W520 cuts off at random [ Edited ]

[xhu12]

Many users have been discussing about this problem since months in this thread:

http://forum.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/W520-shuts-off-intermittently-no-BSOD-or-shut-d...

Unfortunately, no effective solution has been found so far. Hope a solution will be released soon. Disabling the CPU power control in the BIOS setting might help, but it will lead to a significant increase of the CPU temperature during idle (65C as reported by some users).

[maortl]

sorry that i cant offer any help

but i'd really like to know for how long you had this machine until it happened first time

it seems there are alot of people poping with this problem

so i wonder if this problem is just a matter of time until everyone would suffer from it...

if that thing will happened i guess Lenovo should get all their lawyers ready

and the history in this forum aint in their favor for helping those customers who suffer this problem

and suffer a huge lose of work\time = money in the end...

[ThorsHammer]

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ToddPMan wrote:
@ThorsHammer: Yes, I suppose I will update to the latest BIOS, but I was actually, first hoping to go back to the BIOS I had prior to the update I did two days ago, as I hadn't had any shut downs (4+ weeks) with the older BIOS... may have just be a conicidence, not sure if the BIOS could cause the Kernel-Power fault or not? If everyone doubts the BIOS could cause the shut down, then, yes, I'll update to the latest.

@xhu12: Did the disablement of the CPU power manager in the BIOS do anything for your machine?

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 I believe JamieZ posted a link to the location of all of the BIOSes so if you dig around you should be able to find it.  I'll look later when I have more time.

[wolfindersteppe]

I have tested with 1.30 BIOS and it was still randomly shut down, not solved. Now with disabled CPU power option in BIOS the 6th day in the row without random shut down and still observing. I strongly agree that this is not a solution, after the engineer get cleared what is the issue I want my device to be repaired.

[LMS_CAVSE]

I had the machine for around a month before the shut off problem started occuring (its not the only issue I have dealt with).

I did find that long forum after I posted this, to which I am dismayed that there is no answer to. I am starting to wonder if it was a mistake to buy another lenovo computer, but in the past I did have good luck with them. It seems the product quality and service has began to suffer.

Unfortunately since I just bought this computer I will be stuck with it for a while, so I hope a solution is found...

[BrendaEM]

Do the shutdown happen plugged in, on battery, or both?

While stationary, or moving the machine?

[LMS_CAVSE]

So far its always stationary, with both battery and plugged in, twice while sitting on the dock, once while just sitting on a desk

[ToddPMan]

@wolfindersteepe: Thanks for the update. I've installed 1.3 BIOS yesterday... we'll see how it goes a bit before I also test the disabling of the CPU power option. Do keep us informed of your progress.

[wolfindersteppe]

Moderator, please make this thread BOLD and move it to the top of the topic listing - it is the hottest stuff for now, unfortunately.

[PipoDeClown]

Ok,

last saturday i have reinstalled Windows 7 x64 again. Installed drivers, some from Lenovo site, others from Intel and Nvidia. Only other Lenovo software is System Update and disabled the update service. Actually its useless because it wont recognize the drivers that i've already installed. B.t.w. Windows 2008 R2 is flying on this machine, but alas some things don't work out of the box. You would need to do a lot of tweaking e.g. power settings and bluetooth.

last week friday i have disabled CPU power management in BIOS. My experience so far:

- no sudden freezes or shutdowns as before.

- as long as you keep the enormous powerbrick connected and let the high amps flow to this machine, it wil keep running.

- the laptop uses more energy. The fan is more busy.

- save your documents if you want to run on batteries only! Even though it still says 6h to 8h running time, don't trust it.

- closing the lid will standby the ThinkPad, pray to some unknown God to let it come out from this limbo. That God will laugh at you so hard.

- safest is hibernation Fn-F12 it does work.

- today a KERNEL INPAGE DATA something BSOD after furious clicking in some remote desktop session. The first boot after this made me freak out! No disk found, **bleep**!!! Calm down, poweroff, poweron, chkdsk and resume my work. The BSOD could be caused by the 4x4GB Kingston 1600DDR3 PNP SO-DIMM's or the Seagate Momentus XT? I really would like that to be the truth... But but the freezes and shutdowns happened even before i put in this stuff. So...

After the BSOD i installed the ThinkPad Power Manager which gives me lot more settings and Fn-F3 works again. Tomorrow i will test my laptop with wireless and batteries. Crosses my fingers.

The Chinese have a saying something like: customer is king until he pays.