Lenovo W520 Owner's Thread

My understanding is Lenovo has 2 levels of tech support - basic and a service they sell: ThinkPlus Priority Tech Support. From what I have been reading in this forum, I have not read any complaints regarding the ThinkPlus Priority Tech Support:

Would anyone that has purchased the ThinkPlus Priority Tech Support please report their level of satisfaction with this enhanced tech support service.

 

I also have a bad 1339. System won't even turn on with it installed. Hopefully my Kingston 1600Mhz ram comes in soon.

 

I can't comment on the priority, but I've had nothing but excellent service from their standard support. We have over a hundred Thinkpad laptops in the company, gone through several hundred over the years and never had an issue. And no, we don't have a corporate account or anything and we don't buy them through Lenovo.

 

Same issue with the 1339 crucial ram from Newegg. I could see it in the bios, 16GB, but got the blue screen of death, PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, when starting up. Did not mix the RAM, used all 16G of 1339 Crucial. I was not able to get into safemode, etc. I tried reseating it, one chip, 2, etc, and same thing. Put the one 4g Samsung back in and no problem. Sent it back to Newegg and going to try something else. Hoping it’s a problem with the RAM and not some other underlying issue with the pc. W520 / 4270CTO / 2720 QM.

 

Did you order the single packages or the doubles? Mine were all single. Two were good, one was not. What I'd like to hear from anyone else, do you have a fully populated W520 / 2720QM / 4270CTO running with Crucial RAM? What about something else ... I saw hrana had Kingston.

 

He could always go by an old-style tire shop, get some lead weights, and balance the CD himself.

 

Sounds exactly like the problems I am having with my brand new (1 week) TP W520.

 

Hi,

I liked your video.

My response to your thoughts on the W520;

I agree that the laptop runs very cool; I use TPFC and the fan is generally inaudible or off during general browsing, but, I am getting some pulsing of the fan, which is really annoying when in a silent room.

From my experience so far, I find the Thinklight is next to useless, and in no way compares with a backlit keyboard; however, i'm not really fussed about having a backlit keyboard.

Equally with the fingerprint reader; I find this really annoying, it doesn't recognise my finger swipe first time often, and it makes the machine make electrical noise if activated when the machine is off. I've disabled myn for these reasons.

Touchpad: I use the wireless bluetooth Thinkpad mouse, which is really good, and can thoroughly reccomend it for much quicker mouse control compared with a touchpad.

 

#DMARK06 score of GTX 460M, running with Sandy Bridge i7-2630QM, i7-2720QM & i7-2820QM.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...-sandy-bridge-laptop-g73sw-coming-soon-7.html

 

I ordered the doubles. Newegg has other recent doa's reviews on the 1339's. I would also like to hear some success stories and what RAM others are using to get a fully populated W520 / 2720QM / 4270CTO.

 

I have a w520 / 2720QM / 4270CTO with 16 GB of Patriot 1600 working well.

 

I ordered 1339 doubles from Insight.

 

The newegg picture shows Micron RAM chips on the Patriot. The Crucial RAM were also Micron, wonder if the 1333 Mhz ones have a bad batch. But it's good to hear that 1600 RAM works on all slots. So it shouldn't be a design flaw on motherboard.

Ok, so it's not just the batch from Newegg that's problematic. Read a recent review at Newegg that said he got one direct from Crucial that was bad.

 

What kind of battery life does the w520 get with a 9cell plus slice in a quad core and quadro 2000m?

 

Yeah the first two work great. The second two had one bad one in them. Both pairs from Insight. I'm replacing them all with the Kingston HyperX 1600Mhz though.

 

6-9 hours depending on usage. With the slice batter, 12-18 hours.

It's an all day machine with the slice battery, I've liked having it a lot. As another bonus, with the slice battery attached it raises the back, AND, this is nice for you mobile performance guys, booting the machine with the slice attached the BIOS does NOT disable turbo boost!!!

 

Hello,

I am new to this board but have followed and read the this thread for the past weeks and I am planning to buy a W520 soon. I would like to have a nearly perfect Notebook that will accompany me for the next 3-4 years but since I have seen and test the predecessor W510 at a local store and also read the W520 review on notebookcheck.de I am a bit uncertain about the display - brightness, resolution, colors .....

Does someone think, try or plan to upgrade to an IPS panel? I read about the x220, DreamColor and LG Panels. What about the W520 and changing the panel to a 300+ nits IPS Panel?

greets Peter

 

I was experiencing the same thing!! However, once I changed the wireless mode from 802.11 a/b/g to 802.11b ONLY mode, everything runs just fine. I suspect that the 802.11 g is more prone to interference than then b mode.

I would appreciate if anyone can advice solutions on this issue as the g mode is almost 3 times faster than the b mode when streaming from the same router!!

 

Is this the slice battery you have: Lenovo Support - ThinkPad Battery 27++ (9 cell slice) - Overview ?

 

Well I've diagnosed my problem a little further and think it is an incompatibility between my wireless router and the 6300. My router (a DLINK DIR-615) is running DD-WRT firmware which is not playing ball. I have temporarily setup a different wireless access point (NetGear WAG102) and everything seems to be running fine over 802.11g. What the root cause is I don't know but I'm making progress.

Still not sure why I can't see many access points though. Maybe there is a setting somewhere to boost the wireless card's strength to pick up more access ponts?

 

Thanks man.

After coming from an MBP, fan noise doesn't bother me at all. I'm used to it by now. I agree that it can be annoying when it spins up and down though.

I just find that it lights up the entire area on and around the keyboard and isn't intrusive or annoying. I just thought that it was a good alternative as the scissor keys can't be backlit all that easily.

It works for me on the first time, every time as long as the light is green. IDK if you messed up your image or something.

Yeah, I have a Logitech Anywhere MX mouse. It's awesome. I still like using a trackpad or the trackpoint because of the lack of bulkiness and extra stuff to deal with.

Thanks again.

 

I mention a few days ago that SSD Caching won't work on RAID-enabled W520's because we need Lenovo to update the Intel Option ROM to version 10.5.0.1034 before we can experiment with it. Lenovo's email support misunderstood my request and scheduled me for a "BIOS update" appointment on the next business day. I cancelled and will have to call them and try to get to Level 2 tech support.

I can confirm another issue in RAID-enabled W520 machines and UEFI. As best as I understand it, Lenovo has NOT included UEFI drivers (EBC) for the Intel RAID functionality. Once UEFI is switched on the system won't initialize RAID functionality properly. The only way to use UEFI is to disable RAID. I'll try installing it that way and see if I can enable RAID later. Again, this is an easy fix. All Lenovo needs to do is embed the UEFI drivers in the Intel Option ROM but this seems to have slipped their Q&A testing.

I wonder if both the 10.5.0.1034 Option ROM and UEFI drivers could be embedded with a BIOS hack. I'll have to do some research on it.

For those of you with RAID-enabled W520's, are you using the mSATA device, RAID, and UEFI together? If so, I'd be interested in your configuration.

 

It appears that the Intel HD Graphics driver is NOT for the W520. Only the T520/T420 are listed in the driver matrix (the W520 column says "NA"), and the driver write-up does not list the W520. Not sure why the W520 is "NA," since it does, indeed have integrated Intel graphics, but there you are.

 

I did a search on "What is UEFI good for?" and found: Uefi, what is it good for?- The Inquirer
I can see how UEFI will be important in the future. BTW, what are you using UEFI for today?

 

I tried to install the NVIDIA Optimus driver and I got: "Install cannot continue. -The graphics driver could not find compatible graphics hardware."
So I installed an even newer version directly from NVIDIA.com: NVIDIA DRIVERS 270.61 WHQL

It worked. But is it advisable to go to NVIDIA.com or am I better off sticking with official Lenovo drivers?

 

Hey I have a quick question about the sound card. I got my w520 yesterday and installed a few applications on it. When running Starcraft 2, I noticed that the audio seemed to be muffled periodically and then jump back to the regular sound. This happens quite often. Is it the result of a bad sound card, or is it another problem?

 

Faster boot-up times at the moment. Lenovo needs to address the issue of UEFI + RAID since most motherboards today work with both activated. There are other deficiencies in Lenovo's UEFI implementation but since they're not earth shattering limitations I won't get into them.

 

That's the one.

 

Understood.

My W520 is a "rocket", once it is "airborne", but boot up time is excruciatingly slow with RAID0 and SSD.

 

Nice! Yeah I was hoping it would be pretty good. Im not in the market for a while but Im hoping the slice setup sticks around as Id love to have a workstation with great battery life. The whole reason why I got rid of my quad core laptop is I needed better battery life.

 

My only wish is that they would write the power manager to balance the load on the two batteries. You can do it manually to avoid deep draining one of them all the time, there's a switch on the slice to flip it on and off, however it'd be nice if it was all automatic.

 

My RAID0 will not boot in UEFI mode - only in Legacy Mode.

 

I'm using DLINK DIR-600, not sure which firmware is running though ... but it's very likely that the issue is caused by incompatibility of the router and 6300 ( I've no issue with the wireless on g mode at workplace). Please let me know if the driver update fix up the problem. Thanks!

 

My problem was everything seemed just fine with the card but no access points could be found. Everything in "Device Manager" for the card looked right. Even if I keyed in the wireless info manually, still wouldn't connect. Reseated the card and disconnected/reconnected the antenna to no avail. Once the card was replaced, access points could be connected to so I think it was just defective.

I've had no problems with the card after that.. nothing like you describe. I hope you are able to solve it.

 

New drive (slightly worse but I'm still happy with the performance)
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 V3LT-25SAT3-240G.oem 2.5" 240GB SATA III - SSD

Defective drive was a
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

Anyone know what preconfigured models are available in the UK? Is that the ones mentioned in that pdf from the US as well? And if yes can you link to it again?

 

i7-2630QM, 14292
3DMARK06 score for both CPU

i7-2720QM, 14978

i7-2820QM, 15757

is it worth to get 2MB extra cache with $200? because score difference is quite high.

 

What subscore you are getting with 1600 memory in Performance Information and Tools?
Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB 7.6 is this better than 7.6?

 

It's not really worth it for that price. Just stick to the 2720qm

 

So Lenovo just posted BIOS (UEFI) update for W520. Anyone brave enough to give it a try after the botched Bluetooth update?

Lenovo Support - BIOS Update Utility for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), Vista (32-bit, 64-bit), XP - ThinkPad

 

Hello,

I got my W520 with 8gb memory factory installed and I got additional 8gb from newegg. When I opened the bottom slot to install the two 4gb modules I got I saw a 4GB already there (factory installed). Looks like one 4gb stick was installed under the keyboard and another 4gb at the bottom of laptop when it came from factory.

I wasnt sure why they didnt install both 4gb under the keyboard - so I took out the memory that was at the bottom and installed that under the other slot under keyborad. Then I installed the two dimm I got from newegg on the bottom of laptop.

Now both the factory installed RAM are under the keyboard and the two 4gb modules from newegg are under the bottom of laptop.

But I came across a thread that said

"2 slots under the keyboard, and 2 under the laptop. They should be paired, slots 1 (keyboard)+2(bottom), 3(keyboard)+4(bottom)."

Since my setup is not like that would be an issue? The system is working fine in my current setup though. Just wanted to make sure I am using the memory in optimal way.

Appreciate any thoughts...

Thanks

 

Should be fine as long as they are all similar spec. Mine is running 0-Crucial,1-Samsung,2-Crucial,3-empty right now. Did you run memtest86+ or PC Doctor to verify your RAM? Which modules do you have installed?

 

Does anybody know what this is? Maybe we can now use the 90W adapter with throttling (wishful thinking)

 

Forgive me if my searches have not found perfect answers to my wonders about the W520.

First of all, how good is the screen, really? I understand that the Huey Pro colorimeter is an option, but what is the point, if the screen is still TN (as I've read)? To those of you who do graphics and/or photo editing and need reliable color accuracy and gamut (hopefully from a more than a +/- 1 degree viewing angle) how does the W520 screen deliver?

Are there any issues with the W520 not accepting certain SSD's? Optimally I'd like to put a 240GB Vertex 3 or Corsair Force 3 in it.

Hardware-wise the W520 with Q2720 looks very promising, faster than the overclocked Q9550 desktop it would be replacing in almost every respect. How does the machine hold up to 100% CPU loading for hours on end?

I've been trying to get an outdoor-screened X220t, but it seems like Lenovo is doing everything possible to make that not happen. If I'm going to have to drop $1600 on a laptop, I'd rather get the power of the W520 than the same X220t that I know Lenovo can sell for $1200 (but apparently doesn't want to).

Thanks for your answers.

 

I'll fire it up tonight...what's the worst thing that could happen?

I don't see anything about making RAID arrays visible under UEFI so I don't know what benefit this will have for me though.

 

You should be fine as long as you have all four DIMMs filled with the same type of memory. If you weren't using all four DIMM slots, then you'd have to "pair" the memory in the appropriate slots to get maximum performance. This is why your laptop came the specific memory configuration that you saw. But since you have all four slots filled, your memory is already paired as the brands don't really matter.

 

New BIOS version 1.25 includes this much waited fix:

• (Fix) Fixed an issue where the computer with large-capacity memory installed might fail to resume normal operation from standby/sleep state.

Let's hope this fixes the problem of "Resume from Sleep" when using Kingston 1866MHz Ram with Win7 SP1 installed.

I can't wait to install and test it out. Ahhh, did not bring laptop with me. Have to wait until tomorrow after trip.

If anyone tried, please post result. Glad Lenovo got this fix out FAST.
.

 

"Version 1.25
UEFI: 1.25 / ECP: 1.13
(New) Updated Computrace ROM to version 80.895.
(Fix) Fixed an issue where some security settings in ThinkPad Setup could not be changed by Windows WMI script.
(Fix) Fixed an issue where the computer might not be booted from the hard disk with Linux installed if there was no active partition there.
(Fix) Fixed an issue where the computer with large-capacity memory installed might fail to resume normal operation from standby/sleep state.
(Fix) Fixed an issue where a particular AC adapter might not be detected."

Perhaps this fixes the Kingston 1866MHz HyperX standby/sleep issue?

 

In your situation, it is OK, you can put the Ram in any order since you filled up all 4 slots.
Otherwise, your system will not boot if you only put both Ram under keyboard and no Ram under the laptop.

 

Anyone with a 90W adapter will have to test it out. And post result.
.