Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

-DVDROM on/off Question?

~When I received my W520 the DVDROM would stay off and only turn on when I would open it to insert a disc.

~I have installed a mSATA and transferred the operating system to it. Since than the DVDROM stays on constantly.

__How do I set it back to factory specs. To only come on when a disc is inserted?

Thanks.

 

It's in the Advanced mode power profile settings. See my thumbnail for the location.

 

Has anyone used this battery slice with there W520? Batteries - Lenovo 3000 & ThinkPad R60/T60/Z60 Series

 

Thank you, that was too easy. +1 to Thors.Hammer

 

Please can someone help confirm that these memory stick are compactible with W520? Corsair 16GB (2X8GB) DDR3 1333MHz Laptop Memory Kit.. | Ebuyer.com

Thanks

 

Yes. Those sticks will work.
Here's another link. Maybe you can save a few euro, if the shipping charge isn't to crazy. FRYS.com | Corsair

 

Thanks

FRYS.com don't ship to the UK. I'll order from Amazon at £100 free delivery.

 

Not sure if this is a place to ask this question but hopefully someone has some advice. When I purchased my W520, I got a docking station with it for a home setup. I feel like I need another one for the office now, but this will add much cost. Even with the B&N discount, I am looking for $216 before tax. Any suggestions? I was thinking may be getting it and selling the adapter as I already have 2 adapters now!

 

What was the question?
The cheapest option is probably eBay.

What are you using the dock for in each location? It would put the dock at the location that has the most stuff to connect.

 

My work is flexible. I move back and forth between home and office (both have display, keyboard and mouse to connect--home keyboard and mouse are wireless but not the office). I am still not decisive whether or not I should buy one for the office especially that I share the office and I am afraid the docking station gets stolen).

I may end up just connecting the display, keyboard and mouse manually at the office each time I work there!

Sorry if this discussion's place is not supposed to be in this forum.

 

If you are worried it will be stolen in the office, I would take it home.

 

Thanks. Will think about it to see if it is worth the hassle of carrying it around versus just connecting my peripherals manually each time.

 

I want to dual boot on my new W520. One will be windows 7 and the other Windows Server 2008.

What's the best way to do this? I'm thinking of putting an SSD in the Ultrabay and load Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 on the main drive.

Or partition the main drive?

 

Anyone know how much have to be wrong before I can use my onsite warrenty? I have static noise when I use headphones, but if I gently press down on the area where the fingerprint reader is it disappears, but I dont want and sit and press that down when I listen to music

 

This depends on what you have as the main drive and where you need the performance. You can install R2 on the primary drive in a partition or a VHD. A VHD is much more portable in case you want to move it to an Ultrabay drive later.

What are you planning to do with R2? Run Hyper-V?

You might want to fork this dicussion out of the W520 owners thread.

 

No. I'm planning to run VMWare ESXi on one partition with images for SharePoint 2010 Environment.

I already have VMWare Workstation on my laptop, but want to test ESXi.

 

Hi, I've been thinking of buying the w520. I always look for build quality, good keyboard, good screen and speakers. I know the w520's build is good and its keyboard will be good, but am wondering how's the quality of the 1080p screen and the speakers? I've heard from a few websites that the speakers are pretty bad. I've also heard a rumor that when you unplug the w520 it throttles the cpu/gpu pretty severely, anybody know if this is true? Thanks!

 

Speakers aren't great but I always use headphones. Haven't notice any throttling on battery but the screen is excellent.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

 

You should still install Windows Server 2008 R2 in a VHD and boot from that VHD. It isn't a VM. It is running on the native hardware. The VHD is just a container for the files and as I said before, easily moved later. ESXi should not notice a difference.

The latest BIOS versions for the W520 have resolved nearly all of the throttling issues people wanted changed. The FHD screen is considered quite good. Bright and colorful. Good contrast and blacks. Reasonable angles.

 

I just purchased a Corsair Force 3 SSD and a cheap ultrabay from ebay, I was afraid of the height gap but I was lucky!
Image

I swapped the drives so now the SSD is the internal one and the HDD is in the ultrabay.
I also tried installing windows from scratch on the SSD, but after installing Lenovo software and updates Explorer crashed all the time.

So I ended up creating a recovery usb and running that on the SSD drive.
Now I can start on ram upgrades!

And yes I have to write about my GNU/Linux experiences on the machine.
To my surprise running Ubuntu 11.10 with Bumblebee 3.0 for graphic switching has been quite amazing.
Everything runs on the Intel card and the dedicated card is powered off, and when you need the dedicated card you just run the application with a simple command "optirun" and it turns on the dedicated card and uses it for that application.

It really shows the innovation the open source community can do, without touching the proprietary drivers they have managed to jury rig a solution.

 

There is throttling on battery, but "Throttlestop" fixes it.

 

where is this throttlestop and how do i find it?

 

What settings do you run on "Throttlestop"?

 

These are the settings I use:

My ThrottleStop Option Settings - Page 29 - Lenovo Community

Throttlestop is available for free download at:
http://www.techinferno.com/downloads/?did=9

PS: Since I work on battery a lot, this is a lifesaver!!!!

 

Hi Everyone,

I just replaced my W520's internal speakers due to the original one only made a 1 click sound in the left speaker. Anyway, I broke the copper clip on the copper heat pipe which routes the left speaker wires and the Wifi antenna wires on top of the heatsink. Is that going to create any problem? the design of this copper clip is just too easy to broke. and doesn't seem really that useful anyway.

Thanks

 

Hi All,

I did a clean install on my new Corsair Performance Pro 256GB SSD and I'm missing a driver in the "Device Manager" call "Base System Device".

Does anyone know the driver's name? Or how to look for the driver name?

 

Hi

I intend to get a friend in the US to order the w520 for me.
She'll customize the hardware according to how I want it, pay, receive the notebook, and send it to me halfway round the world.

I'm hoping she can check the hardware before she ships it. Just to make sure we're getting the hardware specs that we ordered.
If there's a need to, she can send it back to Lenovo for me.

Seems to me the best way to do this is:
Start button > "Performance Information and Tools" > "View and print detailed performance and system information"

Anything else I should check on 1st boot?
She's not a windows user, so I might have to provide screen shots somehow.

Thanks

 

Another question, can I used the AC Charger for my old T500 with W520?

 

My W520 turned ON from sleep twice (over 3 weeks) on its own while lying in my laptop bag. I discovered this after a long time when it has already become very hot and the fan became noisy. I do not think a harm has happened as it works fine but I just wanna know if any of you had a similar incidence and if so, why does it happen?

 

Because it was sleeping and something woke it up. In order to figure this out, please use Bing or Google. This isn't unique to the W520.

Hint: Powercfg

 

No, you cannot unless it's a 135W charger.

 

Multicard Reader driver, possibly?

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-77000

 

I'm not sure I would bother with her checking unless you are actually on the phone with her during the process. You're going to want her to ignore the anti-virus, Office 2010, and other offers on first boot, plug in your name for the userid, not set a password, ignore the network, etc.

 

Is this across all W520? I haven't tested it since I got my W520, but I didn't notice any throttling when I did. I'll test it out this weekend again.

 

If it isn't broke, don't fix it.

 

My W520 turns on in my bag all the time as well and I think it's from opening the cd-rom drive (which is very sensitive).

My new hard drive bay is coming in the mail soon so hopefully it won't be a problem after I take it out.

 

Check your hibernation settings if it is turning on. If there is a hibernation timer set and it can't hibernate for some reason, it'll just stay on for a minute and then go back to sleep if you don't do anything with it.

 

Do you use a wireless mouse? ( I found out that mine wakes up if I forget to turn off the wireless mouse.)

 

Yes, per Lenovo, this is "by design".
(What Thors is trying to say: If you are not running "heavy-duty" apps, you may not notice it.)

 

That was it. Thanks

 

Correct. The only folks that need to worry about this are folks that run simulations or some sort of demo that needs full performance while on battery, because a wall plug isn't available. The percentage of people this applies to is really low.

With the new BIOS, the machine will run nice and cool on battery and still turbo up when needed for spikes in CPU and GPU processing. It will then settle back down.

Throttlestop is not needed for the masses. A good understanding of the BIOS power management settings along with a good understanding of the settings for a Power Manager profile (advanced mode) is a better course of action for the vast number of people.

 

There is a solution for this issue.

 

Ah I see.
User ID I could tell her in advance what to use, and to not set a password.
I can get her to ignore the network too.

Stuff like anti-virus, office 2010, and other offers, do they turn up before you get to the desktop screen?
Do they come in the form of pop-ups, so that you can just go ahead and click on the Windows start button anyway to bring up the hardware info? (and just shut down after that)

If that's how it works, I can go through the "valueware" stuff after the second boot on my own.

Or are they a series of full screen steps you cannot skip and have to go through? (like how you have to enter your user ID)

 

Where can I buy a spare 170W AC Charger for my W520?

 

I downloaded the Power Manager from here Power Manager for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), Vista (32-bit, 64-bit) - ThinkPad

But when I try to install, it crashes on setup and minimizes to taskbar showing "setup", but can't expand it.

What should I do?

 

I just got my w520 last night, and I'm having some problems. Hopefully someone out there can help!

I replaced the main HDD with an Intel 160GB SSD (the older G2 series, not the 300/500 series). Then I swapped in 2 sticks of Corsair 4GB DDR3-1600 RAM. Installed Win7 Pro, and then ran Windows Update, and installed all the Lenovo software using the ThinkVantage tools.

Now, I get about 2-3 minutes of use after a reboot, and then I start getting "Windows Explorer stopped responding" errors. Happens randomly, no matter what I've been doing. Restarting/closing explorer doesn't fix the problem. Other stuff seems to keep running just fine in the background though. (file copies, program installs), I just can't click on anything anymore with that error. A restart fixes the problem for about a min or two, then the same thing again.

I wiped the drive and ran the install again (this time doing the Lenovo updates before Windows Update) and the same thing happens.

I'm running Memtest86 right now to see if there's anything there. Anything else I should try?

 

You are installing http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8mu416ww.exe ??? That is version 3.66. Don't forget to install the power management driver first. It is version 1.64.

I bought mine on amazon and saved a few dollars. See Amazon.com: Thinkpad 135W Ac Adapter: Electronics

This is the 135W charger and works with the W520 as long as it isn't the extreme proc version with RAID.

 

First things first. Disable the Flash add-in. Go to adobe.com and download and install the latest version of Flash. Re-enable the Flash add-in. This is usually the problem.

 

Thanks Thors, it's working now. I've now install Power Management Driver 1.64 and it's working.

Thanks a lot

 

I let MemTest run all last night, no errors this morning.

I have tried what you suggested, but it didn't seem to have any effect. I did say that Windows Explorer was crashing, not Internet Explorer (if that makes any difference for this issue with Flash) Basically it hangs when I right click the desktop, or try to open the Start menu, or click on the notification area, etc.

I noticed that the ThinkVantage power manager wasn't showing up. After a number of Explorer crashes, it finally popped up, and after that showed up, the machine worked perfect. Until the next restart, when the power manager was lost again. I'm uninstalling and reinstalling the power manager driver and software now..