Lenovo ThinkPad X201

The Lenovo X201 is a subnotebook produced by Lenovo.
Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
PS/2
Yes
Keyboard
Yes
GPU
8086:0046
Yes
Webcam
17ef:4816
Yes
Ethernet
8086:10ea
Yes
Bluetooth
0a5c:217f
Yes
Card reader
0bda:0159
Yes
Audio
8086:3b56
Yes
Wi-Fi
8086:4239
Yes
Fingerprint sensor
Yes
Installation
The X201’s USB ports do not seem to work with many USB 3.x devices. A USB 2.0 install medium is recommended.
An extra kernel parameter might be necessary to enable proper CPU frequency management, see
#BIOS CPU frequency limitation
.
Accessibility
Note
Sound output (speakers or headphones) seems to not work in the Arch Linux installation environment on the X201. Blind users may need to request the help of a sighted person to complete the installation.
The firmware is a traditional keyboard-only BIOS, navigated with arrow keys,
Enter
, and some function keys. In all menus,
F3
and
ESC
exit and return to the next-higher menu.
F9
resets the entire firmware configuration (
Enter
to confirm), and
F10
saves the firmware configuration and reboots (also
Enter
to confirm). In the “Boot” menu of the firmware,
F6
can be used to move entries up, while
F5
can be used to move entries down.
The current entry of a firmware menu appears in white text, while other entries appear in blue text. Explanatory text in black appears on the right, while keyboard shortcuts appear in white and cyan text on the bottom.
Selecting a boot device
To interrupt startup, press the blue
ThinkVantage
button after poweron. This is the fifth button from the left in the top row. The startup interrupt menu that appears will automatically continue booting after a few seconds. This can be paused with
Enter
.
Unfortunately, the
F12
boot override does not seem to function properly at least on some models. Therefore, the following procedure utilizing the normal BIOS setup should be used:
Enter Startup Interrupt Menu by pressing both
ThinkVantage
and
Enter
repeatedly after poweron for up to ten seconds.
F1
to enter BIOS Setup.
F9
and
Enter
to reset firmware configuration, such that the boot priority is in the default order.
Navigate down three times to the fourth option “Startup” and select with
Enter
.
Enter
for “Boot” menu. This menu contains numbered items for the boot priority.
The default boot priority order is as follows:
USB FDD
ATAPI CD0
USB CD (installation medium burned to disk and connected through external drive)
ATA HDD0 (internal hard drive)
PCI LAN (network boot)
USB HDD (installation medium on USB mass storage device)
ATA HDD1
(empty)
Excluded option 1: ATA HDD2
Excluded option 2: ATAPI CD1
Only the options “USB CD” and “USB HDD” are relevant. Note that any option below “PCI LAN” will likely never get used, as this option enters the Intel PXE ROM, which usually fails if the network is not configured for netbooting.
To prevent PCI LAN and any existing OS on the hard drive from overwriting a USB installation medium, navigate down five times to the sixth entry in the list, which is “USB HDD”. Press
F6
five times to move it to the first entry in the list.
F10
and
Enter
to save and exit.
The system should reboot and load an installation medium if available.
Firmware
The X201 does not have UEFI, leaving
GRUB
or
Limine
as the only remaining maintained
boot loaders
.
Function keys
Tip
In the firmware configuration under “Keyboard/Mouse”, the
Fn
and
Ctrl
keys can be swapped, which aligns the keyboard layout more closely with standard laptop keyboard layouts.
Key
Visible?
1
Marked?
2
Effect
Fn
Yes
No
XF86WakeUp
(press, or hold for >1s)
Fn+F2
Yes
Yes
XF86ScreenSaver
(lock screen)
Fn+F3
Yes
Yes
XF86Battery
Fn+F4
Yes
3
Yes
XF86Sleep
Fn+F5
Yes
Yes
XF86WLAN
(soft-disable WiFi in rfkill)
Fn+F6
Yes
No
XF86WebCam
Fn+F7
Yes
Yes
XF86Display
Fn+F8
Yes
Yes
XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F9
Yes
Yes
Unknown, key code
202
, key is marked with laptop symbol next to eject symbol
Fn+F12
Yes
3
Yes
XF86Suspend
Fn+Print
Yes
Yes
Alt_L
pressed and released, followed by
Alt_L
+
Sys_Req
pressed and released
Fn+Scroll
Yes
Yes
Num_Lock
Fn+Pause
Yes
Yes
Control_L
+
Break
Fn+Scroll
Yes
Yes
Num_Lock
Fn+Home
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+End
Yes
Yes
XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+PageUp
No
Yes
Toggles keyboard light
Fn+1
,
Fn+2
Yes
No
Unknown, key code
248
Fn+ArrowUp
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioStop
Fn+ArrowLeft
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioPrev
Fn+ArrowDown
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioPlay
Fn+ArrowRight
Yes
Yes
XF86AudioNext
The key is visible to
xev
and similar tools.
The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
systemd-logind handles this by default.
Troubleshooting
Overheating
There are some discussions concerning overheating-related shutdowns when running under full load (video encoding, etc).
[1]
[2]
Use the following
thinkfan
AUR
configuration
[3]
:
/etc/thinkfan.conf
#X201 user specific
#lvl    low     up      RPM
(0,    0,      47)     # 0
(1,    42,     57)     # 2000
(2,    44,     59)     # 3300
(3,    50,     65)     # 3500
(4,    54,     70)     # 3500
(5,    60,     73)     # 3800
(6,    62,     83)     # 3800
(7,    65,     88)     # 4300
(127,  70,     32767)  # 5300
cpupower
can be used for frequency scaling; see
CPU frequency scaling
for more information. Undervolting is not possible with the Intel core iX cpu.
No speaker output
Try pressing the
mute button
(next to the Escape key). See
this article
for details.
No ACPI events
See coreboot documentation:
[4]
[
dead link
2024-12-15—HTTP 404]
[5]
[
dead link
2024-12-15—HTTP 404]
Display issues
See
Intel graphics#AccelMethod
and
Intel graphics#DRI3 issues
.
X201s:
If planning to use VT-d, it is also
recommended
to add the following
kernel parameter
:
intel_iommu=igfx_off
Hardware virtualization
If
KVM
claims virtualization support is disabled in BIOS, even with VT-x enabled, disable Intel TXT.
[6]
BIOS CPU frequency limitation
The X201 BIOS suffers from the BIOS CPU frequency limitation bug when on AC power only, which it shares with several ThinkPad models. See
CPU frequency scaling#BIOS frequency limitation
for how to work around this.
Note
If “Intel SpeedStep Technology” is disabled in the firmware, the CPU will always boost to maximum frequency and the ACPI interfaces for CPU frequency control are not available, so this function should not be used.
See also
ThinkWiki.org
ThinkWiki.de