[Bug 1734147] Re: Ubuntu 17.10 corrupting BIOS - many LENOVO laptops models

[Tautedorus]

I can also confirm this. I use the Lenovo Z50-70 laptop and I have
encountered this problem. After installing Ubuntu 17.10 (and other
remixes of it) and reinstalling it again, the UEFI BIOS does not save
any changes except the date and time. I could not reset the UEFI BIOS
settings because it did not save any changes and the CMOS battery is
soldered, unfortunately. What is even worse, the UEFI BIOS does not boot
any bootable media. I tried booting DVDs, USB sticks and other HDDs with
no luck. The only thing that the boot menu shows is the old installation
partition name and nothing else. Before that happened I used Manjaro
distribution which did not have such problems even after reinstalling it
multiple times. By the way, the solution to this problem was the a
motherboard replacement... Two times.

The only way to boot bootable devices is to install and properly
configure rEFInd:
https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/forums/v3_1/forumtopicpage/board-id/ll04_en
/thread-id/154203/page/2. That does not solve the UEFI BIOS corruption
problem. It is just a workaround.

Maybe it is a defective Lenovo UEFI BIOS (two motherboard replacements
proved that it could be defective "by design"). However, as I mentioned
before, other distributions had not caused any of these problems before.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1734147

Title:
  Ubuntu 17.10 corrupting BIOS - many LENOVO laptops models

Status in grub2 package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Hi all,

  Basically on Lenovo Y50-70 after installing Ubuntu 17.10, many users
  reported a corrupted BIOS.

  It's not possible to save new settings in BIOS anymore and after
  rebooting, the system starts with the old settings.

  Moreover (and most important) USB booting is not possible anymore
  since USB is not recognized. It's very serious, since our machines do
  not have a CDROM.

  Lenovo forums at the moment are full of topics regading this issue.

  For example:

  https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Y50-70-BIOS-Can-t
  -Save-Settings-or-boot-with-USB/m-p/3849142

  https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/Y50-70-BIOS-Can-t
  -Save-Settings-Or-Exit/m-p/3601285

  https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-P-Y-and-Z-series/y50-70-BIOS-can-t
  -save-settings-and-I-can-t-boot-system/m-p/3865727

  Thank you!!

  
  #### UPDATE (25/11/2017) ####

  LENOVO machines affected so far:

  Lenovo Y50-70
  Lenovo G40-30
  Lenovo U31-70
  Lenovo G50-70

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