to be working.

    Thanks again

    wow just checked my mail the file is already there many thanks
    Let me know if everything goes well. Are you doing the Windows way, or through Linux only?

    Mike

  8. #18
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    All went well upgrading from bios 1.06 to 2.14 I used my mums windows computer to make the bootable usb.

    The first few attempts didn't work I was using a SanDisk 4gb usb stick with U3 software on it. I would boot in to a black screen.

    I went home and got my ocz 1gb usb, it doesn't have any u3 software on it. I follow the windows parts of you tutorial and all went very smoothly.

    Once again great tutorial and thanks for the fast reply yesterday in sending me the bios update, It was very nice of you.

  9. #19
    Join Date
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    The first few attempts didn't work I was using a SanDisk 4gb usb stick with U3 software on it. I would boot in to a black screen.
    Hmmm... Interesting! That's good to know.

    Once again great tutorial and thanks for the fast reply yesterday in sending me the bios update, It was very nice of you.
    Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad the upgrade worked for you!

    Mike

  10. #20
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    Aug 2008
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    Re: How to Upgrade the Thinkpad x61 BIOS

    Thanks for the guide!
    Exactly what I was looking for!

    Didn't have a single problem and am now running 2.14

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