Laptop Retrospective's guide to updating the BIOS to the 1.46 Whitelist BIOS (also known as the Whitelist Removed BIOS) Note that the Whitelist BIOS allows you to do potentially stupid things that could brick your Thinkpad, There are two good video guides: However you will also need to flash your X220 BIOS to the "Whitelist BIOS".
This combined module is an upgrade which provides both WiFi (including WiFi C the original only provides up to WiFi N) and Bluetooth 4 (including Bluetooth Low Energy the original BCM92070MD only provides Bluetooth 3). Replace the PCIe N 6205 WiFi module with an Intel 7260 module from eBay for fifteen quid or so.
Buy a Broadcom BCM92070MD FRU 60圓271 module from eBay for eight quid or so, strip down your Thinkpad and fit it, or.If you don't have a Bluetooth module, you have two options: Here's a photo of the area underneath the palm rest from MyFixGuide, to which I've added arrows labelling the WiFi and Bluetooth modules: MyFixGuide's thorough pictorial guide to X220 disassembly covering much more than just the keyboard and palm rest ("C surface").
Laptop Retrospective's guide to stripping down and replacing the PCIe WiFi module also shows more generally, how to remove the keyboard and palm rest The WiFi and Bluetooth modules will be under the palm rest. Unplug and remove the battery, then remove the keyboard and the palm rest ("C surface") only. You should strip down and physically inspect your Thinkpad. If this still doesn't work, it's possible that your Thinkpad does not have a Bluetooth module at all. I believe this light is either on or off, and doesn't change colour, but I'm not calling a daughter over again to confirm that. The Bluetooth indicator at the bottom of the screen, above the PrtSc & ScrLk keys, should light up when Bluetooth is activated. If you don't have the Lenovo bloatware installed, then you may be doing this without any on-screen indication that the mode has changed. You may need to press FN-F5 more than once to cycle through the various options (on other laptops, I've seen them cycle through "all off", "all on", "WiFi only", "Bluetooth only" but not necessarily in that order). This can be done from the action bar (Notifications sidebar) or it can be done by pressing FN-F5.
It took two or three reboots but the Windows 10 drivers were detected automatically (no downloads required) and it has remained rock solid ever since.
The only solution appears to be to replace the hardware module with a 60Y3303 or 60Y3305 Bluetooth 4.0 module. You can reinstall the drivers, but they'll be removed at the next reboot. Update: As of spring/summer 2019, Windows 10 will remove the drivers for the BCM92070MD / 60Y3271 Bluetooth 3.0 module that shipped by default with many Thinkpad X220 laptops. Bluetooth on the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 with Windows 10 - Andrew OakleyĪ Bluetooth on the Lenovo Thinkpad X220 with Windows 10