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:
1. USB FDD
2. ATAPI CD0
3. USB CD (installation medium burned to disk and connected through external drive)
4. ATA HDD0 (internal hard drive)
5. PCI LAN (network boot)
6. USB HDD (installation medium on USB mass storage device)
7. ATA HDD1
8. (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`	Yes³	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`	Yes³	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.