Can I Fix These Broken Lenovo Mini PCs?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 พ.ค. 2024
- This probably wasn't smart.
#minipc #pcrepair #techrepair
I FORGOT TO MENTION that the ch341a programmer I used has a flwa in that it doesn't work correctly when not using the 1.8v adapter. When it's supposed to have 3.3v on the data pins, it actually has 5v which could cause issues when working with 3.3v chips. There is a mod, or you can buy version 1.6 which is built properly.
This @Adamant_IT video explains it much better than I could.
► • CH341a v1.6 Review, No...
ch341a I'm using (has issues when using 3.3V but can be modded; works fine on 1.8v)
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:24 What's Going On???
1:12 Testing System 1
3:00 Testing System 2
3:51 Testing System 3
4:30 Disassembling System 3
7:40 Testing RAM
9:24 Interesting
13:38 Diagnosing System 3
15:45 Disassembling System 2
16:40 Trying RAM
18:51 Disassembling System 1
19:20 Trying RAM
20:35 Status of all RAM
21:34 Swapping CPU 1 into Sys 3
28:50 CPU 3 into Sys 1
32:00 Recap after some work off camera
33:44 What could it be?
34:27 NOT THE END
34:50 "I did some messing around"
36:40 Flashing System 1 as well
37:14 The Results - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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UPDATE/FAQ/RESPONDING TO A LOT OF COMMENTS:
I've had a lot of comments recently and have been a bit busy, so I'm sort of responding to a lot of them here. First of all, thanks for all the incredible feedback and advice! I've learned a lot just from this video and appreciate all of you sharing your years of experience and knowledge. There are a few things I'd like to either answer, provide some more clarity, and/or update you guys on so here it goes:
- I learned after the fact that flashing the BIOS directly from one mobo to another can be sketchy since OEMs put serials and other info on the UEFI. I guess it's common to edit this in UEFITool or something similar before flashing. Fortunately, I was able to boot into windows on these and use Lenovo's flash tool to not only update the BIOS but also insert the correct serial number. I'm not sure if there are any other issues, but so far I haven't come across anything. One is running debian and the other two are running windows just fine.
- I'm aware that the BIOS chip could be faulty or susceptible to failing again on these. I plan to keep two currently and will only sell the one that had an issue with the RAM module. If I have issues with the UEFI corrupting again with either of the others, I'll look into replacing the IC.
- I tested the faulty DDR4 module after substantial cleaning to no avail. I might try it in a different system but have no reason to belive it isn't faulty.
- It was silly to jump to the CPU as fast as I did, but looking back, its clear to me that I was nervous about losing too much money on the deal and I was hoping to at least confirm that I had 3 CPUs and some RAM I could sell haha. It would've been much smarter to clear CMOS/remove and replace the CMOS battery before doing that. Speaking of which, I wasn't super clear in the video but I replaced all the CMOS batteries of camera giving both non working machines a good amount of time before putting the new one in.
- Some people pointed out that I should only change one variable between boots, and this is a good idea when trying to pin down the exact problem. I partly didn't always do that for the same reason as mentioned above; I was hoping to just get a POST to hopefully feel better about buying three dead PCs. Also, if I can get a POST, I can always go back and start adding those same variables to see what was causing the issue, granted that can sometimes not work out and you'll get a POST after resetting something only for it to fail again down the road. So, thats fair criticism, but things are also different when filming a video haha.
- Also, I guess I touch my face too much..? 🤔
At this point I'm really just typing my thoughts so feel free to stop reading, but having to explain all of the above is sort of the reason that I get a lot of the somments I do, which don't get me wrong, I love reading the comments and learning from them. However, just realize that for the sake of a video, it's impossible to address every single little thing. Even in a longer format like this. I don't say that to discourage comments. But I do hope that maybe this encourages you to be a bit more positive and open minded when dropping comments on your favorite creators' videos. Just because they or I like waffles doesn't mean that we hate pancakes (or ventoy). Okay I'm done. Thanks for watching this video and reading this mess.
Stay curious 👍
Ignore hate, take in the constructive comments, keep learning!
You probably doesn't have time to answer all comments, but reading could be possible.
And as you noticed, some people are brittle like a snowflake in hell, so don't bother with hatets, even if it could be hard to do. You really can't please everyone.
Try to extract the good information and ignore the rest.
And your video set up is good enough that you don't need to make excuses about it.
As a musician, I tell you what I have learned from other musicians. Don't ever tell your audience about misses you make, that you could do better, when they tell you are good, or at least not say you did bad. Because you then can take a good experience from them.
Just suck that good vibes up and put that into next video.
If you get comments about it not being as good as as it can, just comment if it is constructive, and THEN make the excuses/explain why. Not before.
Yes, I did not got any bad experience from your videos, when it comes to the production.
About the Repair, good that you managed to fix them, I know I would, as I would reprogram the BIOS/UEFI Memory.
can you tell me how you identified the Bios chip.. i have the same unit.. not working same issue.. i bough a programmer to try this but not sure how to locate the chip
@@bishoydoozy2133 sorry for the delay. YOu can hopefully find it by looking at the clip that shows the clamp towards the end of the video. I believe it's underneath the cpu fan. It's not the one that's under/near the nvme slot
Quick note for a little advice and encouragement.
1. Great video, it's very interesting to see some of this content, and I am sure inspires a lot of people to have a go themselves.
2. If you make mistakes, own them, and share them. It is very helpful to people if you share your mistakes too. Seeing someone do something perfectly in an edited video may dishearten other people if they don't find things as easy as they see you do it.
3. Log your steps. Either on a piece of paper or a word doc. Not just so you know where you are up to, but also so you can see your steps the next time you attempt something like this and you can see what went right or wrong, and improve on things perhaps.
4. When messing with things like RAM and slots, set up a matrix and do all of the different combos to see what you have. You may miss a step and move on to something different without completely eliminating an aspect as a defect.
5. Get a anti-static wrist band, not sure how effective they are, but for a few £/$ it can't hurt. Don't work on a PC with the power in, just on the off chance.
6. Check there is a CPU present, lol, I have actually seen it that someone is going nuts over why a PC won't POST, and there is no actual CPU in the comp :)))
7. Ignore any negatives that someone puts in comments etc, YOU DO YOU, enjoy what you do and keep up the great content.
Retired electrical engineer / computers just a long time hobby. My experience is to suspect mechanical failures before worrying about failed silicon. Surplus computers get slung around a lot and the memory board mountings aren't made to handle violent accelerations. So your instinct to open it up and unplug and plug things is a good one.
That said the next thing I worry about is power supply failures - some regulator component allowing 3.3v or 1.8v to go way too high which damages everything it's attached to. For this reason very early in troubleshooting I'd check the power supply rails with a multimeter. That keeps you from plugging damaged components into a good system board or plugging a good RAM, for instance, into a system with a 3.3v rail running at 8 or 10 or 19 volts!
A fascinating video which I enjoyed very much - happy hunting!
Yes, a mechanical 'thump', say from dropping, can dislodge other internals which can cause a no-boot. Always good practice to check that stuff is seated properly.
Totaly agree with you, also a retired hardware/software engeneer
As bit warning, these systems have now exact same serial number, UUID and OA3 Windows 10 key. But that can be fixed by moving serial-regions for broken BIOS image to working one with UEFITool.
Also another warning for future repair videos: when testing CPUs from other systems: newer Lenovo business PCs, like Lenovo M75q Tiny Gen2, can vendor/PSB lock your AMD CPU.
Thanks for the heads up!
that's one thing I hate about new bios/uefi. you can't just dumb flash a file from the manufacturers website anymore, it has to be a "smart" operation.
recently fixed an am2 board from the dumpster room with bad bios, download latest from asrock, flash and bam, booting again. miss those times eh..
and yeah, as soon as he said to try swap cpu's around and mentioned his wife/gf's I was like oh no no hold up!
@@GizmoTheGreen Haha yeah, wouldn't have been the first time I messed her stuff up 😂
I beleve only the pro chips can be hw locked.
Don't quote me on that though.
They will also have the same mac address. Would probably cause network issues if you connect 2 to the same network.
You can change mac inside windows for ethernet so that is a simple solution.
I do not know how the lenovo bios is structured and if UEFI Tool will work but definitely worth an try.
On that "bad" DIMM. One of the things I have found in experiece is that sometimes, the pins get a layer of oxidation. To fix this, you can use a touch of rubbing alcohol and a cleaning wipe to renew the contacts, or some electronics cleaner, or use a good pencil erasers on those contacts. The color change should be apparent.
Caig labs Deoxit is a superb formulation for removing resist from connections
Future tip, if you are just testing for post you don't absolutely need to put thermal paste and cooler back on.
Athlon XP has entered the chat.
Intel xenon servers don’t post without cpu and cpu fan.
@@TheJonchihuahua Oh yes they do ! I do it frequently. The CPU has NO WAY of telling if the cooler and fan are preset. An alternative if you have one that's 'safer' is to stick on something like a spare chipset cooler (no fan or mounting clip) with a dab of h/s paste. It'll 'absorb' a bit of hear for a minute or so. A finger on the heat spreader will tell if it's getting too warm.
@@TheJonchihuahua He wasn't saying without the *CPU* !
Pentium 4 HT Has entered the chat
I'm only to the first fix so far, but I'd warn that when troubleshooting, you should always try to make only one change at once. For instance, if you're removing the wi-fi card, immediately try booting again. When you change the RAM, put a different stick in the SAME slot.
Love the video, and great effort. Keep at it!
We use this same theory of operation in maintenance of retail fuel dispensers. Always try to keep the changes one at at time, especially on those stubborn issues that are hard to pin down. This is definitely solid advice.
Didn't expect to see a full size AM4 CPU honestly haha, great video man!
Yeah that was a bit refreshing considering all of the embedded platforms I’ve been looking at recently lol
Those are like Intel T series chips. Same size but less TDP (and performance).
the fog is coming
they toast and burn really easy in these models.
Wow! Experienced technician, here… NICE WORK! I’m super proud of you for sticking with it and getting this done. How cool a feeling is that?
Such a good feeling haha. Thanks!
Just finished watching, amazing video as always! Love that you kept us along for the whole troubleshooting process, didn't expect that final outcome!
Love the channel, used your videos for my own home media server and samba share : ) Keep up the good work!
Thanks! And me neither honestly. I started sweating a bit after none of them showed any signs of life 😂
And that’s awesome! Hope it’s working well for you.
I really enjoy doing this too. You are very calm and thorough in your troubleshooting. Gave me some ideas to try in my non-booting Lenovo mini PC, thanks!
I'm a Systems Administrator at my current job. Google and luck are a huge part of the job. Good work finding the RAM issue with little to no previous troubleshooting experience!
I like your style. You're upfront about what you can do and what you can't do. I'm in the same boat myself; I'm trying to learn more about electronics because my job is starting to require it, however my formal training is in software/programming.
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. I try to be as upfront as possible
And best of luck with your hardware endeavors!
Hey hardware Haven! Nice video, I like the PC's because how easy they are to dismantle too! I have not watching ur videos because of school, and the ones Ive watched, I forgot to comment or Im just lazy. I can see you are loving to create content! Your videos are much better than the ones that you were a small TH-camr. By the way, you are growing fast! In the previous, previous previous video, I swear I saw you were at 50k and now you are at 70k!! I can't wait for your reaction to hit 100k subs!!!
I love trying to fix videos! All your content is great, keep it up!
Finding an entry-level diagnostic technician who can guide me through logical diagnostic steps is beneficial. Thanks!
12:20 yes these are the standard business-oriented, non-overclocking BIOSes typically seen in these kind of machines. I have one of these ThinkCentre mini PCs from several generations back and the outside, inside and BIOS look exactly the same. My Lenovo Legion laptop also has a similarly spartan advanced mode BIOS. I've been using my own ThinkCentre as a DNS server and docker host because they're so low-power I don't feel bad leaving it on 24/7.
these bioses were present before standardized bioses , i remember similar layouts on my single core cpus to celeron dual (2004 before) pretty sure licensing or using this one cuts costs
The indirect lighting is better. It actually has a cinematic mood. Nice!
Great job, good video. From now on, when confronted with a machine that won't post I'll check the BIOS first before moving to a teardown.
From now on I'm using coffee filters for paste stuff... As soon as you mentioned them, the light bulb went off and I knew immediately your reasoning. Brilliant
For those of you who don't speak AMD, GE means 35W. Now I'm wondering if these machines can get something like Ryzen 4600ge using a custom bios. And how good of a Batocera media PC these little machines can be. Great find, nice fix.
I'm not sure if you intend on doing more repairs like this in the future but I think thermal pads would be a good investment at least for troubleshooting. No mess or clean up and the pads are reusable.
Usually not worth the trouble. As long as you have a price of chunk of copper or aluminum to place on top, you are in the clear to handle the initial boot test, the initial heat load is what needs to be wicked away. Even Derbauer uses this method just to check for the post. I usually do this when I get a CPU/Socket combo that seems to be having seating issues. I also do it when doing CPU socket pin repair, sometimes you have to seat and unseat the CPU to check if you got the pins to just the right spot.
Even besides troubleshooting, I always go for thermal pads. Set it and forget it. No need to renew them ever again :)
@Arnie's Tech Thermal pads degrade just as thermal paste does over long periods of time and heat cycles. I personally have been testing carbon pads out, seems promising for an AIO I keep at the ready on my bench for temp setups. I don't even clip it on, I just lay a bag of lean on it to weigh it down.
Good video i'm glad you where able to get all three of the mini pcs up and working :) Thanks for sharing with us!💖👍😎JP
These large OEM machines often have a reset feature for the system management chip (it can crash and freeze sometimes), usually just holding the power button down for 60 seconds when connected to power will get it going if the firmware will not get to the screen init stage.
Adding to this, vurtually all modern systems have a "last ditch" bios recovery method usually involving a small USB stick with a file names bios.sys (super.rom on supermicro, a BIOS recovery ISO for Lenovo (which may or may not work from USB, apparently needs to be on CDrom on some units (with the CDrom plutgged into a specific port)
These models have lots of threads about bios update failures and the hoops which need to be jumped through to recover. Lenovo appear to have dropped the ball quite badly
Fascinating video. VERY informational and educational. Thanks for making it. 👍👍
@12:12 because you loaded default values. The default is Enabled. Secure boot works with certificates and checksums before the operation system it does it's wizardly things and either loads the OS when the check is complete or refuses to boot an OS. Resetting to Set-up mode clears all checksums and certs that were remembered. You should also enter in to this option so it shows load default keys (or something along the lines of that). You are then set to go. The error you got on booting to the OS was related to the secure boot settings.
I really enjoyed the video!
It was interesting to see the whole process
Glad you enjoyed it! A bit of a long burn, but I like those types of videos haha
@@HardwareHaven it's a mini adventure and you can never predict what will happen!
Haha yeah that’s a good way of putting it
How is this comment 5 days old when this was posted hours ago?
@@StraightToThePoint217 Patreon Early Access :)
Keep track of the troubleshooting on three slips of paper, one for each system.
Each sheet has a table to track which components are working or not.
Nice work, I would like to see you using this systems to create some sort of a cluster like a Proxmox cluster
These video blogs are a good contribution to your channel. I have one of these with a 2200GE. So far using it for BOINC but I'd like to find more projects for it.
Oh that’s super cool. And thanks!
@@HardwareHaven Just finished the video. A few thoughts about my experience. I received two of these from eBay and neither posted upon arrival.
1) These systems (specifically M715Q AMD) are super sensitive about their boot configuration (secure boot, original CPU and RAM etc.). Both of my M715Q's behaved strangely around CPU swaps. I can use the 2200GE in other systems but it will not boot with a 2400GE from a separate system. I've sort of given up on a CPU upgrade and chocked it up to OEM shenanigans.
2) It's possible the previous owner swapped RAM or CPU config. It looked like your systems had different RAM configs upon arrival. From the previous owner's perspective, after the change in question they never booted again and they didn't have the energy or time to troubleshoot.
3) One of my two systems also had a single dead DIMM upon arrival but worked fine with a new set of 2666 SODIMMs. Not sure if there's a connection with your dead SODIMM but we had that experience in common.
4) CMOS reset with the jumper never worked for me. I manually removed the batteries and let the systems sit for 1-2 hours (longer than necessary but just to be safe).
5)I suspected corrupted BIOS too. Maybe a botched enterprise BIOS update? Glad you were able to go down that rabbit hole and come out the other side!
@@jonathanmarshall3974 Thanks for sharing your experience and advice!
Well done. Very enjoyable video. I have one of those that I bought used on ebay. I used it as a backup while I rebuilt my main system. Not a bad little computer. The graphics were not amazing, but that's not what they're built for.
Hello Hello From Canada!!! Great job doing the A#1 trouble shooting. Keep up the awesome content and I think your lighting, sound and camera angles were just super for your channel's level. I can't wait to see what you do next. 🤘😁👍
Thanks! That means a ton
Great job! I learned lots watching. Thanks for sharing
the best way too clear cmos is too pull the battery, leave for 2 mins and then retest. also test battery voltage in circuit, should be above 3.1 volts in circuit. have never used the jumpers dont trust them, an old tech told me once just pull the battery. nice video, well presented
This was a fun video!! And I see you've got that great IFixit toolkit!! Hoping to get my server rebuild video up next week!!
Can't wait!
Really nice video and didn't expect for the 2 off them to have corrupted BIOS. This BIOS Flasher is a nice tool. I'll get one too
A little luck, a lotta work swapping stuff around, and 1-2 bad RAM chips later...you have all three pc's working! Enjoyed watching this little journey.
Nice video there. I very recently bought a M900 Tiny with i5-6500T and was using it for a NAS because the Tiny series are tiny so it will save me some precious desktop space, after I watched your videos about the home NAS. I have an old Lenovo laptop and I was upgrading the Wifi card for it, and Lenovo's part-compatibility check was tight to say at least; they are even worse for locking CPUs now. You have a great voice btw!
Desks have under sides too, a suspended shelf maybe !
I am certified reseller . One big issue they had with those models. Is the hybrid drives in it would fail due to heat. Replace with ssd and they are fine. Also, Lenovo uses pcie white list. So to replace wireless card it has to be on the list. You can tell if it is stock tam from Lenovo look for FID#.
There are a number of modified bioses available with the whitelist removed (and a couple of crowdsourced bios mod sites which will attempt to do it if you have the bios image)
I had to do that to get 5GHz/802.11ac support on my T62i laptop
It's irritating, to say the least
Thats pretty sweet! Am curious about that bios flash equipment you have. Looks quite cool!
Nice work. I would have never considered the BIOS as the problem. Excellent fix.
Thanks Johnny!
What a great video! I have a Lenovo tiny p320 that I'm going to have to swap the ram and ssd into from an older one. Excellent "how-to"
Wait what??? I was looking for one of this and throw my ventoy with pfsense and use it as a router!!! Just in time man, keep up the good content!
Haha nice!
Nice video as always :)
And yes, you can absolutely yank an AM4 CPU out of the socket when you pull on the heatsink.
WOAH! Appreciate the comment from such a legend! And thanks for the info as well haha
As a follow-up warning ; you can "Yank" any PGA based Cpu out of it's socket. That happened to me with my AM3+ that I was running before I initially switched from AM3+ to AM4 and that's a part of why I had to switch.
i've done it to just about all flavors of pga cpus you care to name with shorter pins. sometimes the cooler mounting just doesn't give you the choice, sometimes you can rotate a bit to break the connection first.
once they moved away from the pin length that was on socket 7, and to some degree socket a and 370 (due to the small die size, mostly), it became ridiculously easy to rip the cpus out once the thermal paste had effectively transitioned to an adhesive.
thankfully, i haven't had pin failure from any of these yanks, but its still worrying when dealing with the cases that don't allow you to twist it to break it free.
que sera sera.
Since they are all working you could always update the BIOS to the latest version then you can be certain that there are no faults associated with the BIOS program as well... Great work, you are officially no longer a LARPer. Btw the humility seems to be a big help when dealing with these things. The lower your expectations the less frustration will be involved because frustration leads to failure and overlooking possible points of failure, not to mention causing failures...
Yep! That's what I did, and the Lenovo flashing tool even allowed me to correct the serial no which was duplicated in the reprogramming. And thanks!
Love this kind of content, keep it up!
Thanks, will do!
Excellent job on Failure Analysis. 👍👍👍👍
I have 8-10 Lenovo m93p tiny PC's, and I've noticed that depending on the BIOS version that is installed some won't work with a Display Port 1.4 cable, but will with a Display Port 1.2 cable. Something you could try (in future) to see if it's just you need a Display Port 1.2 cable. The Bios upgrade you did likely has a high enough version to support the Display Port 1.4 cable which is more than likely what you have.
No need for thermal paste when checking if a CPU posts, you can hold down the heatsink without screws or a fan. It can speed up the process considerably.
For sure. I even was thinking that while editing haha. That crusty paste just made me feel bad I think lol
Hey great video I just got a Lenovo from PC's for People for $50, refurbished , haven't worked on computers for years , found your video ! Way to go with the bios cloning ! I need a dedicated video editing Station so giving the Lenovo a shot once I order parts to Upgrade it!
I just stumbled on your video great work! I was thinking RAM and data retention issues with the BIOS chip too. Such cute little computers, would make great little studio PCs running something like Reaper or even Cubase 👍
Hey I just discovered your comment about using Reaper or Cubase on them. I aim to do this in my homelab/studio in efforts to reduce power consumption and distribution of work. What I envision is to use multiple mini PCs in place of my Gaming PC workstation. Reaper if provisioned identically, can run REAmote over the LAN and be distributed.
As an IT guy, you did pretty darn well for someone claiming to not be an IT guy….kudos! I wonder if the bios chips suffered from bit rot from sitting somewhere in storage too long without power.🤔
Great video. thanks for the extra part
@10:23 I work with these machines on a daily base. It is correct that you can boot the PC with ALT+P... because these machines are designed to put in a Thinkcenter monitor (that snugly fits the tiny desktop on the back of an LCD screen). The connector at the back of the monitor has a Display link port, a power plug and a USB plug that gets pushed into the desktop. You can then use ALT+P to boot the machine.... Although most of the time this still does not work :P
Great job. Like this repair video :)
You obviously know more about computers than you thought you did. Excellent job!
These lenovo mini pcs look so cute! Congrats for 70k subs too
I wonder if you could get an up to date BIOS (build date showing 2018) and test newer G ryzen cpus in it. Since you have bios chip reader you could also try injecting the microcode for newer cpus but not sure how well that works with ryzen.
I have the m910q which has 6/7th gen intel cpu in it but I am planning to flash 8/9th gen support to it then install a laptop 1440 Xeon with a socket adapter.
Could anyone tell me where I can find one of those "stair-style" memory module slots like the ones from those Lenovo Mini PCs featured in the video?
My Acer Aspire 5 laptop came with only one memory slot module, but there are solder pads for another one - thing is, they don't face away from each other, but the way it's designed, the memory slots module would be just the same as the one in the video (one on top of another).
Absolutely beautiful. Love these Lenovo Mini PCs. And what I do love even more is when people give things a second life, instead of tossing them into the trash bin! 💪🙏
It is against federal law in the USA to throw any kind of electronics in to the garbage. They should be turned in to a certified electronics recycler; some townships do have programs until someone starts abusing the system and they get sick and tired of dealing with the crap... Then they stop them solid with no chance of reopening them. All the same if a person is caught throwing electronic components into the trash it can be some serious fines and big not worth the hassle.
Great video as always!
My boyfriend has one of these little NUCs for work and I've always been curious about what's inside of it. I don't know if this video has sated my curiosity or increased it.
Haha hopefully increased it. GO OPEN IT UP!
Great video. I just bought one of these off of eBay for $100 with a Ryzen 5 2400GE. Listing said it's working, but I can't get it to POST. No video output, and two short beeps that repeat ad infinitum. I tried swapping ram sticks around, using good ram sticks, making a bootable USB with the bios files from Lenovo (which a few posts on Lenovo forums indicate can sometimes work). I'm assuming it's a bios issue, so I just bought the kit in your video. Fingers crossed it'll work; otherwise it's back to the eBay seller.
I'd also love to know if there's a way to get later gen Ryzens on work in these, like a 4600GE.
Just got a start with saying that this was a great video, I love seing people taking care of "broken" hardware and fix it. But I have a tip for you, when just testing CPUs dont even bother with thermal paste. Aslong as you dont run any heavy stuff and just try to boot the pressure of the cooler is more then enough to keep the temps under control. At work the first thing we do at the test stations is to wipe off any preapplied thermal paste on coolers since it just takes a lot of time to clean and makes a mess when swaping stuff often
Thanks for the advice! I get nervous on camera and often doubt myself on stuff like this, but I've had a couple people now say its fine. Appreciate it
Yeah thats understandable. I reacted the same way the first time I did it but after seeing temps of around 35-40c without thermal paste I started to see the advantage
I have one I bought on eBay for $85.00 and I had to add an SSD I choose a Kingston 500GB Drive and the power adapter. It was over $100.00 to get it up and running. I'm using it now to watch your video. It's a Lenovo M92 ThinkCentre that was used in an office I installed Windows 10 Pro and it just works. I also messed with some Linux distros too because I like testing them out. I'm a Slot Tech who worked in a casino. I've messed with the computers since Windows for Workgroups and DOS 6.2 on my old Packard Bell Computer from 1998-99 somewhere around there. Liked your video and you did a good job troubleshooting and getting them to work. Kudos to you.
Thanks Richard! And that's awesome. I just picked up an older desktop from way before my time with computers, and it's a lot of fun and quite a challenge to just understand what all is going on haha
I love those mini PCs, I hope they bring those to me for repair or maintenance.
Wow. Very satisfying seeing this workout. Can explain more this BIOS tool?
Checkout adamant IT honestly. He has some good videos covering it. Just search adamant IT and ch341a
Lenovo still publishes assembly / disassembly, and parts manuals in PDF. For Free too. Great video!
I had an HP SFF core2 machine get picky about ram once. It would only boot on one stick and either stick worked fine as did both slots. Yet it would randomly stop working with either one RAM stick or another, same with RAM slots. Sometimes it would not detect RAM at all.
The problem had no consistency and kept driving me nuts so i put it away. Then after some time i tried booting it up again with all ram installed and it worked fine ever since.
I have it now in my garage as a media PC for music and datasheets and it has no problem starting up and works just fine.
I am very familiar with these lenovo mini pcs in fact im typing from a M70q right now. I wish i seen this video sooner i would have told you from the get go it was not a bad motherboard. When motherboards in these systems die you get no power at all and the tell tale sign is when you plug the power cord in the power light will flash blue 3 times and quit.
Hardware Haven: "I'm not a computer repair guy"
- Repairs computers.
This was a great video for sure. An idea for the 3 PCs you now have could be a little cluster... dunno, just a thought
Glad that you made it, interesting as always to see what you did. I just notice because of the Binary copy of worked well BIOS other system having same Serial Number, UUID, and OS License if I'm not wrong, is there a way to fixing those value?
I'm probably going to use Lenovo's BIOS reflashing software to hopefully fix any of those issues now that I can boot into windows. We'll see!
Hi, I really liked your video. How much did you charge for that repair?
Great result. Job well done. 🙂
you have a pretty decent idea of what it takes to do this for other people . Hobbies don't always need to have a return though. , sometimes the freedom is what keeps it fun. Ch341a is such a massive pain in the ass , BIOS chips are so slippery . I want to make a an 8 pronged set of needles that rest on the chips with a small adjustable stand. Full size chips could use 2866/3000 mhz ram too i believe.
Sounds like quite a project haha
work well done, it came with great results, and the flashing tool save the day.😀
One thing when you test systems is consistency and not assume stuff.. So for example, after finding out RAM on first, when doing the second, you skipped clean POST testing, so technically you could then have fried your "known good" RAM in the second machine.. Always test from minimal system and be aware anything you put into an unknown machine then becomes "tainted" until you have retested them. Newer system can even blows hardware fuses in cpus to machine lock them....
About 2 years ago I got the 715q came with 6th gen I3 ,16gb ram ,1tb Hd ,128gb Nmv windows 10 ,no WiFi Bluetooth (I will get)
With power brick etcI have added 128gb external SS0 Linux mint,I use it to watch online stuff.
Think I paid a
Less than £90
Been looking at the cd/dvd tray burner all in one,£25 online,except you have to upgrade the power brick,I think to 90 or 120 watts.
I love it even can go up to I7 ,6th gen, 64gb ram
Awsome,quite,cheap done 2 bios upgrades,fan can be set to come on when hits certain temp,connected to my plasma. In living room.
That's super awesome you flashed the bios, & it worked! When these little pc's break though...You have to wonder how the bios was corrupted in the 1st place right? Because you wouldn't want it to happen again in the future
I've heard some people mention that these often have this issue because of the environment they're deployed in, in which they're often prone to "hard" power cycling. Not sure if that's the case, but I think a couple of technicians in the comments said similar things.
Did you try using an HDMI cable? If you fix them, what do you plan on doing with them? Also, is there a one-key factory reset button? Thank you 🤓 & I subbed
Nice outcome man.
did you try to clear cmos while it was still plugged in?
Nice job. Good idea to buy three almost identical system. Flashing working BIOS could be tedious task. Taking one from another similar board is very good idea especially if you do not need windows key which is often embedded into BIOS.
AMI BIOS is what Lenovo uses, I love modding nvme boot on the m93p SFF. Enter key is for the menu with all the options.. at least it should be (it is on all the SFFs I’ve had)
I'd suggest using a version of Puppy linux to initially run the system. It runs straight from a USB (no install required) and you can check the hard drive to se if there's an OS on it.
Really enjoy your videos man! An observation from me, you felt the need to qualify that you weren’t an expert on repair or content making a few times. Maybe i’m thinking about it too much and I know it’s probably just filler or to throw a quick acknowledgment of things people would nitpick in the comments, but don’t put yourself down so much! if you feel the need to acknowledge or point those things out I recommend doing it all no more than once at the end of the video, or in a pinned comment. That way the flow of the video isn’t interrupted and you aren’t putting yourself down. a lot of people do it subconsciously but they say if you say something yourself about yourself enough, you start to think it’s true. Which isnt the case at all, your content and knowledge are impressive and appreciated
Yeah I’m trying to find a good balance of confidence but also being clear that not everything I’m doing is a tutorial or expert opinion. People get dicey in the comments haha. Appreciate the input!
Are you missing hard drives or do these systems have on board msata ssd's. If not, isn't that more expense times 3 in added cost.
Great video as always dude just wondering what monitor arm do you use?
Something from amazon haha
5:00 I just realized we got the same screwdriver set from Kaufland, except mine is with red inlays :D
well done ( 1 mans trash is another mans treasure with profite ) persistence paid off and patience. and you have a new subscriber ;)
Got a Lenovo Thinkpad M700 tiny pc and i was doing a driver update through the Lenovo Vantage program
Bios Flash update was amongst the drivers that needed an update so the tiny pic shutr down and i waited like 5 hours and nothing happened
did a restart on it and now the tiny pc never comes back on tried cmos battery & cmos jumper trick that did nothing
the fan comes on and you can hear a little bit from the tiny pc but it won't boot or post anything
would that have to do with getting the ch341a programmer in order to fix it because i think it's Bricked asf xD
The BIOS could be different between them, allowing some cpus to post but not others, you can probably find documentation somewhere about the bios versions and cpu
Time for the Perfect Amount of Thermal Paste(tm)! Well done with the BIOS reflash too; it's a bit dicey reflashing in place, but if it works, it works.
28:20 The CPU doesn't have to be dead, sometimes this also happens if a motherboard doesn't support the cpu right for example the BIOS needs an update on order to properly function with the CPU.
Hi! Good work! Amazing video! But, have you tried to clean the stick of ram that is not working?
Great idea! I think I tried that off camera actually to see if I could get it working before ordering a replacement.
eraser from a #2 clean pencil works great to clean edge conectors. has just enough abrasive to be useful
That's a nice score!
NeoProgramer will help me a lot as well. Does it auto detect type and manufacturer of bios chip that you try to read / write?
It attempts to and was accurate for me
PRO TIP Lenovo actually has great guides for replacing parts in their manual.
I refus USB pen image of a UEFI image to the SSD internally with a windows 11 build. Worked fine on the HP Stream systems and these ones
Hey great video. I have also a 710q model where I changed the Bios chip andrewrite a new Bios using the programmer. Now the PC it's starting but unfortunately I have no video output. Is there something that I missed? I was trying 2 or 3 different Bios also the one from Lenovo. Is there anything else that can be done?
if it is at all like a NUC I had one I changed the video output on in the BIOS. I don't know why. Of course then I did not get any video from the usual port. Luckily I had switched it to the Thunderbolt 4 (DisplayPort) and just had use a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter to get video so I can see what I am doing to go back in. Then I can fix it and not do that again. If I sold it as is it might appear to be not working if the HDMI on it was used but if you know what I did then you can fix it. The problem is it is difficult to know unless you have the right cables to try for troubleshooting that to see if that was it. I did go back to HDMI since the framerate was terrible on that USB C DisplayPort for some reason. It may have been my adapter but it was workable and helped me get it back to normal. Every computer is different and each one is likely to have its own problem. You may see bad CPUs or bad RAM instead. You may see one that shows no signs of life at all.
What is the music on your video for is it to confuse and disturb ?? well it worked
"I'm an amateur" - Has better quality and camera angles than a lot of "professional" You Tubers 🤣 Nice video man!