jaxst

I did... I have the SLI version of he laptop and was able to get everything working for a short period of time. After a week or so, the power adapter stopped charging. I had Lenovo send me a new power block, which also didn't charge, along with an additional battery. I ended up needing to have the mainboard replaced. I'm assuming this occurrence was directly related to the BIOS mod. Luckily my laptop was under warranty, so it didn't cost me a dime. I haven't tried modifying the BIOS since.

So I'm back with an update after a week of not using my Laptop. I have the Y500 w/ SLI GT750's and successfully flashed the modified BIOS to get my wireless AC card to work, but have ran into further problems. The battery doesn't seem to charge anymore and it would seem I blew out the power plug on the laptop. I'm looking at having the mainboard swapped out under warranty, but afraid they may catch on about the BIOS mod. I'm assuming this would void the warranty (I purchased the three year accidental plan). I'll give a rundown of the troubleshooting I have gone through thus far. 1. Battery would not charge, although the icon would show it was... It kept losing power. 2. Laptop will not boot w/o battery in, so I thought it was the power adapter. 3. Contacted Lenovo to have new battery and power adapter sent... Computer powered up for a second because the new battery had a tiny amount of juice and powered off. Was I supposed to update the BIOS on the second GPU? It wont power even w/o the second GPU anyways, but just wondering. I will be sending the laptop in to have the board replaced and hoping they notice that it is not powering up and just replace the board w/o hooking up a fully charged battery to see if the BIOS was tampered with. (You can expand on this if you know of their process... anything could be helpful). I have the backup file to my BIOS on the machine still on the mSATA drive, and I have a Y470p I can plug that into to pull data off and try to restore the original BIOS, but I would need power first... I don't think I have much of an option to do anything like that right now, but if you have any tricks, do tell.

Just wanted to report back that the BIOS upgrade worked and I now have the 7260.HMWG wifi card working! Thank you to all whom worked on creating this solution.

Would it be possible to have two external monitors plugged in via the USB 3.0 docking station? (not good for gaming or video editing) There are two DVI ports on it... and I wonder if you could use the HDMI port for a third monitor? I have the small USB 3.0 dock, so there is only one DVI... It does not work for gaming at all.

You can purchase the Y500 bezel here: https://www.lenovospareparts.com/search.asp?keyword=90201989&search.x=10&search.y=2&search=GO I spoke with a service rep there when I purchased a BDRW and HDD caddy... They didn't have this item up for sale at the time, but eventually put it up after I hounded on them. Everything is kind of loose when using it with aftermarket parts, but I wasn't able to find the extension piece that you would attach to the other side of the drive from the bezel (this is a piece that will allow the drive bay lock to work... whatever it may be called). Anyways, not the cheapest solution, but know that you can get the bezels.

Original KH Special Laptop black Carbon Protector Cover Skin Fit for Lenovo Y500 Search for that and you'll have your cover. Thanks so much for pointing me in this direction... Those fingerprints and smudges are awful.

Windows 8.1 boots w/o extras plugged in around 8 seconds. C=120GB Atlas mSATA D=256GB Samsung 830 Drive C Read max 435770 kB/sec Read average 409050 kB/sec Read min 367963 kB/sec Write max 441589 kB/sec Write average 371669 kB/sec Write min 233460 kB/sec CPU usage 0 percent Drive D Read max 333170 kB/sec Read average 277074 kB/sec Read min 152698 kB/sec Write max 414341 kB/sec Write average 397778 kB/sec Write min 332061 kB/sec CPU usage 4294967294 percent

I'm enjoying the Y500 I have. Dual 750M's, with 120GB mSATA and 256GB SSD. It screams for the amount of money spent. Picked up a BDRW drive for it and an HD caddy for my linux boot (still dual booting W8.1 and Ubuntu seem to have some issues when you install Ubuntu on another drive. I wont get into that part because I've many options with no such luck. The only problem I've had with this laptop is the whitelisted BIOS junk... I would like my wirelessAC card to work. I found the forum here about modifying the BIOS, but now waiting to be approved for downloads.

My first post! Corny, I know... I came here looking to modify my Y500 bios allowing me to use the [h=1]Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth HM[/h] I'm currently running the 2.04 BIOS and would like any pointers, but as soon as I can download the tools I should be well on my way. Thanks for the help everyone!