Owners of Lenovo gaming laptops have encountered problems in some reported cases due to the recently released BIOS update, which launches in April.
Since it was released a month ago, more and more people have updated to the BIOS version “GKCN53WW” and there are growing complaints in various online forums (including Lenovo’s own platform) about serious problems encountered since the publication – improving. The latest version of Windowswho noticed this, notes that the problems mainly affect gaming laptops Lenovo Legion.
The nausea caused by the BIOS update in some cases involves similar crashes of the Blue Screen of Death with the error “DEVICE_POWER_STATE_FAILURE” (or power failure of the driver) or even unsuccessful loading and freezing during game sessions, together with the frame rate falling sharply at times.
An inhabitant of Reddit published: “I installed this on Legion 7 16ACHg6, which I have had for 7 months. After playing games for 10 minutes, the laptop suffocates for a few minutes. In terms of productivity, it was impossible to ignore. Decrease from 75-140 frames per second in FFXIV online to about 15-20 frames per second. This adjustment will be repeated every 10 minutes or so.
“I went back to GKCN49WW and the problem disappeared. Quite a serious error for updating the BIOS on a gaming laptop, pushed as “critical”.
Lenovo does appreciate this BIOS update as a critical installation upgrade, probably because it contains fixes for some annoying BIOS vulnerabilities discovered by the laptop maker last month, along with a bunch of power settings.
Analysis: Avoid the update, then? You can do it, but it comes with its own risks
First, it should be noted that there are people in these various Reddit topics (and others) who report that they have installed the GKCN53WW update without any problems. So there may be a relatively small percentage of Legion owners who have had problems with this BIOS update – we can’t know the exact numbers, of course, but the number of threads in Reddit suggests that’s not uncommon, at least.
Therefore, the best course of action may be to give a deviation to the GKCN53WW update for now, perhaps; however, these aforementioned BIOS vulnerabilities are not something you want to leave around. However, you do not need GKCN53WW to correct them, according to Lenovo’s security tips in this regard, these holes are resolved by updating to GKCN51WW (as well as GKCN53WW). So, if you are already on 51WW, you are protected against these exploits.
The bad thing is that if you want to get the GKCN51WW now, you can’t anymore – we’re not sure why, but the only download option is the new GKCN53WW, with possible crash problems and frame rate drops. We hope that Lenovo will fix this BIOS update soon enough, but we haven’t heard anything from the manufacturer yet – and in the meantime you have a hard time choosing whether to upgrade and risk crashes, or leave and risk vulnerabilities instead. (If you’re on GKCN51WW and managed to grab this version before it disappears, we’d suggest you stick to it for now).
If you update to the latest BIOS and encounter problems, Windows Latest emphasizes that you can revert to the previous version of the BIOS, which is now GKCN50WW: it can be downloaded directly as an EXE file here (but of course it does not have these vital fixes security).
To restore the BIOS to your Lenovo laptop, simply double-click the EXE file of the previous version you want to install, and follow the instructions provided by the pop-up wizard. You may need to enable BIOS flashing until a previous version before you can reset it, which is done in the Lenovo BIOS setup screen – to enter this, see instructions here.
Once in BIOS Setup, there is an option that is associated with reversing the BIOS version and you must enable this (note that some Lenovo machines may have a reset prevention option that is enabled by default – and in this case, to revert to a previous version of the BIOS, you must disable it).
However, resetting the BIOS is a process that can go wrong, so you do it at your own risk – and whatever you do, make sure the laptop doesn’t shut down while applying a new BIOS (this can damage devices).
Overall, the situation is not good for less tech-savvy Lenovo laptop owners, who may not want to mess with a BIOS reset, but may feel compelled to do so if there are any crash issues after the update. are really bad. And indeed, they may think it’s best to sit firmly on an older BIOS to avoid this scenario – understandably – but it’s hardly ideal from a security standpoint. So, hopefully Lenovo will prioritize fixing these reported issues …
https://www.techradar.com/news/lenovo-legion-gaming-laptops-hit-by-major-bios-fail/
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