Relic Recovery Log: ThinkPad Resurrection
Overview
Last week, my ThinkPad L13 Yoga Gen 1 threw a curveball. After a routine restart, I was greeted not by the familiar login screen, but by a green-screen BSOD (yes, green—thanks Windows Insider builds) with the stopcode NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM (0x24).
Details
The crash loop began. I launched Lenovo’s diagnostic tools hoping for clarity. The drive passed all tests, which was... suspicious. But then came a surprise: the memory check flagged a failure. That’s when I thought, I’m screwed. The RAM in this model is soldered, this would be no easy swap. If it’s dead, it’s motherboard replacement or bust.
I opened the laptop, cleaned it again (I’d repasted the CPU a few weeks prior), but found no physical issues. Reluctantly, I accepted the possibility of retirement and pivoted: I picked up a GMKtec G10 mini PC, perfect for coding and daily tasks, no gaming needed.
Still, I needed my data. I bought an enclosure for the laptop’s SSD. Disk Management showed it as “Healthy”... but formatted as RAW. Not good! I suspected the Realtek RTL9210B-CG chip in the enclosure might be the culprit, so I swapped it for one with an ASM2362-QFN64 controller. Same result.
Time for a deeper salvage quest. I created a bootable USB with Ventoy, loaded MX Linux, and tried bypassing NTFS to extract the files. No luck. But I did notice something: the memory was active and functioning. That gave me hope...and a bit of frustration, was it not in a failure state?
Solution and Outcome
I reinstalled the SSD into the laptop, downloaded the official Windows 11 ISO, and loaded it via Ventoy. The repair tools couldn’t fix the drive either. So I dove into the command line:
chkdsk C: /f
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bcdboot C:\Windows /s C: /f ALL
bootrec /rebuildbcd
After exiting CMD and rebooting, the error persisted—but something had changed. The screen now showed a “Restart” button instead of “Shutdown.” I clicked it.
And just like that—my laptop came back to life...it's alive, ALIVE!
Turns out the memory warning may have been a false flag. Or maybe not—this machine’s been through a lot. Either way, it’s running again.
Now, it’s backup time. No more chances.