Lenovo has issued a warning that several models of its laptops have been plagued with problems when upgrading to the latest version of Windows 10. The Windows 10 May 2020 update (version 2004) has been out for almost a fortnight now, in which time Lenovo has discovered numerous issues with various models of its laptops, ranging from minor flaws to showstopping bugs.
ThinkPad P70 Blue Screen of Death
The most serious problem afflicts the ThinkPad P70 laptop. Lenovo warns that after the upgrade, customers may experience the dreaded Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) intermittently, after the system is resumed from sleep or hibernate modes. Lenovo says it suspects the problem is connected with the BIOS and is being investigated, but recommends customers roll back to the previous version of Windows (1909) until a fix can be found.
Elsewhere, owners of several models of ThinkPad laptops are warned that they may see a yellow warning mark against their disk drives in Windows 10. This appears to be a bug with the BitLocker encryption system, with Lenovo curiously describing it as “a limitation of the operating system”.
Fortunately, this problem is easily resolved by turning BitLocker on and off on the selected drives, although it’s not clear whether you’ll have to wait for the entire disk to be encrypted first, which is a process that could take many hours.
The full list of affected ThinkPad laptops can be found on Lenovo’s support page.
ThinkPad touchpad errors
Alas, the list of potential pitfalls doesn’t end there. Owners of the ThinkPad E570p and L570 are warned that they may see error messages relating to the Alps Pointing device application when they upgrade their machines. This concerns a problem with the touchpad’s software driver, which can be fixed by upgrading to the latest version of the drivers.
ThinkPad X395 owners who see a green border around the Movies & TV software on their PC when resizing the windows are told this is a problem with another driver, this time AMD’s. Lenovo says a fix is due by the middle of this month.
Finally, ThinkPad X1 Tablet Gen3 users are warned of a problem with the F11 shortcut key failing after the upgrade. Owners can either use the Lenovo Keyboard Manager utility to fix the problem or wait for a fix to be released at the end of this month.
Windows Update woes
All told, it’s been a problematic round of Windows updates for Microsoft. The company has listed nine major issues that are preventing millions of customers from even being offered the Windows 10 May 2020 update at this point, through fear that installation may cause a serious problem with their PC.
That list of bugs was last updated on May 27, and given that Microsoft will likely need to test fixes for such serious issues with Windows Insiders, it could still be weeks before many customers are even offered the chance to download and install the latest update.
I have been a technology writer and editor for more than 20 years. I was assistant editor of The Sunday Times’ technology section, editor of PC Pro magazine and have written for more than a dozen different publications and websites over the years. I’ve also appeared as a tech pundit on television and radio, including BBC Newsnight, the Chris Evans Show and ITN News at Ten. Hit me up if you’ve got a tech story that needs breaking at barry@mediabc.co.uk.
Source: https://www.forbes.com
