Lenovo Carbon X-1 Lenovo

Hello. I am currently fixing Lenovo Carbon X-1 second gen (i5 4200U), and encountered an issues of a short circuit on the board - it was stuck in a boot loop, where the FN bar would light up for a second, then all off, then on, then off. After drawing power and cooling it would work, but there were constant BSODs. After reinstalling the system, cleaning the mobo and reassembling I have found the possible cause - the audio jack subboard was a victim of liquid damage, and the board connector on the main board seems to be slightly melted from the current. It was working, but after running full driver update it was finally stuck in the above boot loop again, then if it ran it was a BSOD after a few minutes, and now it's over with just three blinks on the power button. I've tried to drain the CMOS w/o main battery, but the problem persists. I have a theory that it's something more. Hence the question - I have a second hand motherboard to be bought, but it's with bios password locked, works, but locked, is it possible to simply reprogram the EEPROM of the BIOS to fix the lockout, or is it located somewhere else? Or is there any other simple solution to reanimate the board?

 

Also, what possible motherboard upgrades am I looking at? What generation motherboards fit into this machine? Gen3 looks promising, can anyone confirm compatibility?

 

Regarding t he motherboards option, I would recommend you to go with your guts with the third generation, it is by far the best ones I come across for laptop.

 

So far after a lot of digging I have encountered a statement with pictures that there is a slight incompatibility issue - LCD and one other ribbons won't fit. So there's that. Furthermore, after cleaning the board and installing driver's it seems that the short struck once again, the 3-Blinks-of-Doom came into the picture, it won't power up, even after full power draining