Some hapless Lenovo laptop owners (especially those with Legion) have apparently run into serious trouble after installing a BIOS update pushed through Lenovo’s Vantage app. The BIOS update, which is available on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, is causing some annoying boot errors, according to several reports.
It’s worth noting that only a few Lenovo Legion models are affected, and so are the Legion 5 and 7 series. The BIOS update version GKCN53WW throws random Blue Screen of Death errors with a rather vague stop code “DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE”.
We’ve noticed several reports of issues on reddit and Lenovo’s own support forums or social media platforms such as Twitter and Telegram, with complaints of boot errors, lower frame rates, or black screen freezing after installing BIOS update version GKCN53WW.
“I thought I was the only one. I recently noticed the system crashes at random times. I’ve done everything possible to troubleshoot but none of them seem to have told me anything convincing. I didn’t have this problem with the default BIOS that came with my 15ACH6H,” said one of the affected users in the Reddit thread.
Another thread on Reddit flagging possible performance issues after installing the BIOS update, with some people claiming their games are running much slower than usual due to reduced FPS.
“I wanted to take care of my new Legion 7 by always keeping it up to date. So, as usual, I checked for updates in Lenovo Vantage. I saw a “critical BIOS update” GKCN53WW. I’m not tech savvy so I assumed (unwisely) that updates can only help. But yeah, I was wrong,” another user complained of serious performance issues.
We own one of the affected machines and can confirm that Lenovo’s Vantage app uses a pop-up warning that appears on top of apps and games to recommend the faulty BIOS release.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the popup clearly states that “Lenovo recommends that you install these updates to optimize your computer. Please note that the following updates may require your system to be rebooted several times.
- BIOS update Win10 [64]/Win11
The BIOS update is still offered through the Vantage app and the Lenovo site, so if you’re thinking about that upgrade right now, avoid it. Make sure to disable the BIOS update option when checking for updates in the Vantage app.
We don’t know how many users have been affected, but complaints are all over the Lenovo Legion community. Reports from multiple machines and Lenovo’s silence on the matter are, of course, cause for concern.
This BIOS has also been marked as a critical update on Lenovo’s websites, so there’s a chance that many unwitting users installed it without any research.
Uninstall Lenovo Legion BIOS Update GKCN53WW on Windows 10 & 11
This BIOS update sounds like a nasty mess, but since we’re talking about Windows, there’s an obvious solution.
As described in several of the above threads and confirmed by us, uninstalling and reinstalling the previous BIOS can fix the issue. However, this may or may not work for everyone, so if you give this workaround a shot, do it at your own risk.
To go back to the previous BIOS update, all you need to do is download and run the stable BIOS version (GKCN50WW).
If you cannot downgrade the BIOS directly from the installation, make sure that the device allows flashing BIOS to an earlier version. To do this, open the Lenovo BIOS Setup Utility from the boot menu and look for an option related to BIOS rollback or flash, and set it to “Yes”.
Press F10 to save and exit the configuration settings, then run the BIOS downgrade again. Do not power off the device midway through the process while downgrading the BIOS as this may cause serious damage to the system.
Another option might be to wait for Lenovo to acknowledge the mess and hopefully release a workaround. This assumes that you can fix the problem described or that you have a backup device.