I guess I should preface this by saying that Lenovo recommends that you do not install Windows 10 on the N581.
Well this is a little bit of a different post. I just thought I’d document this little hardware issue that I encountered and had to solve.
So the situation was that after I got the November Update for Windows 10 on my Lenovo N581 the Wifi stopped working.
The solution is to update the BIOS.
I got the BIOS Updater from the Lenovo site (they make a habit of changing the URL for their support pages, so if the link is dead just navigate to their support page from lenovo.com).
For reference the device description and hardware IDs on my machine were
Broadcom 802.11n Network Adapter
PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_058714E4&REV_01
PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&SUBSYS_058714E4
PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&CC_028000
PCI\VEN_14E4&DEV_4727&CC_0280
The updater was called 5ecn96ww.exe and my previous BIOS version was 3.06 and it updated to 9.01.
Just be aware that after it flashes the new version it will reset your settings. I was still using MBR Boot with GRUB, so it didn’t boot anymore after the update. I had to go into the BIOS settings and disable EFI again for the device to boot again.
But after that everything was fine again and the fan seems to kick in a lot less now. So good tidings all around.
Hope I could help someone find the solution to their problem (I know I searched the net fruitlessly for an hour).