Lenovo Tablet 2 needs BIOS update for Windows 8 Enterprise Upgrade
One of the first things I did when I received my Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 (see my recent blog post), was to upgrade it to Windows 8 Enterprise. My first attempt left me with a non-functioning tablet. The upgrade completed, but when the system rebooted, it just sat on the spinning circle screen, rebooted, and eventually went blank. I had to power cycle the unit, and at that point Windows was pretty unhappy, complaining that the upgrade failed and never finishing startup.
I had to use the System Reest option to get back to a working syste. Since Windows would not start, I had to access System Recovery by following the steps in Lenovo’s support document, Accessing Microsoft Windows 8 System Recovery during Startup with ThinkPad Tablet 2:
- Start with the system powered down.
- Power up the system.
- Press and hold the Power button while tapping the Volume Down button until “Please Wait” appears below the Lenovo logo.
- Select your language followed by your keyboard
- Select from the recovery options listed.
After the reset, I checked the BIOS and saw that it was v1.20 and dated November 28. The current version on Lenovo’s website is was v1.22 dated February 13. After upgrading the BIOS, I was able to successfully install Windows 8 Enterprise.
Update: As I was getting ready to post, I checked and saw that Lenovo just released BIOS v1.51.
Make sure you use the 32-bit version of Windows 8 Enterprise for the upgrade. The Atom in the Tablet 2 is 32-bit so my flash drive with the 64-bit setup didn’t get me far. I’m so used to having a 64-bit system, I had never even downloaded the 32-bit version until now.