I am reading through the advice on how to roll back BIOS on Lenovo X230. and I see information that seems to be from different times. Not sure which to follow.
Hoping for information from someone who has done this recently, and knows which webpage to follow.
Where I get to the point where the note says.
Run downgrade.bat (NOT as Administrator - WinFlash64 should request admin on its own). The system will reboot and flash the BIOS region on your device.
Above that is a link to
Which has a lot more detail.
I am guessing whoever wrote the advice on the first page expects me to know as much about the process as he knows, and only hits the high lights.
I suspect I am supposed to follow the webpage.
I asked about this on the Lenovo Forum, and a moderator said that since Lenovo does not support rolling back BIOS, he was closing my thread.
IVprep is a packaging to make it as simple as possible to downgrade the
BIOS to one where you can apply 1vyrain.
You only need it if you have upgraded your BIOS beyond 2.60, and you
only need to run downgrade.bat. Simple as that.
By all means, read and study the detail - but it isn’t necessary.
Ive always found the best way to interact with the flash chips on the x230 is a few screws and a ch341a with a SOIC clip. Very inexpensive to buy and very easy to use dd to separate the rom into the correct size for each chip. I always short the WP pin after writing and use ifdtool on the descriptor to lock as much as I can. This is my SOP with writing heads. Once done I add tamper proof seals to the case.
I would rather have the assurance that i have to physically write to the EEPROMs with a clip, than have the facility to write to the EEPROMs from userland. Its less surface for adversary.
I should add, that using this method makes it exceptionally easy to roll back to factory firmware also. Just unsolder the WP pins, clip on SOIC and then write to the 4mb and 8mb respectively with the factory image.
Agreed, but 1vyrain is for people who arent comfortable with “a few
screws and a ch341a with a SOIC clip”.
Once applied, cant you lock down the chips against anything but a
physical flash in any case?
Notes say: Go into your BIOS setup. Navigate to Security -> UEFI BIOS Update Option. Set Flash BIOS Updating by End-Users to Enabled, and Secure RollBack Prevention to Disabled.
That is accomplished.
Decided to wait until this morning to write this.
I think there was one or two things that is obvious to others of how I am supposed to use IVprep which is obvious to others, not me. I have not used DOS in a long time. And I am not sure if this is DOS.
I have installed 64 bit Windows 10 Pro onto target Lenovo.
I Download the zip for IVprep. Extract it.
I am guessing this has in it the versions of BIOS I might choose. ???
Saying “Run download.bat” means, open a DOS Window and. Or do I have something in the wrong place. Was I supposed to write this extracted file to a flash drive?
I am more familiar with the processes involved in using 1vyrain.
At the end, the last question for me to answer was whether to install a modified version of Lenovo BIOS. After the expected error messages. I see the BIOS is listed again at 2.77.
Now for the next step. I need to insert an Atheros WiFi chip and see if this starts. And I will quite posting on this thread. Just wanted to finish off.