I hadn’t seen my dad for a whole year - God have mercy on my lazy ass - and now that I was going to see him, he asked me to help him factory reset his laptop (some Lenovo running Microslop). He could’ve done it by himself technically speaking, but he knows that I’m knowledgeable when it comes to tech, so why not.
Oh. My. FUCKING. God.
I hadn’t “used” Microslop Shitdows for five or so years, Windows 10 at the time. I had been following some news - and posts here too - so I knew to expect some bullshit, but…
- It doesn’t let you install without an internet connection PERIOD. I even disabled the wireless NIC in the hopes that it would let me USE THE COMPUTER THAT MY DAD HAD PAID FOR but no. “Install drivers” or “contact support”, it said.
- It doesn’t accept CLI hotkeys. Mkay…
- It (being Lenovo in collaboration with Microslop, I guess, not Microslop on its own) doesn’t allow you to boot from a USB stick. I imaged a USB stick with a Windows 10 ISO, even bought an activation key at Kinguin, but no. Just no. The BIOS doesn’t let you to change boot order, the recovery mode - EVEN THOUGH IT HAS THE OPTION TO BOOT FROM REMOVABLE MEDIA - simply jumps back to the stock installation upon choosing “boot from USB”.
- Finally, after giving up and connecting to the internet, setting up a fake account, it wouldn’t let me proceed unless I turned off my VPN.
Only after having been force fed the Microslop setup, I finally was able to nuke it with Cris Titus’ Windows utility and then setup an offline account.
At least my dad is happy with the laptop. That’s all that matters. I gave him Librewolf with uBlock and Libre Office. And mad respect for him saying before point four above, that he’ll let me slap Linux onto it if nothing else works. 🩵 Which of course wouldn’t work since booting from removable media is disabled in the firmware, but still. Love you dad. 🩷
Rant over.
PS: he did give me permission to unscrew the bottom and have a look inside, so I will try to replace the SSD (if it’s M.2) and possibly flash Libreboot if the model is among their officially supported laptops.
Some Lenovos only allow you to boot off USB via the “novo” button.
It’s a pin-tool reset hole with a “U” shaped icon next to it. I’ve seen it hiding among the cooling intake holes on some models.
Turn the laptop off, hit the novo button, and the laptop boots into a separate menu from the bios that among other things allows you to get to a boot device menu.
I’ve also come across a case where secure boot would just refuse to boot stuff that didn’t already have matching keys in the bios. Disabling secure boot, everything worked, but turning it back on shit immediately broke. In that case it had stopped booting its NORMAL install of W11 because it had become too new. I had to discover that windows ships a tiny EFI executable signed with the old keys whose sole purpose is to slip the new keys into the BIOS for exactly such a situation.
It’s also possible to circumvent the online requirement if you know how. The key combo is shift+f10 (or shift+fn+f10 depending on how the function keys are bound) to bring up cmd, after which you can run OOBE\BYPASSNRO to reboot into a mode that allows you to skip ms account setup.
If you create the bootable USB with Rufus (which you unfortunately need windows to run 🫤), it boots into that mode from the start.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
As soon as I saw your comment, I asked dad. There IS such a button just next to the CPU/busy LED… But I refuse to be ashamed for fighting this battle. 😭🤣 Well, next time. Thanks! 🙏
No shame for you. Just for lenovo.