Lenovo Legion 5 (15ACH6H/17ACH6H) - Does not boot into any OS

[Luke Anders]

Hi everyone,

A few details about the laptop itself:

Name: Lenovo Legion 5
Model: 15ACH6H (according to its back cover details) / 17ACH6H (according to the BIOS Menu)
BIOS Version: GKCN60WW
EC Version: GKEC65WW
Serial Number: PF39AQ7Z
Board Model: NM-D562 Rev 3.0
RAM: 16GB Installed, DDR4 (brand new)
NVME: 500GB NVME drive (brand new, installed Windows 10 onto it for testing purposes and tested on another laptop (a dell XPS) works perfectly fine and boots in)

I bought this laptop recently from eBay as a faulty device. It came with no SSD or RAM, and so I installed brand new ones myself onto the laptop.

The laptop would originally not boot up whatsoever. The keyboard light would switch on, I could change the lights using the FN+Space combination, but no backlight at all. I flashed the BIOS onto a BIOS that was available on this forum, and now the laptop switches on and I can access the BIOS Settings and change these freely.

When I boot into any operating system (I've tried Windows, Ubuntu, and Kali), none of these OSes will boot. Windows returns a myriad of confusing blue screen of death (BSOD) errors, which often change on each restart of the laptop. The most frequent is CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED.

I thought this could be a potential board issue, and so I opened the laptop up to inspect its board and found no issues whatsoever. I'm not an expert at this but I did my best using YouTube and my handy multimeter, but thought for best practice I should ask someone else to look over it too. I took it in to a friend of mine who does boards and he said the board is perfectly fine, no issues with it at all. There's no obvious damage, the components are all receiving their power, volts and resistance seem all to be good.

I'm baffled as to what to do now seeing as the board and its components seem OK, but the laptop still won't boot into any OS. The laptop does boot into Lenovo's own diagnostics tool, which says everything is working as it should be, apart from that it won't boot into anything else.

When you boot the laptop after pressing F2 you can access the BIOS, you can alter these settings freely, the BIOS version is GKCN60WW, the EC version is GKEC65WW (no clue if the 5 version difference between these is significant).

I tried to look into how to reset the EC Chip but I couldnt find anything specifically for this lenovo model (its the 15ACH6H according to the back cover, BIOS menu shows it as 17ACH6H, I'm not entirely sure which one it is exactly).

I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on next steps or knows (if they think this could be an EC issue) how to reset the EC chip, alternatively if its a BIOS issue what could be the problem there? If not no worries but I thought it'd be good to ask! Any help would be appreciated

I hope the information provided is helpful! Thanks all.

[trepachka]

Usually a faulty RAM stick could cause different BSOD, often with each boot. Burn a copy of bootable MEMTEST app and see if your RAM is faulty.

Also, this computer has 2 SSD slots. Try the other slot to eliminate the possibility of a faulty SSD slot.

[Sephir0th]

How was it, was it possible to deactivate the dedicated GPU in the BIOS environment with those Lenovo gaming laptops?

this would be away to rule it out as a potential issue. Other than that, Lenovo is currently known for weird issues originating from badly soldered BGAs, usually the CPU. But this would be out of the league for most technicians. Even for me...

[Luke Anders]

Usually a faulty RAM stick could cause different BSOD, often with each boot. Burn a copy of bootable MEMTEST app and see if your RAM is faulty.

Also, this computer has 2 SSD slots. Try the other slot to eliminate the possibility of a faulty SSD slot.

Hey, thanks for the response.

MEMTEST runs perfectly and passes both RAM sticks. I've put the SSD into both slots, still has the same issue.

It's a real mindboggler!

[Luke Anders]

How was it, was it possible to deactivate the dedicated GPU in the BIOS environment with those Lenovo gaming laptops?

this would be away to rule it out as a potential issue. Other than that, Lenovo is currently known for weird issues originating from badly soldered BGAs, usually the CPU. But this would be out of the league for most technicians. Even for me...

Hi, so this was interesting because I had plugged the SSD into a Dell XPS to turn off the dGPU (it's not available through the BIOS, it has to be done via the NVIDIA Control Panel in Windows), and so now it should be running without the dGPU, but the BSOD still remains.

On the second point, it could be that, yeah, but I guess the question would be how would one identify the badly soldered BGAs, is there a test that I can do to figure that out? Just curious so thought I'd ask!

Thanks.

[Luke Anders]

Another important thing to add just in case anyone's interested:

No USB running any OS (other than diagnostics tools like MEMTEST or the Lenovo UEFI Diagnostics which both return the hardware components as all passing) will boot.

Windows boots into a BSOD with a Windows 11 or 10 bootable USB drive and no SSD plugged in. With an SSD plugged in, same outcome.
Linux returns a similar equivalent to the BSOD error across multiple distributions.

I was wondering whether the disparity between the BIOS and EC string (the five version difference) is normal, or whether this is problematic?

[trepachka]

As alternative, though time consuming, installed Windows OS on another computer, update the drivers, then remove the drive and place back into this computer. See if the problems go away. If not, most likely a motherboard fault but very tricky to find.

[Diego Eloren]

Hi Luke,
can you please try something else.
There are lenovos out, which have a problem with the soldering joints because the impact on the keyboards losses the soldering.

1. Can you open the device.
2. Disconnect the batterie.
3. Unplug the RAM modules in the slot.
4. Poke each pin gently if it is connected properly to soldering. Sometimes they look good, but are not connect.
5. Same equivalent with the M2 slot (But this not the thing if you have also have a problem with booting from USB).

Maybe you find a losen pin. I know it is a shot in the dark, but i think it is worth it.

Best regars, Diego

[Luke Anders]

Hi Luke,
can you please try something else.
There are lenovos out, which have a problem with the soldering joints because the impact on the keyboards losses the soldering.

1. Can you open the device.
2. Disconnect the batterie.
3. Unplug the RAM modules in the slot.
4. Poke each pin gently if it is connected properly to soldering. Sometimes they look good, but are not connect.
5. Same equivalent with the M2 slot (But this not the thing if you have also have a problem with booting from USB).

Maybe you find a losen pin. I know it is a shot in the dark, but i think it is worth it.

Best regars, Diego

Hi Diego,

Thanks for your reply.

I've had a look and the connections seem fine - MEMTEST returns all positive too, and so I don't think its a RAM issue necessarily. I'm still sceptical about whether its a BIOS issue (because the flashed BIOS version is 60, whereas the EC version is 65), but I'm still looking into how I can resolve this issue specifically. When I flash the 65 bios to the computer, it doesn't boot up at all, so it's very strange!

Thank you though.

[Luke Anders]

As alternative, though time consuming, installed Windows OS on another computer, update the drivers, then remove the drive and place back into this computer. See if the problems go away. If not, most likely a motherboard fault but very tricky to find.

Hey,

So I've tried this and it's the same issue - BSOD still appears. I've tried it with the NVME drive forcibly booting into both safe mode and regular mode with the Lenovo drivers pre-installed, hence why I'm thinking it's an issue with the BIOS potentially.

Still unsure though!

[Luke Anders]

An update:

I tried to boot from WinPE, this also blue screens. I also tried to boot into Sergei Strelec's WinPE but this still led to a blue screen after it was done loading the files. I'm sharing this in case anyone else out there is facing a similar issue, but this method didn't work for me.

I'm starting to think its a motherboard fault, but the board looks fine on inspection, and I'm struggling to find the specific fault. If anyone has any pointers on where to have a look, it'd be very helpful!