Lenovo IdeaCentre Re-Install Issue

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening everyone,

I come to you guys as I am 100% stumped and I wonder if anyone can help at all!

My parents have a simple Lenovo ideacentre 310S - nothing fancy, done the job they use it for. I recently had a phone call to say it was not working, and with the Covid restrictions, tried to diagnose via video call etc, with no luck. Managed to visit them this week.

When the machine boots, it immediately comes up with Preparing Automatic Repair, then Diagnosing Your PC and eventually ends up at the blue Automatic Repair screen. I have tried everything to get it repaired and nothing works. Windows and their files are still there on the harddrive so I am at a loss.

Having tried everything I could think of, I decided to just reinstall Windows 10 and be done with it. I ripped out the old HDD, and placed a new SSD in to test. Created the bootable USB image via the Microsoft tools. Plug in, boot the machine and the menu comes up for Windows 10 Setup (64-bit) or (32-bit). Select 64-bit, and the screen goes black, the progress bar comes up Loading Files... and completes.

The blue Windows logo appears on the screen, then it flashes with some green "noise", goes black and it reboots to the Windows Boot Manager again.



If I leave it, after the 3rd attempt, it comes up with some bad corruption and the whole computer freezes (pulling the power is the only option).



Tried 32-bit after switching to Legacy in the BIOS, and does exactly the same.

I have tried diagnostics in the BIOS, all pass without errors. I can play for hours in the recovery menu with no graphical issues, which suggests its not the integrated graphics. I've tried the VGA and HDMI output.

Does anyone have any ideas at all? Its only a couple of years old and they don't use it a great deal so its really annoying if we have to bin it an buy something else, but I am all but at a loss now! I know Lenovo is generally junk, but they wanted something cheap at the time, and we needed it there and then to replace the old one, so we were limited with our selection, else I would have gone with something else.

Any suggestions very welcome! Thanks in advance everyone!

Thank you for the suggestion @dalchina, I shall give that a try tomorrow!

Apologies for the Lenovo comment - personal opinion, should have kept it out of my post. Just very frustrated with it! I know some people hate Dell, but they are my preferred big-box brand. We use Lenovo at work and I don't have any real complaints, but if there is ever an issue its swapped there and then, so I guess I don't have to live with them for long.

Thanks again, I will let you know if I have any success.

Does F2 get you the lenovo onekey recovery?

Hi all,

Thought I'd follow-up. I managed to boot without any issues from Bob Omb's image, and the first thing I tried was updating the BIOS, as I had noted it was out of date. As soon as I did that, I managed to boot the Windows 10 USB stick and reinstall Windows 10 on the new SSD. So that confirmed everything was working. No idea what the problem was prior to updating the BIOS though.

With that done, I turned my attention back to the original HDD. After hours and hours of reading, tinkering and rebooting, it became clear that the registry was damaged. Unfortunately there were no backups (thanks Microsoft - first thing I re-enabled on the new installation!), no shadow copies, and no system restore points, so I was basically out of luck. In the end I copied the entire config folder from the new windows SSD, and replaced the original one on the HDD just to see if I could get any further (I had already written off the install by that point, so had nothing to lose).

That got the computer to boot, and to attempt some repairs. It then said there was a pending update causing problems. I managed to revert that using dism. Finally it booted with the Lenovo logo and the spinning white circle. After about 4 hours with no change, I decided it was just not worth pursuing any further, so finished up copying over the data to the new SSD and setting that up completely.

So all back up and running now.

Thank you for the kind suggestions - I had not heard of these recovery images before, but they are extremely handy, so I have a couple stored in my kit bag for any future issues.

Same issue here on a Lenovo Ideacenter 310S-08ASR.

Can't even get a clean Windows installation going.

Firmware is O2HKT32A reflecting current version as O2HKT63A

Just can't get any form of Windows on the machine to do the BIOS update.

Will be trying the aforementioned Bob.Omb’s rescue disc

- - - Updated - - -

This issue is DIRECLTY related to the motherboard firmware and what a ridiculously difficult battle it was to finally get the firmware updated.

Only with AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro could I get past the Windows logo and to a console at last. EVERYTHING else would simply reboot (as described by the OP) just after the display of the Windows logo.

I have flashed firmware on 1000's of machine and never has it ever been as difficult as with this machine.

Lenovo, YOU NEED TO ADD a BIOS/UEFI update option from within the firmware. It is ridiculous to have to have a working GUI before an update can be done.