Can't enter BIOS/UEFI or boot from a device

Megahertz said:

You tried almost everything.
I would try to reset the BIOS by taking off the coin battery.
On some Laptops isn't a easy task.

I tried that already. Disconnected both batteries. Don't know how long should be disconnected before I turn the power on? Last time it was bout 15 min.

When you disconnected both batteries (Main and coin) did it reset the clock?

Megahertz said:

When you disconnected both batteries (Main and coin) did it reset the clock?

Not sure, I was unable to enter BIOS to check.

MikeMecanic said:

Since sys info shows legacy mode and that you have damaged the partitioning scheme, it will be hard to get Windows back in the UEFI mode unless the conversion is done with an app doing so. Consider yourself lucky for having Windows booting to desktop in legacy mode. Backup important stuff.

All you have to do to enable booting in UEFI mode is to shrink the C: drive (OS) partition by 100 MB and create a FAT32 partition for the computer to boot from. The only major roadblock to doing that is if the MBR drive already contains 4 primary partitions and you cannot create a FAT32 primary partition. Otherwise, a few diskpart commands and 5 minutes is all it takes.

So, I have tried several things. I left the Notepad for 14h with no batteries connected. Started again, no change, no BIOS.
Tried again with disconnecting the SSD, like MikeMecanic suggested. Tried both when turned on and off. Gets me to simple boot manager outside BIOS, like when I disconnected SSD before. .

Tried in DISKPART to make a new volume. I shrunk it to new 500MB partition, marked it as active. No BIOS. Now the computer starts with boot manager, so makes it easier to boot from USB.

I want to give it a shot with Linux Mint. Started it in compatibility mode, but I do not have knowledge to rewrite the SSD in Mint like MikeMecanic suggested, I would appreciate if somebody can help with that.

Data on the disk is not of importance, don't worry about that.

Once again, thank you all for suggestions.

- - - Updated - - -

To avoid possible confusion, this is the boot "manager"/menu that I am talking about, it is not inside the BIOS.

You are making progress!

The screenshot shows the content of F10 or the boot menu. All you have to do now is to insert a bootable stick, Windows or Mint and click enter on the USB device name with the down arrow. The compatibility mode is just in case the machine does not support Linux. The first option in the menu is also good.

Follow the procedure = delete all partitions and rewrite the SSD default (In Mint, select erase disk instead of selecting alongside Windows). Avoid changing the time zone, keep New-York or the one that is displayed, Windows does not have the time zone setup.

Mint installation takes about 5 minutes, Windows less than 10.

MikeMecanic said:

You are making progress!

The screenshot shows the content of F10 or the boot menu. All you have to do now is to insert a bootable stick, Windows or Mint and click enter on the USB device name with the down arrow. The compatibility mode is just in case the machine does not support Linux. The first option in the menu is also good.

Follow the procedure = delete all partitions and rewrite the SSD default (In Mint, select erase disk instead of selecting alongside Windows). Avoid changing the time zone, keep New-York or the one that is displayed, Windows does not have the time zone setup.

Mint installation takes about 5 minutes, Windows less than 10.

I had last few days installed Win 10 about 5-6 times to try to solve the problem and tried again today. Windows are installed successfully but still no BIOS. Does not work. I can not convert to GPT in the installation (Shift+F10/Diskpart) because it has been booted in Legacy mode.
I think I can safely assume that Windows installation will not by itself return / reorder the partitions/settings/BCD or I don't know what to the state where I can start using BIOS/UEFI again. If I could force conversion of SSD to GPT, maybe that would help...

- - - Updated - - -

I managed to open the BIOS!!!! Think I cried a bit...

The solution was:
1. Create a partition in Windows Diskpart, and mark it as active, so the machine tries to boot from it.
2. That opened Boot menu upon next startup (although physically removing the SSD also works) , which allowed me to boot Linux Mint (I suppose that other Linux packages would work, but did not try).
3. From the terminal entered:

Code:

systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

4. BAM! Goes to BIOS.

Here is how it looks like, total mess:



Once again, many many thanks to everybody that posted here, you helped a lot!
Now to see what happens next...

- - - Updated - - -

Update.
There is one thing tho. I still can not enter BIOS/UEFI normally, with a hotkey or even with NOVO button. Very strange. But I can at least use the option from Advanced startup to go to UEFI.

It looks like your BIOS is corrupt. I would reflash it.

NavyLCDR said:

It looks like your BIOS is corrupt. I would reflash it.

Seems that I already have the only available BIOS version from official Lenovo support webpage and it will not flash.