Solved! Thinkpad T460s won't stay powered on after showing, "Press Enter to interrupt normal startup operation.."

[GBleezy]

So it's my friend's laptop and it was getting a Windows Stop Code after a driver (touchpad) install. Not being computer literate he spent hours messing with it. Last I seen was he was in the BIOS just #@$&!+ing things off even after I told him he needs to not mess with any of that and instead spend his energy trying to boot into Safe Mode while I went to work. Well he didn't listen and I came back to the T460s in the state described above where it won't stay on longer than 10 seconds. I'm pretty sure it's not even making it to the POST. And even though it says to hit enter, doing so produces no results and it shuts off. I took out ram and wasn't even able to generate any expected beep codes of any kind. Unplugged the CMOS battery thinking maybe it would reset bios or something but still get the same thing.

Is it possible he messed it up to the point of no return via BIOS? I mean it did have bitlocker enabled on the drive and he most likely messed with boot order which I heard was a bad idea?

Anyways, how would I go about fixing this thing? It was a perfectly good Thinkpad until that one reboot after driver install. Any idea if it's possible to reset bios to default maybe? Or what parts would have to be replaced first? Or any ideas at all would be much welcomed really!

Thanks in advance!

 

[hang-the-9]

If bitlocker was enabled then changing random BIOS settings could have easily messed up the encryption, which would prevent the system from booting Windows. Also things like drive mode, secure boot, some other settings can cause issues with booting.

Can you get to the boot options at all or get back into the bios? Was there a bitlocker backup key saved? There is a pretty good chance whatever is on that disk is gone and a clean Windows setup after clearing the partition is needed.