W520 shuts off intermittently, no BSOD or shut down

[jmcelroy]

Over the last week I took the time to read this entire topic. I received a new w520 from my employer about five months ago as they're rolling out new hardware to the entire department.

I have been suffering the SSS since day one. Attempted remedies included new hard drive, new Win7 install, new unit entirely, careful isolation of power manager settings by changing one factor at a time and noting results. For a while I suspected the dock as a factor and replaced it. After reading this, I also modified the memory bay door springs to ensure proper grounding.

No success.

I have lost countless hours of work over this issue despite being a frequent, almost obsessive, work "saver" as I work.

Symptoms are as described by others here: Instantaneous shut down with no warning and no errors logged other than the ones logged on reboot. Sometimes it would go unresponsive to mouse or keyboard input first.

I know my employer dropped some serious money on these units as they are loaded. I think they purchased eight or ten of them. Initially, the support dept. seemed convinced it was something I was doing or some software that I use. After sending them this, I hopefully have convinced them otherwise so they'll pursue a refund. Enough time and money has been wasted on these units.

I admire the efforts made by some here in isolating possible causes and proposing resolutions. Thank you. It is unfortunate that Lenovo hasn't stepped up and contacted registered users about this and offered a recall/refund.

This was my first Lenovo, and will likely be my last. I realize it's tough to generalize based on one experience, but I'd not had experiences like this with other laptops. I simply don't have the time to act as Lenovo's unpaid R&D department.

My employer is swapping it out for a two-year old T420 tomorrow. These have been in use at our company for a while and have had no issues. Oh well.

Thanks,
Jason 

[Alobar]

Could you please advise what kind of  "spare part" (user-serviceeable) did Lenovo sent?

Was it fairly easy to replace it?

Thanks a lot

[Mantas]

Hi

has anybody considered that it might be GPU (nvidia 2gb) problem? When I switched in bios to integrated gpu and alway anable "Lenovo turbo boost" (it makes fans work all the time). Reboots where happening only once in a while. But this weekend it started again. Maybe because I installed unity in VM and requires more GPU or maybe new antivirus :/ But it started again, though it was fine for more that half a year.

Biggest problem that I cannot my laptop away :/

[ThorsHammer]

Nothing has been ruled out.  The root cause has not been identified. And the one year anniversary fo this thread is coming up in just a few weeks.

[olegsv]

I've been having issues where my computer would go into the endless boot loop when resuming from standby. I did two things, and now I don't experience the issue:

1. Bent the metal fingers on the fingers holding the DIMMs on the rear RAM bay
2. Set the computer to Standby when the lid is closed in Windows properties (the ones in the Lenovo Power Manager properties do not persist as the Windows one has priority)

My guess is that static would build up in my laptop carry bag which would cause corruption in the RAM and prevent the machine from resuming. If that could be detected during POST and a message displayed, that would be better than just an automatic reboot loop.

[martinpr]

I have been running my Thinkpad W520 for more than a month now without experiencing any SSSs. Something has definitely changed for the better in my system whether it be reseating of the RAM and/or installation of the updated/stable drivers.

Really enjoying my notebook now that it is running very stable and smoothly. Its great being able to run Catia and other computationally intensive tasks without having to worry about overheating, something that I cannot say of the other HP Elitebook 8560s running here. I will probably keep the drivers as is for the time being to prevent any SSS repeats.

[skippur]

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martinpr wrote:
I have been running my Thinkpad W520 for more than a month now without experiencing any SSSs. Something has definitely changed for the better in my system whether it be reseating of the RAM and/or installation of the updated/stable drivers.

Really enjoying my notebook now that it is running very stable and smoothly. Its great being able to run Catia and other computationally intensive tasks without having to worry about overheating, something that I cannot say of the other HP Elitebook 8560s running here. I will probably keep the drivers as is for the time being to prevent any SSS repeats.

---

martinpr,

Recently sent my computer off to Lenovo repair and they ran a 5 hour test, then sent to the engineers for a 4 day test. Before this the computer ran without SSS for 2 weeks, then of course ran fine for the engineers, and ran fine for about another 2 weeks after returning home. The time estimates here are cautious it was probably around 5-6 weeks total. However, lo and behold last week on May 08 another SSS occured.

So martinpr could you do me a solid and send a list of your installed drivers. Here is an easy, quick way to do this. Either follow this How To article (http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/view-the-list-of-installed-drivers-the-easy-way/) or skip the article and download the tool it recommends here (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html). The download for DriverView is toward the bottom of the page the top two links are related software.

Once you have the DriverView unzipped (no installtion process) open it and click 'View' on the menu then select 'HTML Report - All Items' and it opens an HTML file. Save and e-mailing it to me would be greatly appreciated. 

ryanbmcc@gmail.com

[w520user999]

Its been many months since my last shutdown.....but then I just had one.  The intermittent nature of SSS makes me think that the issue will never be solved. 

Its been a year and still nothing from Lenovo on this issue.

[tbaugh]

I understand your frustration and the difficulty of finding a problem which is so intermittent. I had just about given up hope when Mark recommended trying a different computers memory. I have several of these units w520's and only one showed the symptoms. I had the computer in to lenovo twice, once for memory replacement and once for a new motherboard so I did not expect any different results but tried it anyway. The result... no failures.. I have no idea how 2 sets of new memory (samsung 4x2) could be bad be that seems to be the case. I've tried the memory in different sockets, etc. etc. ultimately this memory works when the others didn't. All memory tested fine.

[w520user999]

How long has it been since your last failure??

I mean, how are you sure replacing the memory solved the issue?

I been reading all of the theories and coming up with some myself, but when I have been free of SSS for months, and suddenly I have one, I feel that there is no way for me to determine what the issue is.

As other users have posted, I'm not going to act as Lenovo's R&D department.