As a result, Lenovo on Tuesday posted a BIOS update that allows the T43 to start up without the need to press an Escape key when receiving a POST 2010 warning message. A note with the BIOS upgrade says that the 2010 message occurs when "using an unsupported hard drive version. Please use support version as much as you can."

The new BIOS version also appears on IBM's support site; IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo in May.

Users who had tried out the BIOS posted messages at a user forum Wednesday saying that it requires a user to wait 10 seconds and listen to a beep before proceeding. Nonetheless, Kramaric said he is eager to try out the fix, since he can provide Hitachi drives purchased on his own at half the cost of the Lenovo drives that came with the T43s.

But the experience left Kramaric and other users questioning Lenovo's commitment to support. "On a scale of 1-10, their score hits rock bottom at 1," he said.

A Lenovo spokesman and industry analysts said the problem was fairly minor and argued that the company's overall sales since the May acquisition show that users apparently like Lenovo products.