Recently global users installing Windows 10 August update have started facing Windows BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) screen error randomly on their system. Some users have experienced a complete crash of the system and slow performance during the boot.
Lenovo is one of the first vendors to acknowledge the BSOD error. A bug in Window 10 KB4566782 and Lenovo’s BIOS is causing ThinkPad laptops to get stuck in BSOD. Lenovo has officially provided a workaround after investigating the cause of this error. According to Lenovo, this error usually occurs when Vantage app is trying to use the Intel Management Engine to interface with the firmware, but the process is prevented by this BIOS setting and Windows 10’s August update.
Thinkpad users having laptop models from 2019 and 2020 were facing below symptoms in their system:
- Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) when booting
- Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) when starting Lenovo Vantage
- Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) when running Windows Defender Scan
- Can’t login by Face with Windows Hello
- Errors in Device Manager related to Intel Management Engine
- Errors in Device Manager related to IR Camera
Lenovo has provided a step by step solution to deal with this situation. Please note that the solution below is applicable only for Lenovo ThinkPad models.
To fix “SYSTEM_THREAD_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED” follow these steps
- Boot into the BIOS settings.
- Navigate to Security.
- Click on ‘Virtualization’.
- Turn off “Enhanced Windows Biometric Security” in Security -> Virtualization menu.
- Boot to desktop.
According to Lenovo, Windows has not yet implemented the software for this BIOS setting, so it doesn’t serve any purpose and it can be safely disabled.