Lenovo W510 Owner's Thread

Yes, ThinkPad_Black.jpg = backgroundDefault.jpg. I just checked - the binaries are absolutely the same.

 

thanks guys, i wasnt sure if it was the same, i only went into windows couple times with the stock load just to test everything is ok before reloading

i already put it up as the logon screen, looks great

what about the play i was mentioning over the usb3, is mine only doing that or is it normal

 

It's all about plastic.. I had almost the same issue but in my case it was in the area between VGA port and DisplayPort and I just used a small piece of black electrical tape to fix the problem (the 1 mm gap is still there but at least it doesn't creak now) other than that the build quality is good. You can actually find a lot of discussions on this forum related to similar issues.. just search for 'creak'. For example:
W510 Build Quality
T410: The loudest laptop plastic I have ever owned

 

Well the mystery of why Windows has been unable to see my WWAN card is now solved.

I opened up my machine to install some additional ram, and while doing so I noticed that the card is simply not there. Unbe*******lievable. I certainly know for a fact that I ordered my machine with the card, I have quadruple checked my invoice and my confirmation email. But Lenovo never bothered to put it in.

Now the question becomes, how do I deal with this? Is Lenovo going to believe me when I call them and tell them the card just isn't there? I refuse to send the machine in, I need it for my job.

VERY VERY ANGRY WITH LENOVO.

 

wow if inside 21 days return it but that's not the case with you.

you should call them and explain (if call goes to India good luck) or ask for sale person in Atlanta office to get you some kind of response.

 

Update on the USB 3.0 with hub issue in case those are interested or intend to buy a USB 3.0 hub for use with the W510. After several weeks I finally received confirmation from the Support Depot that they have duplicated the issue and, after replacing the system board and bluetooth adapter, the issue still persists. USB 3.0 external hard can be left plugged in and the computer booted but hubs (and likely some other devices) cannot be left plugged in or the computer hangs on booting and/or disables bluetooth. The last BIOS fix was supposed to address this but apparently there are still issues. I have reluctantly given up and requested my laptop back...which will likely cost me $100 to get shipped here in 2 - 3 weeks overseas since Lenovo won't ship to Guam. They said over the phone that the problem has been elevated from the Engineers (after initial elevation from general tech support) to corporate. We'll see what happens I guess. I just wish they had worked faster as I would've at least had my laptop now and not had to pay.

 

HeyUp folk! , anyone had "machine_check_exception" BSOD on W510 at any point? I'm suspecting drivers :/ it happened to me 3 times now at random. rumor has it there were some i7 corrupted chips and next gen was recalled.

as with USB 3.0 problem, we all have it! I had 3 W510 in on hands all had it no matter what Bios ver was on them. its a quirk , yes bad one but never the less.

but mike seriously just talk to rep and ask them to compensate it isnt your fault and if its a deal breaker your are customer and you are right!

 

Spoke to lenovo regarding missing WWAN card. They claim, I never ordered it, and did not pay for it. I can't prove anything.

Not likely to deal with Lenovo again.

 

I don't understand. In the first message you said you had your confirmation e-mail and invoice. In the second message you said you couldn't prove anything. Was it listed on there or not?

 

My Workaround for the CPU whine:

I created a 4 hours long silent mp3 (encoded at bitrate 5 to reduce space) and as soon as you play that file with mplayer the whine stops.

This has several advantages over disabling CPU power management:

• it does force the CPU to not go below power state C3 (creating the disturbing noise), which means the battery will be drained faster, but absolutely not as fast as removing power management by BIOS.
• it doens't interfere with other audio playback processes or programs or even other istances of mplayer
• it uses a very little part of the CPU, it's almost unnoticeable
• You can stop it whenever you want (i.e. when on AC power) and have your laptop back at power state C4

On C3 CPU stabilizes itself on a temperature around 50 degree celsius (while on C4 may drop down to 40), but this is the price to pay for a quiet laptop.

 

pretty good...I like that..

 

How can i do it? disabling CPU power management?

 

you can do it from bios

 

just be careful because disabling CPU power management brings the CPU temperature as high as 70-75 degrees celsius, forcing the fan to work almost constantly at full power creating a noise probably even worse than the CPU whine.

 

Quite horrible, but that's what we do when we get desperate.

For the record, under linux you can (at least in the past) limit cstates with passing max_cstate=2 for the processor module. I did that for years with my T61p.
For windows, apparently RMClock allowed to do something similar.

 

I set intel_idle.max_cstate=2 inside grub and the whine stopped, many thanks!!!

Now I have only the other while left (nvidia whine on decreasing brightness), and the laptop is finally 100% quiet.

For all the rest, I'm very happy with this machine, fast and solid built.

 

What's with the CPU whine on the W510? You think the W520 will have the same issue?

 

Probably. This issue has been going on for years. It is related to power management, and is not likely to be fixed any time soon.

 

IBM says that the W520 does not have the CPU whine. I have a W510 920XM - which has a terrible CPU whine. I am getting a W520 with the 2920XM and I guess we will see in a few weeks.

 

IBM/Lenovo said that the W510 didn't have it either, LOL! At any rate, I hope they've resolved it.

 

when you are on battery it happens if you under power CPU (not keeping it on max performance)

I don't get it if power supply is connected & CPU performance on "Max". When I am on battery anything less than max performance will create tiny bit of noise randomly.

 

I wonder if the W520 will have better sound (including speakers).

 

New bios
26 Mar 2011
1.37/1.37

Change log don´t said anything about CPU shine.... :S

 

I am not sure but after updating to 1.37 bios everything is smooth.

Also make sure you select "Engery Saving" from power management software (also updated)

 

temperature which you can successfully drop by using this ---> TPFanControl by troubadix (I would donate) I use it every day and also you can customize the fan speed pattern (google).

default setting number 2 is satisfactory for me when cpu goes into 70-99% usage.

beware that non registry mode seems more stable than otherwise (experience)

 

(correction im on 37 now and all looking good sbut update took about 10minutes in total ,was saying needs extra time when using CD ) damn anyone please report how it goes,and if CPU shines we are golden! :}

 

Hi guys, im from Italy and i bought a lenovo's w510 some week ago

Here's my config!

Model : NTM2CIX 4389-2CG

Intel Quad Core i7-820QM
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64
15.6" FHD LED Touchscreen
nVidia FX-880M
Pantone Color Sensor
Fingerprint
8 GB PC3-8500 DDR3 (2 DIMM) Max 16gb
640GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm Raid0
6cell, LI Battery TWSL
Integrated Bluetooth PAN
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300
MS+M2+MMC+SD+XD
1*USB 2.0+3*USB 3.0+MODEM+FIREWIRE 400
SATA PORT / VGA / HDMI
3 Years Warranty

 

how much you paid

 

2617 eur, but cant compare with .us princes since in Europe shipping prices are much higher than USA and we cant customize our laptops, the only thing that we're able to do (at least in Italy) its to choose available models

 

ah forgot eu can't do that way...understand the price difference.

 

this is crazy price! mine was about 1600$

New Video driver released "Non Lenovo" http://www.nvidia.com/object/notebook-win7-64bit-267.76-whql-driver.html

 

Yeah but u've to consider that if in usa a lenovo's laptop its selled out for 1600$ here the same model it will selled @ 1600 eur, they don't do the exact mathematical currency conversion....., ah btw we havent 'students' prices even :/, too bad in fact for us that we cant buy from .us lenovo's store and then import here hehe

 

Just got my own W510, seems like a very solid machine so far, but...

Flash based videos (youtube, NHL highlights etc) are quite choppy at fullscreen for some reason. Surely the hardware must be more than capable of handling them...I tried installing different video card drivers to no avail.

Help anyone?

[edit] I must also add that I did a clean install of Windows [/edit]

 

Lenovo Support - Drivers and software - ThinkPad T410, T410i, T410s, T410si, T510, T510i and W510

download all latest drivers from above link

 

I'd recommend downloading Lenovo System Update instead. It will automatically download and install all the drivers and utilities you need:
Lenovo Support - ThinkVantage System Update

EDIT: Also, make sure you are using a suitable power profile. Switch to "High Performance" and see if that makes a difference.

 

Thanks for the responses. Thinkvantage Update seems to have done the trick, the video performance is much better.

Could I ask a few more questions, if you wouldn't mind:

Is there a way to middle click on the touchpad? The Synaptics touchpad on my old HEL80 recognizes two finger tap as middle click and three finger tap as right click, but looking at Thinkpad touchpad options, I can't seem to locate something similar to that.

Also, is there a way not to have the laptop wake up from sleep mode on wireless mouse register? It wakes up every time the mouse is moved, and unless the wireless dongle is plugged out, it is impossible to keep it sleeping.

Thanks in advance.

 

In the device manager, find the device and set the power settings to not allow wake.

 

Just spent 3 hrs replacing the HD LCD on my notebook with an FHD w/3yr warranty that I bought at laptopscreens.com. Figured it would have taken me two hours, but the wiring was a bear and I got a little off on the bezel connector because I wasn't/didn't pay enough attention to the graphic in the instruction. Couldn't figure out why the damn fingerprint reader, touchpad and trackpad weren't working.

All in all though, for $115 versus the $450 upgrade that Lenovo charges, pretty happy. Damn this thing is pretty.

 

i'm looking for the w520...and i think the display is the same..

the fhd of the w510 is comparable at the macbook pro display ? better ?

thnks

 

good job isnt it strange how screens dropped in the recent i hope next gen thinkpads will have AMOLED FHD

 

concur with OREV,but system update can also be the cause of your problem.

choppy flash is related to intel chipset drivers installed after video drivers so several restarts will be required.

best thing to do the uninstall (with restarts to get read of any previous drivers) of the video drivers and after that uninstall chipset drivers "completely", and then install chipset drivers first again restart then install video driver on top and after that fresh flash. all needs restarting just like always.

problem of "system update" is it installs in a bulk that's why it has "install deferred updates" option since "wrong order problem" exists.

 

has everyone abandoned this laptop?

Ive been having issues lately,
First is I randomly get a blank screen under normal use, no games, or solidworks. Then after it flashes back, I get a "Video driver has stopped working". Im using the latest lenovo supplied graphic driver.

Also, Ive noticed a few times that words on web pages are not where they are supposed to be. Now I thought that was from the IE 9 browser, but today when I opened a power point slideshow, the print was off on a slide while everyone elses was fine, and they have W500's.

Does this sound like I have a graphics card going out or what?

 

I went with the Beta driver from NVIDIA to resolve that issue. I never went back to the Lenovo driver, because the beta drivers have been so much more stable. I'm bleeding edge on that note I guess... Try it before initiating a service call. NVIDIA - Download Drivers

 

Thanks, Ill go give it a try.
Are you doing a full uninstall of the old driver first, or just installing it over the old one?

 

install over , but restart still

 

I uninstalled the old and deleted residual traces of it before installing the new one.

 

W510, Nvidia Qudardo FX 880M video, and what I'm seeing on occasion is a Windows 7 (64-bit) recovery, screen blanks out, goes 2-3 seconds, then recovers, things go back to normal, but a message displays saying that an error was detected in the video, and it has recovered. Per System Update at least, I'm current on the Lenovo downloads. SIW shows the driver level as 8.17.12.5738 (2010-06-27). Nvidia web-site shows their current driver level on the wen-site as 270.61 (2011-04-18), which is a considerably newer date at least. So two questions:

1. Has anyone else seen Driver/Recovery issues on Win 7 (64)
2. Has anyone directly run the Nvidia video drivers and had them run OK?

Seems like it would be nice for Lenovo to update their drivers, if indeed this is a driver issue, they appear back-level.

 

I see this once in a while but it seems to recover and work ok. I tried the Nvidia drivers and while they worked OK for some things, they caused the sound on hdmi output to stop working. There was a lot of discussion in the nvidia forum about it, and supposedly it was fixed. That was about 5 months ago and I haven't had a chance to try them since. If you don't use sound on hdmi out, or are willing to test it out, you can try the official nvidia drivers.

I still have the original lenovo version of the dirvers if you need to rollback

 

Did you not read a couple posts before you posted? I had the same problems, updated to the newest Nvidia driver and have not had any issues since. Ill let everyone know if I do.

Where do you have an HDMI output? Or are you using an adapter?

 

* I have the same issue about recovery 2-3 seg, but don´t know how to fix, or may try another drivers.

Anyone know the best Nvidia driver for win 7 x64?