The POST 2010 error "is not an enormous issue, but one that we're aware of," a Lenovo spokesman said this week. "Certainly, people are upset about it, but it's not a hugely overarching issue.

"We were aware of the problem, created what we believe to be a useful solution, were disappointed that we had unhappy customers and certainly are doing our best to make sure they're happy," he said, noting that the new BIOS is only needed if a user adds a third-party hard drive.

The T43 issue arose at a time when Lenovo is trying to grow its customer base for laptops and PCs to include smaller businesses, taking the ThinkPad brand beyond the traditional large business base, Lenovo executives have said.

Richard Shim, an analyst at market research company IDC in Framingham, Mass., agreed that "a smaller scale" problem gained importance because it cropped up on a mainstream laptop that has probably been sold to hundreds of thousands of users. Still, he said, "it doesn't sound like (the problem) would have a material impact on Lenovo revenues."

In fact, Lenovo has nearly regained the market share with PCs and laptops that IBM had before selling off its division. Lenovo had 7.7 percent of global laptop and desktop sales in the third quarter of 2005, while Dell Inc. was the leader with 17.9 percent, and Hewlett-Packard Co. was second at 16.1 percent. IBM's PC division had about 8 percent of the market in the third quarter of 2004, Shim said.