Lenovo T450s takes 35 seconds before showing splash screen

Hi all

After month's of carefull selections and returning 1 laptop that did not fit my needs I ended up with a amazing Lenovo Thinkpad T450s (+dedicated Nvidia 940M GPU). After a week of testing I decided that it felt that this was a keeper. Thus I ripped it open and swapped the HDD with a 512GB Samsung 850 PRO SSD.

Now the problem(s):
1. When starting up the machine, it takes about 35 seconds before the first screen activity appears (Lenovo splash screen). After that it boots quite normal.
2. When waking out of sleep mode it takes 11 seconds before I see the power led stopping to "breath" and the screen wakes up.

It feels like this is a hardware/bios related issue, as (so far I know) hdd/ssd is only accessed after the bios has loaded and has finished its hardware checks. When sticking in a bootable usb it only starts flickering after the bios had loaded on screen.

Question:
Does anyone has an idea why my laptop is waiting so long to boot or to wake up? I don't mind waiting a bit, but waiting for 35 seconds + the normal boot time is really annoying. Specially with the fact that the laptop doesn't show any sign of live for 35 seconds after briefly lighting up the keyboard backlights. The wake-up delay is also very annoying since even my 7 year old BSOD laptop wakes-up faster, and I'm using sleep mode a lot.

Some origins that I'm thinking about:
- Hardware check during initial hardware startup does not yet recognize a dedicated GPU card. (POST: Power On Self Test)
- I don't think this is a problem with my software since the problems occurs before reading any media.

Things I tryed already:
- Reset bios.
- Start in legacy mode.
- Bios update
- rebuilding MBR (although I don't expect this to be the problem.)
- Refreshing windows installation although I don't expect this to be the problem.)

This problem was already at the beginning (with origenal hardware):
From the first time I started the laptop (so even with the HDD) I noticed it took quite long to start. I remember pressing the ON/OFF button multiple times and thinking I did something wrong, when suddenly the "Lenovo" splash screen appeared.

I hope someone can help me!

 

A couple of questions:

a) What OS are you running?

b) Is the current install on the SSD a fresh one, or a clone?

c) Have you tried removing the BIOS battery from the machine for 5-10 minutes and then re-inserting it?

 

A) Windows 8.1 64 Pro, or Linux from USB (Mint, Debian, Ubuntu)
B) SSD is a clone, HDD is fresh, USB is fresh
C) Have not removed the BIOS battery yet, but did factory reset for bios. Will try the battery thing though, thanks.

 

I just made a service call to IBM for this problem.
Most likely they are going to change my mainboard, a engineer is going to call me for this.

I guess a new mainboard should fix the problem since it effects so many parts (Bios, NB, CPU, GPU, Voltage regulators, Kernel and Bios software)

I will post my updates here.

 

My problems have been solved!


I called the support from lenovo Thinkpad. I wasn't really sure this would come to a good end after the call. But 5 day's later an IBM engineer contacted me that they have recieved a spare mainboard and they wanted to make an appointment. I gave them the adress where I worked the next day since I'm very mobile, and the next day an engineer came by. He seemed like a skilled IBM engineer and tested my machine and came to the same conclusion as me. He then did a few tests to see if the problem was caused by something else then the mainboard but ended by replacing my mainboard with good care.


After the replacement the the boot and wake-up time was normal like it should be. I'm very pleased by the service Lenovo ThinkPad has given me.

 

It's very good to hear that you've received excellent service and that the machine is now fully functional. Enjoy!

 

Hi,
Happy it works out for you.
could you tell me where you got the laptop??
ive been looking for ages for where i can buy it with the GPU