My Thinkpad T480 won't boot anything Windows based but will boot anything FOSS (Read the first post!)

Both my Ubuntu installs and the Windows install are all UEFI.

I have run a few test from the built in diagnostic tools. I’ve run the full CPU and Motherboard tests, and my Thinkpad passed. I’ve also checked the 2242 for disk errors, ran a short test on the RAM, and checked the SMART info for the 2242. It hasn’t turned up any issues.

It wouldn’t be so bad if modern search engines weren’t so useless for this sort of thing… thanks listicle website but I don’t need to know how to boot from USB, so get lost!

[EDIT] Add “installing Windows to an SSD in my desktop system, moving it to the Thinkpad, trying to boot, and failing in the same way” to the list of stuff I’ve done.

Have you tried chaining your BIOS setting to factory settings and installing Windows and Linux on brand new drives that haven’t even been formatted yet. Them follow the video I posted in my last post. The last time I tried using Windows and Linux I had to do that.

I have a Lenovo ThinkBook 15G2 ITL and to get linux to install I had to disable secure boot and change the Intel drive controller.

Under Configuration, I go to Intel VMD Controller and set to Disabled.
SATA controller mode should pop up and set to AHCI if there are multiple options.

Try that

As soon as I saw the title I immediately thought this is a secure boot problem, as I have had it in the past, I am however not the right person to help you fix it. But I would suggest to focus your efforts on secure boot problems.

Yes, it could be the ram stick.

I had a bad stick and by moving it around I could get windows, or Linux to boot.

Remove the new stick, and/or run memtest on it.

The problem isn’t technically Linux vs windows, but in where they put essential memory. Linux was laid out in memory where it would eventually use the bad sector and crash. Windows must have put something important like kernel or drivers in the bad space.

Hope you fixed the problem! (my T480 has a different motherboard revision that doesn’t like any NVMe, or SATA m.2, except the one in the adapter sled where a 2.5" goes, so there are different revisions)

Can Windows ISO boot in qemu on Ubuntu? You could swt a partition for Windows and load it from a VM in Linux.

Still no joy I’m afraid but you did remind me that I hadn’t included any information in my original post about how both the old and new DIMMs had passed Memtest86 (in the case of the new DIMM, it passed in both RAM slots, and when it was installed by itself). To be honest… the issue has been on the back burner for a while as it felt like I was making no headway. Perhaps its time to give it another crack though.

As for the issues with your T480. First things first, the T480’s second m.2 slot (i.e. the 2242 WWAN slot) is strictly NVMe only. SATA m.2 disks categorically do not work. The T480 is also known to be picky with what NVMe disk it will take in the WWAN slot. I have a Toshiba RC100, which I bought because it was one of just two disks that were known to work at the time. It is DRAMless though, so I would recommend looking at what other options have become available in the years since I bought what appeared to literally be the last commercially available, compatible 2242 NVMe disk in all of Europe.

I’ll give that a go as soon as I have time and report back. Thank you for the suggestion.

I finally have something to update.

It’s looking like the issue is that the dGPU in the T480, and Nvidia MX150, is dead or at least doing a very good impression of a dead chip. It’s not showing when using commands such as lspci and sudo lshw -C display. The weird thing is, if I run something like a grep command, that greps a path related to Nvidia, such as modinfo /usr/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/video/nvidia.ko | grep ^version, I get a not found error. So not only has the MX150 gone missing, it also appears the drivers and the various files and folders have disappeared too.

If I was paranoid, I’d say someone had swapped my T480 for a non-MX150 but it’s the same laptop… unless someone has swapped out just the mobo!

So this all raises a new crop of questions. Why can so many FOSS OSs load just with fine a non functional dGPU, yet when anything Windows based tries to load, it thoroughly craps the bed? Is there a way of making Windows boot without touching the dGPU? Is the dGPU really dead or has a BIOS or firmware update failed partially, rendering it inoperative but otherwise not causing any other noticeable issues? Should I try installing the Nvidia driver?

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The MX150 has no link to the system except x4 PCIe, it has no outputs or anything. I say this because the system will be fully functional (aside Nvidia support) if you can disable it in BIOS.

Unfortunately there is no BIOS option to disable the MX150… I really wish there was because it would solve my problem.

I am starting to wonder though, whether a custom BIOS with the option to disable the MX150, is possible.