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 👍
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.
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.
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!
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.
@@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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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
@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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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
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
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.
@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.
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.
@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
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.
coffee filter... cool perk... haha... good work. I appreciated the bios flash idea! helpful! I think you came out okay on the deal. and now I see it is an older video. oh well... thanks anyway!
- Wrong method of memory diagnosis. You were only trying to insert DIMM 1 into Slot 1 and DIMM 2 into Slot 2, instead of trying each in Slot 1 (lower/first/underneath slot). - Always force POST/boot screen by booting without battery and no RAM, turning off at beep. Then adding one DIMM at a time into RAM Slot 1, checking for video. Then other DIMM into RAM Slot 1. Then insert new CMOS/BIOS/CR2032 Battery into its slot, and booting up. Then entering BIOS and Factory Resetting (without Network Boot!). Then optionally configure BIOS, saving and exiting, and safely turning off. Then connecting SSD (HDD extremely not recommended in general, and in such Form Factors). Then connecting USB OS drive, turning on, and booting from USB OS Drive. - If no video (after attempting said Battery/RAM diagnosis), try different video port, changing video mode on Display, or different video cable. Also try cleaning/air-blowing connector/port.
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 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
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!!!
It's great to see you fault-find to component level, especially in 2024. As a retired 74-year-old ex-Marine Radio Officer and Acorn Risc PC dealer, I appreciate your skills. International Music Services (Malta)
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!
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!
Part of my diagnostics before I go check the CPU is to clean seemingly bad DIMMs and clean seemingly bad RAM sockets. For DIMMs, simply rub on the contacts using a rubber pencil eraser. Some really thin grime can form on top of the contacts that will cause a bad connection. The eraser will fix that. For sockets, you can repeatedly connect and disconnect a DIMM and periodically clean the DIMM contacts. If is still doesnt work, a electronics contact cleaner spray would help. While wet with the cleaner, do the same connect-disconnect trick and try again. If it still doesnt work, plug the DIMM in and attempt to wiggle a bit in different ways, all while trying to boot in between. Worse comes to worse you have a bad CPU pin. I one caught this off an Intel LGA CPU where one if the pada was ever so slightly dirty (fingerprint? Thermal paste?). Checking the LGA pinout it was related to the bad slot. Cleaning that part fixed the RAM problem. I also had a problem also ince of the Intel CPU being too overtightened/depressed causing the ram slot to not work too. Another one that happened to me for intermittent boot failures is replacing the CMOS battery.
It was off camera, but I did try cleaning the bad stick or ram (tried IPS, eraser, and deoxit) but could never get a POST with it. And I replaced CMOS batteries in the video as well, just off camera. Appreciate the advice and info!
If you want to learn how to repair a Lenovo computer, just go to your local dealer and buy a new one. Almost guarantee it won't work. I've bought a couple, problems with PSUs, USB ports, SATA cables, SSD... I finally got one working properly, it took best part of a couple of months! Technical support was bloody awful.
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....
Lenovo ThinkCentre, and most other business grade PCs have a BIOS recovery procedure. Lenovo’s method is: Leave the clear CMOS jumper on the clear setting. Place the binary BIOS ROM file on the root of a CD. (Not a zip or exe, has to be only the ROM). Boot the machine with the CD inserted. Wait for the BIOS flash to complete. Power off and return jumper to normal mode. Blank screen doesn’t mean it’s flashing. You see the normal flash screen just as if doing it from Windows and it reboots into the flash utility. Should take less than 10s to kick off. You may need to reboot if you don’t get the CD in fast enough. Don’t wait 5 mins on the black screen thinking it’s doing something. Something isn’t right, double check your steps and try again. You’ll know when it’s flashing and working right. I’ve done a Lenovo Tiny by attaching a desktop CD drive to it. There might be a new way to do with USB. But I already had a CD made. So it was convenient at the time to use the CD.
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!
Loading BIOS defaults is always a good idea on unknown systems. As is clearing the CMOS, but don't press the power button if the power cable is still attached ! The idea with using the power button is to discharge any stored charge on the board which it won't do if the power cable is plugged in. Also, that antenna cable can be removed from the Wi-Fi adapter easily enough. It has 'slide on' tabs.
Good advice! I pressed the power button with it plugged in because that's the SOP provided by Lenovo for those, however I think I've finally just decided to both follow the manuals procedure as well as just removing the battery and discharging the caps to be sure lol.
Probably already got this comment somewhere, but we used these and similar models of Lenovo, HP, and the like for the insides of Kiosks that are used in correctional facilities. So, thousands of these things. All of us in the field had a steady 'refurb' workbench going, and about 90% of the no-boot issues (that weren't immediately just a bad stick of ram as you found) were indeed just corrupt CMOS or BIOS that had to be reflashed. Most of the time this is caused by being used in enclosed environments like kiosks, drawers, cabinetry, etc. and getting power cycled without propr shutdown. One of the consequences of remote support figuring out they can 'reset everything' by just hard power cycling (remotely via something called a netbooter) the PC and everything in the cabinet, rather than doing the troubleshooting they are supposed to. They're built like little tanks, but all that thermal wear and power shock really kills those BIOS chips. Plus they kind of set them up to get extra baked by where they placed them on many of those little boards. You did the perfect path honestly: Clear the CMOS for a quick and easy check, flash the BIOS if that doesn't work. 9 times out of 10, you get a PC back :)
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.
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.🤔
I work IT and our business has hundreds of these PCs deployed across the building. In my time working there, I've actually never dealt with one of these broken PCs. They're a breeze, and they ship WITH a Lenovo mouse and keyboard (they're alright) in simple packaging. It's often one of our company laptops, which, to Lenovo's credit, are SO easy to repair.
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.
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.
@Hardware Haven Oh, I forgot to mention that you should also replace the SPI chip. Sometimes its not bios itself, it's SPI chip corruption and after some time it may fail again, so it's a good prictice to just in case "upload" bios into new SPI chip, because those like SSDs/pendrives has r/w cycles and they fail when they reach that r/w cycle count...
@@opensourceecon Whatever... Generally speaking it may be corrupted bios chip itself, not firmware in it... I have seen already this kind of failure where motherboard still had problem with no posting, bios reflash solved the problem, after some time died again and finally bios chip repelacement solved the problem...
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
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
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.
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.
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!
If you do a lot of messing around with plugging mice+keyboards into things, Logitech have a dirt cheap combo mouse+keyboard with a single usb receiver that I LOVE for just plugging in and getting straight to business.
Yeah, I've seen a few people using those. I just hate the thought of my wireless bugging out and leading me on a wild goose chase haha. Maybe it's worth it with how much messing around I'm doing. Thanks!
@@HardwareHaven Oh THAT'S fair man! Mine has been rock solid on my Windows 10 machine and Ubuntu, and never had difficulty with it messing around in the bios either- but I see your point :)
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.
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.
@@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!
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.
Ryzen has a security feature to lock a CPU to a particular motherboard. Lenovo are guilty of using this feature. So that is possibly why CPU swapping didn't work. But it's worth trying those CPUs in a standard mobo to be sure.
Quick tip for trouble shooting older systems. change the CMOS battery. I've messed with systems even only a few years old that had a dead battery and wouldn't post.
I've had a cheap AA battery with good voltage not work. You can short them breifly with a DVM set to Amps and check further. Check those new coin cells. I think something like 0.3A is OK for coin cells,
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.
I have 3 Lenovo Tiny's, 1x m720q and 2x710q. One of the 710q's only boots with ram in slot 1, it will not boot with ram in slot 2 or in 1 and 2. Gives the same beep code as at 7:51
12:39 some bioses does use the on off type secure boot disabling and enabling while others use erase secure key to disable secureboot. I seen oem machines use simple one and the motherboard sepertaly from those same manufacturers use the complicated nobody understand why delete secure keys to disable secure boot
nice fix, probably just bit rot on the bios chip so re-flashing fixed it. Also, as you flashed all pcs with bios rom from that single pc check if they all have same serial/mac/id etc. from that first one as that may cause some problems.
Yeah I'm checking out flashing a new BIOS from lenovo and adding the correct serial, although I'm not entirely sure if I'm doing it correctly haha. Any video/tutorial recommendations?
@@HardwareHaven Adamant IT channel on YT has quite few videos about using programmers to flash bios, also of transplanting certain regions in bios etc.
Dell D6000 is a great troubleshooting tool - It works over USB3 and has its own little graphics card embeded. (So if you're unsure if the DP port might be broken you can use the D6000 to rule that out)
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. 🤘😁👍
Sometimes its simply the contacts. CRC electrical contact cleaner is your friend. I've saved so many computers and other electronic devices that were thought to be dead with that alone.
One issue could be that recently lenovo started bounding Cpus to motherboard, expecially with ryzen pros. Maybe they swapped them before selling and so hard refreshing the bios maybe restored them
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.
@12:22 not really... it's pretty default... the one BIOS gives more options then the other... or different options... but most of them are quite similar...they can also contain old and aged security measures... like the intrusion detection. there is just a switch on the front that detects that the case top has been removed. There is not much needed to go around that... just press the button :P and if you are unlucky the switch has been in the same position for soooo long that it keeps the button pressed or depressed.
When you copy the BIOS straight across like that you lose the Ethernet MAC and machine serial number. I hope you followed the rule of taking 2 backups of a chip before writing over it. If not you might be able to find the Lenovo provisioning thumb drive image and the MAC sticker on the system somewhere. If you wire them all into your router with the same MAC address be prepared for it to get weird. I am finding a lot of these Lenovo have BIOS issues. For Intel you can go through an "ME clean" process to fix once you pull the BIOS file off the chip.
I was able to just use Lenovo's flashing tool to update the BIOS and give it the correct serial no. As of now they are showing unique MAC addresses, so maybe that process fixed it?
I got a free M715Q from work. Exact same problem in that the CPU fan would spin but no video output at all. Reset CMOS and changed the battery. No change. Both RAM sticks work fine in my girlfriend's laptop so that's not the issue. Erased the bios and successfully loaded the latest one via the same CH341A programmer that you used in the video but that didn't work either. I don't have another AM4 system to test the CPU with but I doubt that's the problem. Nothing looks amiss with the motherboard. I may try to find an older bios to try but I really don't have a use for this PC. I just wanted to see if I could get it working and then pass it along to someone who could actually use it.
The first thing should have been to take the cover off and see if there is any memory in there, it will not post without memory. Amazon sells a short adapter cable to use a standard PSU
23:49 i seen am4 also do that the cpu stick to the back of the cooler even when the socket is perfectly locked. It is a design flaw prob we never have to deel with in the future thanks to am5 if finally lga and the locking mechanism is like intel.
@@HardwareHaven Turning off windows defender/security is a good idea before allowing a working windows PC to update its BIOS or third party hardware firmware. Or use Linux to update firmware. Nice to see Ventoy working for you!
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.
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
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
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!
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
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 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!
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
Finding an entry-level diagnostic technician who can guide me through logical diagnostic steps is beneficial. Thanks!
@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.
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
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.
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!
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
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
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
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
@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
The indirect lighting is better. It actually has a cinematic mood. Nice!
Nice work. I would have never considered the BIOS as the problem. Excellent fix.
Thanks Johnny!
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.
coffee filter... cool perk... haha...
good work. I appreciated the bios flash idea! helpful!
I think you came out okay on the deal.
and now I see it is an older video. oh well... thanks anyway!
- Wrong method of memory diagnosis. You were only trying to insert DIMM 1 into Slot 1 and DIMM 2 into Slot 2, instead of trying each in Slot 1 (lower/first/underneath slot).
- Always force POST/boot screen by booting without battery and no RAM, turning off at beep. Then adding one DIMM at a time into RAM Slot 1, checking for video. Then other DIMM into RAM Slot 1. Then insert new CMOS/BIOS/CR2032 Battery into its slot, and booting up. Then entering BIOS and Factory Resetting (without Network Boot!). Then optionally configure BIOS, saving and exiting, and safely turning off. Then connecting SSD (HDD extremely not recommended in general, and in such Form Factors). Then connecting USB OS drive, turning on, and booting from USB OS Drive.
- If no video (after attempting said Battery/RAM diagnosis), try different video port, changing video mode on Display, or different video cable. Also try cleaning/air-blowing connector/port.
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!
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 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
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!!!
It's great to see you fault-find to component level, especially in 2024. As a retired 74-year-old ex-Marine Radio Officer and Acorn Risc PC dealer, I appreciate your skills. International Music Services (Malta)
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'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!
Part of my diagnostics before I go check the CPU is to clean seemingly bad DIMMs and clean seemingly bad RAM sockets.
For DIMMs, simply rub on the contacts using a rubber pencil eraser. Some really thin grime can form on top of the contacts that will cause a bad connection. The eraser will fix that.
For sockets, you can repeatedly connect and disconnect a DIMM and periodically clean the DIMM contacts. If is still doesnt work, a electronics contact cleaner spray would help. While wet with the cleaner, do the same connect-disconnect trick and try again. If it still doesnt work, plug the DIMM in and attempt to wiggle a bit in different ways, all while trying to boot in between.
Worse comes to worse you have a bad CPU pin. I one caught this off an Intel LGA CPU where one if the pada was ever so slightly dirty (fingerprint? Thermal paste?). Checking the LGA pinout it was related to the bad slot. Cleaning that part fixed the RAM problem.
I also had a problem also ince of the Intel CPU being too overtightened/depressed causing the ram slot to not work too.
Another one that happened to me for intermittent boot failures is replacing the CMOS battery.
It was off camera, but I did try cleaning the bad stick or ram (tried IPS, eraser, and deoxit) but could never get a POST with it. And I replaced CMOS batteries in the video as well, just off camera. Appreciate the advice and info!
If you want to learn how to repair a Lenovo computer, just go to your local dealer and buy a new one. Almost guarantee it won't work. I've bought a couple, problems with PSUs, USB ports, SATA cables, SSD... I finally got one working properly, it took best part of a couple of months! Technical support was bloody awful.
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....
Lenovo ThinkCentre, and most other business grade PCs have a BIOS recovery procedure.
Lenovo’s method is:
Leave the clear CMOS jumper on the clear setting.
Place the binary BIOS ROM file on the root of a CD. (Not a zip or exe, has to be only the ROM).
Boot the machine with the CD inserted.
Wait for the BIOS flash to complete. Power off and return jumper to normal mode.
Blank screen doesn’t mean it’s flashing. You see the normal flash screen just as if doing it from Windows and it reboots into the flash utility. Should take less than 10s to kick off. You may need to reboot if you don’t get the CD in fast enough. Don’t wait 5 mins on the black screen thinking it’s doing something. Something isn’t right, double check your steps and try again. You’ll know when it’s flashing and working right.
I’ve done a Lenovo Tiny by attaching a desktop CD drive to it. There might be a new way to do with USB. But I already had a CD made. So it was convenient at the time to use the CD.
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!
Loading BIOS defaults is always a good idea on unknown systems. As is clearing the CMOS, but don't press the power button if the power cable is still attached ! The idea with using the power button is to discharge any stored charge on the board which it won't do if the power cable is plugged in. Also, that antenna cable can be removed from the Wi-Fi adapter easily enough. It has 'slide on' tabs.
Good advice! I pressed the power button with it plugged in because that's the SOP provided by Lenovo for those, however I think I've finally just decided to both follow the manuals procedure as well as just removing the battery and discharging the caps to be sure lol.
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.
Probably already got this comment somewhere, but we used these and similar models of Lenovo, HP, and the like for the insides of Kiosks that are used in correctional facilities. So, thousands of these things. All of us in the field had a steady 'refurb' workbench going, and about 90% of the no-boot issues (that weren't immediately just a bad stick of ram as you found) were indeed just corrupt CMOS or BIOS that had to be reflashed. Most of the time this is caused by being used in enclosed environments like kiosks, drawers, cabinetry, etc. and getting power cycled without propr shutdown. One of the consequences of remote support figuring out they can 'reset everything' by just hard power cycling (remotely via something called a netbooter) the PC and everything in the cabinet, rather than doing the troubleshooting they are supposed to. They're built like little tanks, but all that thermal wear and power shock really kills those BIOS chips. Plus they kind of set them up to get extra baked by where they placed them on many of those little boards. You did the perfect path honestly: Clear the CMOS for a quick and easy check, flash the BIOS if that doesn't work. 9 times out of 10, you get a PC back :)
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
Lenovo still publishes assembly / disassembly, and parts manuals in PDF. For Free too. Great video!
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.
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.🤔
I work IT and our business has hundreds of these PCs deployed across the building. In my time working there, I've actually never dealt with one of these broken PCs. They're a breeze, and they ship WITH a Lenovo mouse and keyboard (they're alright) in simple packaging. It's often one of our company laptops, which, to Lenovo's credit, are SO easy to repair.
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.
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
@Hardware Haven Oh, I forgot to mention that you should also replace the SPI chip. Sometimes its not bios itself, it's SPI chip corruption and after some time it may fail again, so it's a good prictice to just in case "upload" bios into new SPI chip, because those like SSDs/pendrives has r/w cycles and they fail when they reach that r/w cycle count...
Was is an SPI chip?
@@opensourceecon Whatever... Generally speaking it may be corrupted bios chip itself, not firmware in it... I have seen already this kind of failure where motherboard still had problem with no posting, bios reflash solved the problem, after some time died again and finally bios chip repelacement solved the problem...
Even EEPROMs had exactly the same issue, so it doesn;t matter what type it is...
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
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"
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.
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.
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!
Nice work, I would like to see you using this systems to create some sort of a cluster like a Proxmox cluster
"I'm an amateur" - Has better quality and camera angles than a lot of "professional" You Tubers 🤣 Nice video man!
I love trying to fix videos! All your content is great, keep it up!
If you do a lot of messing around with plugging mice+keyboards into things, Logitech have a dirt cheap combo mouse+keyboard with a single usb receiver that I LOVE for just plugging in and getting straight to business.
Yeah, I've seen a few people using those. I just hate the thought of my wireless bugging out and leading me on a wild goose chase haha. Maybe it's worth it with how much messing around I'm doing. Thanks!
@@HardwareHaven Oh THAT'S fair man! Mine has been rock solid on my Windows 10 machine and Ubuntu, and never had difficulty with it messing around in the bios either- but I see your point :)
@@samal3196 I still might look into it. I know a lot of people that are way smarter than me that do the same haha
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.
These lenovo mini pcs look so cute! Congrats for 70k subs too
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!
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.
It is always good SOP to unplug the power adapter/power brick from the PC, BEFORE removing any components. (ie RAM @8:34)
You obviously know more about computers than you thought you did. Excellent job!
Ryzen has a security feature to lock a CPU to a particular motherboard. Lenovo are guilty of using this feature. So that is possibly why CPU swapping didn't work. But it's worth trying those CPUs in a standard mobo to be sure.
Quick tip for trouble shooting older systems. change the CMOS battery. I've messed with systems even only a few years old that had a dead battery and wouldn't post.
Yeah, I bought a bunch to just start doing that basically with any older PC
I've had a cheap AA battery with good voltage not work. You can short them breifly with a DVM set to Amps and check further. Check those new coin cells.
I think something like 0.3A is OK for coin cells,
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.
I have 3 Lenovo Tiny's, 1x m720q and 2x710q. One of the 710q's only boots with ram in slot 1, it will not boot with ram in slot 2 or in 1 and 2. Gives the same beep code as at 7:51
I love Lenovos, Ive got 2x M720S and 3x M720Q. IMO they are the best looking SFFs, well designed and well built.
Fascinating video. VERY informational and educational. Thanks for making it. 👍👍
30:29 on hp systems (with Intel gen 3-7 cpus) if cmos battery dies, it will not post until you replace it.
Good to know! However I did say in the video that I replaced the cmos battery on them
12:39 some bioses does use the on off type secure boot disabling and enabling while others use erase secure key to disable secureboot. I seen oem machines use simple one and the motherboard sepertaly from those same manufacturers use the complicated nobody understand why delete secure keys to disable secure boot
PRO TIP Lenovo actually has great guides for replacing parts in their manual.
When testing CPU's you can just press a towercooler to them to see if they post. That saves a lot of time.
nice fix, probably just bit rot on the bios chip so re-flashing fixed it.
Also, as you flashed all pcs with bios rom from that single pc check if they all have same serial/mac/id etc. from that first one as that may cause some problems.
Yeah I'm checking out flashing a new BIOS from lenovo and adding the correct serial, although I'm not entirely sure if I'm doing it correctly haha. Any video/tutorial recommendations?
@@HardwareHaven Adamant IT channel on YT has quite few videos about using programmers to flash bios, also of transplanting certain regions in bios etc.
@@vaidkun Yeah his stuff is so freaking good. I need to check out the transplanting regions stuff
Dell D6000 is a great troubleshooting tool - It works over USB3 and has its own little graphics card embeded.
(So if you're unsure if the DP port might be broken you can use the D6000 to rule that out)
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
Sometimes its simply the contacts. CRC electrical contact cleaner is your friend. I've saved so many computers and other electronic devices that were thought to be dead with that alone.
Excellent job on Failure Analysis. 👍👍👍👍
@Hardware Haven, Please we will be glade if you doo everything on cam so we can learn from your mistakes as well. Thank you.
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!
One issue could be that recently lenovo started bounding Cpus to motherboard, expecially with ryzen pros. Maybe they swapped them before selling and so hard refreshing the bios maybe restored them
Hmm yeah not sure. I thought that whole debacle was for later gen stuff but maybe I’m wrong
Great job! I learned lots watching. Thanks for sharing
5:00 I just realized we got the same screwdriver set from Kaufland, except mine is with red inlays :D
Don't underestimate the power of swapping out the CMOS battery. CR2032 is easy to swap out. Fixes so many no POST situations.
Thats pretty sweet! Am curious about that bios flash equipment you have. Looks quite cool!
🤓 "Technically these aren't SFF. they're Lenovo "tiny" machines.
great video!! excited to watch!
Good point, thanks!
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.
@08:42 make sure you unplug the power before messing with the RAM. It can short otherwise I think.
@12:22 not really... it's pretty default... the one BIOS gives more options then the other... or different options... but most of them are quite similar...they can also contain old and aged security measures... like the intrusion detection. there is just a switch on the front that detects that the case top has been removed. There is not much needed to go around that... just press the button :P and if you are unlucky the switch has been in the same position for soooo long that it keeps the button pressed or depressed.
When you copy the BIOS straight across like that you lose the Ethernet MAC and machine serial number. I hope you followed the rule of taking 2 backups of a chip before writing over it.
If not you might be able to find the Lenovo provisioning thumb drive image and the MAC sticker on the system somewhere. If you wire them all into your router with the same MAC address be prepared for it to get weird.
I am finding a lot of these Lenovo have BIOS issues. For Intel you can go through an "ME clean" process to fix once you pull the BIOS file off the chip.
I was able to just use Lenovo's flashing tool to update the BIOS and give it the correct serial no. As of now they are showing unique MAC addresses, so maybe that process fixed it?
I got a free M715Q from work. Exact same problem in that the CPU fan would spin but no video output at all. Reset CMOS and changed the battery. No change. Both RAM sticks work fine in my girlfriend's laptop so that's not the issue. Erased the bios and successfully loaded the latest one via the same CH341A programmer that you used in the video but that didn't work either.
I don't have another AM4 system to test the CPU with but I doubt that's the problem. Nothing looks amiss with the motherboard. I may try to find an older bios to try but I really don't have a use for this PC. I just wanted to see if I could get it working and then pass it along to someone who could actually use it.
well done ( 1 mans trash is another mans treasure with profite ) persistence paid off and patience. and you have a new subscriber ;)
The first thing should have been to take the cover off and see if there is any memory in there, it will not post without memory.
Amazon sells a short adapter cable to use a standard PSU
23:49 i seen am4 also do that the cpu stick to the back of the cooler even when the socket is perfectly locked. It is a design flaw prob we never have to deel with in the future thanks to am5 if finally lga and the locking mechanism is like intel.
Makes you wonder about what the people were doing to mess up the BIOS/RAM earlier. Strange how they managed to brick 4 computers.
Possibly some automated BIOS/windows stuff if I had to guess.
@@HardwareHaven Turning off windows defender/security is a good idea before allowing a working windows PC to update its BIOS or third party hardware firmware. Or use Linux to update firmware. Nice to see Ventoy working for you!