Popular Post svl7 Posted February 4, 2013 Popular Post Share Posted February 4, 2013 This is continuation of this thread (http://forum.techinferno.com/lenovo-ibm/2690-lenovo-y500-unlocked-bios.html) with all the necessary information in the first post in order to make it easier to find all the stuff. Lenovo Y400 / Y500 - 'unlocked' BIOS / wwan-wlan whitelist removal + modified VBIOS for higher overclocking The Lenovo Y500 comes with a pretty locked down BIOS, and in addition to this with a whitelist which prevents the user from getting 3rd-party wwan/wlan cards to work properly. The modified BIOS versions here will take care of this. Keep in mind that not necessarily all options available in the modified bios will work. Some might not do anything at all, others could possibly leave your system in a state which will prevent it from booting. Use care when changing stuff in the modified bios, don't touch things you're not familiar with. Use all the mods and software posted here on your own risk. Read the instructions carefully. NOTE: This will only flash the bios region. It won't reset the nvars set in the bios. *************** ONLY FLASH A MOD OF THE SAME VERSION AS YOUR CURRENT BIOS VERSION!!! If you're on 2.02 or 2.03 you can safely use the 2.04 update, *************** Attached you'll find modified versions of the Y400 / Y500 BIOS v1.03 and v1.05. Removed as they're outdated. Better updated to v2.02. The bios contains your Windows 8 license, therefore you can't just flash any file, else you'll have issue with your Windows activation. Furthermore the serial numbers, service tags etc. are stored there as well. You don't want to loose them. I wrote a little program that will take care of this issue and personalize the modified bios for you, so that you won't end up with an invalid Windows or no service tags. *************** Preparation to get to BIOS v2.02 (coming from any earlier version): Generally it's a good idea to keep the BIOS up to date. We're luck to have an official BIOS update to v2.02 apparently thanks to a leak on the net. (Lenovo is really bad when it comes to providing firmware updates and fixing issues). The leaked version must be genuine, else it wouldn't flash by using the regular method. If you want to update your system to v2.02 then grab the update here, extract it and flash the bios by executing the included InsydeFlash utility. Once the update is completed you can continue with the instructions below to get a modified version on your system. *************** Instructions for flashing a modified version: As a reminder - the modified BIOS needs to be the same version as you have on your system (2.02 to 2.04 is ok). Prepare an USB stick which can boot DOS. If you don't know how to do this, follow this short guide: Spoiler Guide by @StamatisX - thanks! StamatisX said: This is a simple way to make a USB flash drive bootable (i.e. if you want to flash your VBIOS) StamatisX said: First download the attachment from below and extract it (i.e. on your Desktop)bootable_disk.zipInstall the program and once done run it as administrator otherwise it will give you an error (right click on it and run as administrator)Insert the USB flash disk you want to use as a bootable devicemake sure you have the following selectedand press on the button with the 3 dots in order to define the location of the needed files (basically where you chose to unzip the file you downloaded)Press start and after a while you are all set Download the flash tool, for flashing you'll need the DOS version, but for creating the backup of your current BIOS the Win64 version will do as well, and it is faster. Get the prr tool as well. Grab the modified BIOS you want to flash, it comes as a tool which will patch the bios for you. Make sure you grab the version that corresponds with your BIOS version. Create a backup of your current BIOS using the flash tool you downloaded (first step) by runing the included backup.bat, or by using the Win or Dos version flash tool with this command: Spoiler -d BackupBiosY500.bin -bios If the .bat doesn't work then open an administrator command prompt in your working directory and run the .bat per command line or type the command written above. In case you get an 'error 104' replace the parts file with the one that can be found in the 'error 104 fix' attachment at the end of the post. And if you still have issues after doing all of the steps above then please leave a reply in the thread and describe your problem. Open the downloaded tool and execute it. Drag and drop your BIOS backup file on it, it will create the mod for you. It will look like this: Put the modified BIOS, the prr.exe tool and the fpt.exe (along with the fparts.txt file) on the root of your prepared DOS bootable USB drive, restart your system and boot from that drive. Execute the prr.exe, if you don't get an error message continue by pressing enter. Then flash the bios by using this command (filename.bin obviously needs to be replaced with the name of the file you want to flash). If you can't remember the name of your file, use the command dir to display all the files on your drive. Flash with this: fpt.exe -f filename.bin -bios NOTE: The name of the BIOS file mustn't exceed eight characters (not counting the extension)! That's a DOS limit, so make sure the name of your file isn't too long. Wait until the process is done. After flashing it will verify the data, in case there's something wrong with the flashed data it will tell you. In that case don't reboot, just flash again. *************** Flashing the ultra bay 650m - only for SLI users with BIOS v2.02: The modified BIOS v2.02 also contains a vbios which will allow you to overclock your 650m past the 135MHz limit. As the ultra bay GPU has it's own vbios module you need to flash it separately. You'll need an USB drive which can boot DOS (just as the one you used for flashing the BIOS). Spoiler Grab the latest version of nvflash for DOS, extract the files and put them on your DOS stick. .. Download the y500-y400-sli-650m-80.07.27.00.33-oc.rom.zip and put it on your USB drive as well. Rename the file so that the name has no more than eight characters (not counting the extension). It's a DOS limitation. Here's a nvflash tutorial which contains all necessary information: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/2166-%5Bguide%5D-nvidia-vbios-flashing.html . Flashing: // X represents the index of your ultra bay GPU, you can figure it out by using nvflash -a nvflash -iX -6 filename.rom // once again, X represents the index, filename the name of the vbios nvflash -iX -r Warnings regarding the SSID can be ignored. *************** It might look a bit complicated at first, but that's the easiest way I could think of. Let me know if anything is unclear. >> Here's the 'buy me a beer' link in case you like this << Use at your own risk, you are responsible for your system and the changes you make on it. My programs come with absolutely no warranty to the extent permitted by applicable law. Grab file archive here: 241 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arjun Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 svl7 awesome guide !! cant thank yu enough could yu please tell me wat are the options in the bios tht has to be changed for enabling intel HD 4000 graphics ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanka Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 im a bit confused about the bios versions.... Is v1.5 the same as v1.05 and v1.3 the same as v1.03?Btw, great job Svl7 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted February 5, 2013 Author Share Posted February 5, 2013 I never called the bios v1.5 or v1.3 as far as I know... in the bios itself it says 1.05v, where did you see 1.5v? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanka Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Earlier in the previous thread... I think it was someone else. Anyway, its good to know that there is only v1.0x. It just got me i bit confused..Thanks--What is a whitelist exactly? Is there any other card you can install thats "within" the whitelist? Or am i getting this all wrong? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted February 5, 2013 Author Share Posted February 5, 2013 Well, there might be a v1.5 bios sometime in the future... I'm not familiar with Lenovo's naming scheme. Whitelist is the opposite of a blacklist In the case of this system it is a list of hardware IDs of wlan cards which are accepted by the bios, if you try to boot the system with a different card it will show an error message at POST and refuse to boot. This mod circumvents this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanka Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 Okey. Is there an actual list ? I mean is there other wlan card that we know are accepted?Sorry for all the questions, and thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted February 5, 2013 Author Share Posted February 5, 2013 Yeah there is, but it shouldn't matter since the check is now removed. All cards should work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kareldegrote Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 @ svl7, I followed your guide and everything went smooth. I also installed a dual band WLAN card which works just fine. Thanx for your work! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maxmed-a80 Posted February 6, 2013 Share Posted February 6, 2013 hello... I try to disperse the lenovo Y 500 GT650 SLI, but clock don't rise. how to correct it? thanks in advance... I am sorry for transfer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n1smo Posted February 7, 2013 Share Posted February 7, 2013 Just flashed to the unlocked bios. Great instructions, everything went smoothly. Thanks svl7!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arju Posted February 9, 2013 Share Posted February 9, 2013 Sir, kindly ask if this will work for v1.04 bios if I flash on top with v1.05 mod bios. TQ sirattached bios backup for reference.Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2LENOVO-6BCN32WW(V1.04).zip 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightrefracted Posted February 13, 2013 Share Posted February 13, 2013 Has anyone tried using the Intel Ultimate N 633ANHMW with the Y500? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanka Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 Great job svl7! Got my laptop yesterday and installed the modified bios. No problems and i have never done anything like it before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kareldegrote Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 Has anyone tried using the Intel Ultimate N 633ANHMW with the Y500?No, but it should work because the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 is a commonly used card. If you want to use 3 instead of 2 connections you should buy an extra antenna. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arju Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 anyone with bios 6BCN32WW v1.04 flash with mod bios v1.05? working?thks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightrefracted Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 No, but it should work because the Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 is a commonly used card. If you want to use 3 instead of 2 connections you should buy an extra antenna.Thanks. I didn't realize replacing the adapter was going to be such an involved task. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kareldegrote Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 Thanks. I didn't realize replacing the adapter was going to be such an involved task.It isn't you can also use two connections, or buy the Intel Centrino 6235. I assume you want 5GHz next to the 2,4GHz?I have a Broadcom dual band card with Bluetooth installed on my Y500. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightrefracted Posted February 14, 2013 Share Posted February 14, 2013 It isn't you can also use two connections, or buy the Intel Centrino 6235. I assume you want 5GHz next to the 2,4GHz?I have a Broadcom dual band card with Bluetooth installed on my Y500.Yeah, I want dual band. I frequently move large amounts of data to/from a desktop and I want max throughput. I have no need for Bluetooth, so the lack of it on the 6300 isn't a problem. I'm just not sure if I'm up to the task of installing a third antenna inside the display and whether it's worth the trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikevromen Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 Im hoping this can fix my touchpad isseu Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted February 15, 2013 Author Share Posted February 15, 2013 The touchpad stuff is (in case it's software related) most likely in the EC. This method will only flash the bios, and as described in my guide, it's not necessarily a good idea to flash a modified which is a different version than your current bios, at least not when flashing this way. The EC isn't included and this might cause serious issues.For going to a newer bios version I highly recommend waiting for an official bios update from Lenovo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tetrazombie Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Hi,Can this method be used for IdeaPad Y400 as well? Thanks.Updated: My Y400 has bios version v1.05 so I use the v1.05 file in the post to mod the bios. The modded bios works like a charm. I can now use Wifi Link 5100 AGN for the 5Ghz band. For those who are skeptical to try because your laptop is Y400 instead of Y500, just go ahead and follow the instruction of svl7 in this thread.Good luck to all and thank you again svl7 for this great tool/instruction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hygi Posted February 19, 2013 Share Posted February 19, 2013 Hi,Why not unlock Intel HD ???In M18x r2 it is possible, Optimus - IGPU switch to GPU SLI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted February 19, 2013 Author Share Posted February 19, 2013 This has been discussed, it's due to the motherboard design, leaving out the ability to use only the iGPU respectively only the dedicated GPU needs a more sophisticated mobo design, i.e. more expensive. Lenovo didn't put that ability in the Y500. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
startear Posted February 24, 2013 Share Posted February 24, 2013 Hi svl7, just wanted to thank you for wirting this tutorial and helping out the community~Any idea on how to bypass the Error 104: The 2 SPI flash devices do not have compatible command sets? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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