octiceps

Amen. Support and quality control for this laptop is a joke. Still, there are stubborn idiots who stick with it beyond all reason *looks in the mirror*

No it's 2 hours, which has already come and gone with no change. Not that I expected any. I think every single person who has repasted has confirmed that it has either done nothing or increased temperatures. This was my first and probably last time using IC Diamond. I bought a tube just to try it out this time and don't see why everyone swears by it. OCZ Freeze performs just as good if not better, has no curing time, and is way easier to apply. Good thing I bought like 10 tubes of the stuff before they discontinued it. I should be set for life.

I opened up my Y500 today and repasted the CPU, GPU, and Ultrabay GPU. The back cover and keyboard bezel were stuck on pretty tight and took forever because I was afraid of snapping any of the tabs, but I was patient and gentle with them and thankfully nothing broke. I used OCZ Freeze on the CPU and GPU and IC Diamond on the Ultrabay GPU. The Ultrabay and main GPU had the exact same temperatures before, so this is a good way to see which paste is better. Well, what do you know, all my hard work was for naught. After repasting, temperatures were identical across the board. I'm absolutely certain the high temperatures of this system are not due to bad factory paste jobs but to the sub-par cooling system. A single fan inside a performance/gaming notebook just doesn't cut it here or anywhere else. Look at MSI's overheating G-series for more evidence of this. I have a feeling you could empty a whole tube of whatever crap they use at the factory onto the die and still get the same temperatures. Also FYI @n1smo the video you followed for your disassembly was of a prototype Y400, not Y500, which is why the layout and screws were different. If you watch the disassembly video closely, you'll see it says Y490 at the bottom left screen bezel. I'm guessing Y490 is what they called it before going with Y400. I was surprised how different some of the motherboard placements in the video were compared to my Y500. For my disassembly I followed the official Lenovo Y400/Y500 hardware maintenance manual, which has the correct, separate instructions for both machines.

What was wrong with it? I used it to flash three different laptops without problems.

You mean svl7's old command prompt BIOS Fixer tool? I have a backup of it I can send you but I'm away from my computer right now so it'll be in a few hours. svl7 can probably provide it too.

You're gonna need to send it in for a motherboard or total replacement. Should be completely covered under warranty since it's entirely their fault. Running the battery gauge reset kills these laptops. Many, many owners of this and other IdeaPad models have done this with the exact same results. It's a serious motherboard defect Lenovo has known about for quite a while but never done anything for.

Get StartIsBack. It turned Windows 8 from unusable to almost like Windows 7 for me. Windows 8.1 isn't going to improve much, believe me.

Go into BIOS and change boot mode from UEFI to Legacy. Now you should be able to boot from USB. Also, why do have the win98_files you used to create the bootable USB? It should just be the 4 files if you followed the instructions correctly. Anyway, it doesn't affect anything, but I just thought it was kind of weird.

No I mean shutting down after unchecking this option:

Your mobo can support 35W quad-cores (e.g. i7-3612QM/3632QM) at full speed or 45W quad-cores (e.g. i7-3610QM/3630QM) at reduced clock speeds which match those of the 35W ones.

Try restarting the system. There's a bug with Windows 8 where Bluetooth disappears when you put the computer to sleep, hibernate, or use hybrid shutdown. The only way to get it back is to restart the system or perform a full shutdown and boot. It has nothing to do with the BIOS mod.

You thought everything was fine when you flashed V1.05 mod over stock V2.02 but that's not the case. Doing so downgraded the BIOS version to 1.05 but the EC (embedded controller) version stayed at 2.02. Even though you could still boot and see the unlocked menus at this point there would most likely be other problems. Yes you can't just directly flash the overvolt mod. You have to use svl7's command-line-based BIOS fix tool to create the mod yourself using that file and a backup of your current system BIOS, just like you did before you flashed the V1.05 mod. This is because the Window Activation, Lenovo serial number, and UUID (universally unique identification number) of the machine are stored in the BIOS. By creating the mod yourself you are adding that information to the file so that when you flash it the information is retained. Now that svl7 has changed how the BIOS fixer works (see below) and it is embedded with the different mod versions, you won't be able to flash the overvolt mod like you used to anymore. You would need the old command prompt BIOS fixer so that you can manually point to the overvolt file and your BIOS backup to create the "fixed" BIOS. I still have a backup of the old tool which I can send to you if needed, and I'm sure svl7 does as well. I would be happy to help you with the flashing when your replacement arrives. I have already flashed three Y500 units and I've completely memorized the procedure. It's quite easy once you've got the hang of it. No, read the instructions carefully. It's an .exe because svl7 changed how the BIOS fixer works. Now, you simply download the mod version you want, run the .exe, drag your BIOS backup into the Window, and the tool will automatically generate the custom modded file that you will flash with.

The Y500 I had before had only the 1TB HDD and no SSD, so that's what I'm comparing it to. I've never used a real SSD so I can't compare it to that. Plus I just got my machine so I've only been navigating around Windows and Web browsing. Haven't used any games or applications on it yet. Windows definitely feels a bit snappier overall. Boot times have only improved a little because Windows 8 boot times were already insanely fast, even on an HDD. I've noticed that there's almost no disk thrashing after bootup and startup items load immediately. Windows is responsive immediately after the desktop loads. My WEI primary hard disk score went up from 5.9 (the maximum on an HDD) to 6.8.

I'm really confused about what you did but it sounds like you mixed up a lot of things and ended up bricking your system. So let me get this straight: You flashed the Ultrabay 650M to the 1.1V overvolt vBIOS and that worked fine, then you moved on to your main system BIOS. Your original Lenovo BIOS was something other than 2.02 so first you applied the official Lenovo 2.02 update. Then, you flashed svl7 1.05 mod. Mistake #1: ONLY FLASH A MOD OF THE SAME VERSION AS YOUR CURRENT BIOS VERSION!!! svl7 wrote that in red letters for a reason. Next you tried to flash the 2.02 overvolt BIOS over your svl7 1.05 mod. Mistake #2: Not only are you flashing a mod of a different version, but you need follow svl7's instructions and fix your unmodded 2.02 BIOS with the overvolting BIOS so things like Windows activation, S/N, and UUID are retained. Now your system shows black screen and is unbootable. Did I get all that right? If svl7's recovery measures don't work for you, I'm afraid the only thing to do at that point is to send the laptop in for a motherboard or total replacement.

As a 650M owner, I personally don't really care as I can easily overclock past 750M stock performance on the 650M's lower voltage. And my GPU runs cooler as well. If you want higher clocks there is a 1.1V overvolting BIOS for 650M made by someone else based off of svl7's mod. 750M runs at 1.125V by default but it's close enough.

Actually I saw a new MSI gaming notebook at Computex, I forget which model but it had an i7-4930XM and GTX 780M, which does that.

Sorry we can't do that. Our BIOS contains our Windows 8 activation and Lenovo serial and ID numbers. If you can enter BIOS, reset it, otherwise you may need to take the laptop apart to remove and then replace the CMOS battery. Maybe svl7 has some other suggestion for how you can recover from a bad flash. If nothing works the last resort is to get the motherboard or laptop replaced.