Many Problems with my Lenovo T420, What is the source of the problem?

Hi, I have a Lenovo T420 laptop and here are the specs for my laptop

I've had this laptop for about over a year now, and over the years it has been getting worse and worse with little problems coming up here and there.

Some common problems I'm getting are random freezes. It would just randomly freeze in the middle of nowhere for about 65-80 seconds. Now it's not an INSTANT freeze - that's the thing. It would indicate that it's loading information from the hard drive, but if I try to alt+tab, or switch windows, it wouldn't process until after the freeze is over. Or like if I'm playing music, it would freeze and the music would freeze as well, playing the same sound over and over again. There are countless ways that it can freeze, and sometimes it'll indicate that it will freeze, but sometimes it'll just pass over and continue without freezing.

Another problem that I usually get is that when I have it on for too long, it stops doing its functions. The finger print reader ceases to work properly - sometimes it'll light up, and register that my fingerprint has been scanned and accepted, but it won't log me in. Or sometimes it won't even light up. When this happens, I'm forced to log in normally (which isn't really a hassle, but it's something that bugs me). Luckily, all I have to do is restart the computer and it works fine again.

Another problem that I get when I leave it on for too long is it won't go to sleep when I close it. (NOTE: I should mention when I mean "leave it on," I mean when I put it to sleep and opening it again, not constantly having it at an "on" state) When I close it, the screen will turn black, but it'll still be "on" and won't go to sleep unless I manually tell it to sleep. However, this problem is also fixed when I restart the computer.

A recent problem that has been showing up is that the Fn key short cuts start to not work. When I'm trying to press Fn + Home/End to fix my screen brightness, it simply doesn't do anything. However, the interesting thing is that when I do Fn + PgUp to turn on my laptop light on, it works fine! However, once again, if I simply restart my computer, this problem is fixed.

A very odd problem that hasn't occurred in awhile, is when I'm turning on my laptop from sleep, instead of saying "Welcome" after logging in, it says " Preparing your Desktop." Now at first I was EXTREMELY freaked out because it never told me that, and when it does, it just loads "Preparing your Desktop." I'd have to put it back to sleep, and then try logging in again, then it will tell me "Welcome" as usual, BUT it will give me a black desktop with nothing on it, and a status bubble that tells me it was unable to read my C:\ drive or something like that. HOWEVER, as usual, if I restart my computer and log in again, it will greet me with "Welcome" and show my desktop.

Lastly, the biggest problem with my laptop is it over heats REALLY easily. Even when I'm barely using Google Chrome, the CPU and RAM simply skyrocket to the max. Ok, that's a little bit overexaggerating, but having too many Youtube tabs open does create a problem. I'm also having problems playing League of Legends - I would have 50 FPS for a good minute, and then after that, my computer starts over heating and drops to a flat 9-10 FPS. I can't even play Tetris properly! It'll work fine for a good 30 seconds to a minute, but then it will start lagging. Now of course, this might be a problem I created because it only started doing FPS drops and over heating after I dropped it a bit hard on a table.

In any case, I was wondering, what are the sources for all these problems? My friends tell me it might be a problem with the motherboard, but I don't know for sure. Does anyone know how I can fix these problems?
Sorry for the very long post, and sorry if my sentences aren't that well constructed. Please give me any feedback and if there are any questions, I will be checking back onto this post to answer them!
Thank you!!!

 

Given your usage I would suspect the RAM to be the bottleneck at this stage, you'll be surprised how much memory browsers and games take these days so I would suggest bumping it up to a healthy 8GB RAM. A 4GB SODIMM module is not really expensive these days and could help alleviate some the caching your drive had to work through (even though it is a SSD) which may lead to the odd freeze.

As for the hotkeys try using the latest driver if that helps as occasionally Lenovo fixes some odd glitches over the older versions. Lenovo also issue some minor Windows patches specifically for the ThinkPad system so its worth checking them out to see what symptoms they fix (such as shutdown problems and others). The drivers can be found here.

Lastly when you do things like gaming ensure the system is plugged in otherwise by default it will go to power saving which will throttle the processor. What temperatures are you experiencing under load and during idle? It could be worth giving the vents a good clean and possibly a repaste of some good quality thermal compound to keep the temps steady.

 

In my experience, your description of the freezing describes exactly what happens when there are bad sectors on a magnetic hard drive. Maybe some of the NAND was bad from the factory in your SSD? I'd definitely check the health of that SSD.

As for the various buttons failing, it sounds like the relevant processes get terminated for some reason as you're using the computer. Do you have an overactive antivirus software?

 

or two antivirus software?

 

@Hearst

I'll look into the adding another memory into my laptop. However, my friend and I tried to open it up...but because it was a Lenovo T420, it was VERY difficult to open, and look around inside. We tried cleaning out the fan with compressed air.
I'll also look into installing the new drivers. Maybe have a clean reset and see what happens.
When I'm using it idle, it's usually cool, and doesn't heat up much at all. But if I'm running too many Shockwave on Chrome, or if I'm watching anime, or playing LoL, it'll heat up very very quickly. At first I thought it was just because it was hot during the summer, but I guess the fan might be broken or something as well.

@Colonel O'Neill
Not sure how I check the health of my SSD :/ I think it's healthy? Haha.
As for the anti virus, I only have Windows Security Essentials.

 

I am starting to get a sense for the source of the problems...

 

I have a T420 (256GB msata, i5, 8GB, no camera, no finger print) and it's running Flawless.

I also only run Security Essentials (as well as on 30 machines at work) and it's fine (far from bullet proof though it's not a pig either).

It could be a virus.

Sounds like driver issues though.

8GB is better but I doubt 4GB is your problem.

Mine is an i5. i7's do tend to run hotter. More memory will make it even run a tad hotter. If it does get hot it will throttle back.

Be sure to take the keyboard out (easy) to blow it out.

If all else fails, wipe it. I'm running Windows 7 x64 (with minimal Lenovo Drivers/Apps).

It could be a flaky SSD.

1) Be sure fans are clean.
2) Check hard drive.
3) Start disabling stuff to find the culprit.
Start disabling non critical drivers and non Critical Services.
You can also look through Task manager (show all processes) sort by CPU.
Start killing things that are piggy when the machine is stalling. You can add columns to show location to figure what software is the cause.

One thing to note is when SSD's get near full they can slow down a LOT !!!!

Also a common problem is users that don't know how to keep startup processes lean. I currently have 3 showing using ToolBarCop , I've cleaned machines with 50.

Your core laptop is probably fine. But these issues can be tedious to find. You have to stay on top of things for a smooth running machine.

SSD Fullness, Startup Apps, Clean Fans, Virus Free, Up to Date Drives.

 

For directions on how to open up the T420 (which is actually very simple, compared to some laptops), see the T420 Hardware Maintenance Manual.

RAM shouldn't be a problem for your usage; 4GB is plenty sufficient.

Most of your problems sound to me like it's derived from either or both a failing SSD or a buggy Windows + Lenovo driver setup. How did you setup Windows? Did it come with the SSD from the factory, or did you add it yourself and one your HDD?

 

Oh wow, thanks for all the ideas and feedback! I don't know how updated my drivers are, I don't tend to check up on those, but I will now.

My SSD has about 20 GB left out of it's 100 GB available, so it's still in the blue. Once it got in the red area, I started deleting some stuff off of it.
Something that I do notice is that when I start up the computer...it has like 100+ processes already running. I have NO idea why I have so many processes at the start up. I looked through my task manager and tried killing a bunch, but some of them told me that I can't stop.

As for opening up the laptop, my friend and I tried doing it, but we ended up breaking the special trackpad stuff that Lenovo laptops have. We did end up cleaning the fan though.

It came with factory installed Windows, and SSD came from the factory as well. As for set up....I just followed the set up that it came with. I don't know if there's anything else went wrong with it.
I DO think I have a lot of pointless Lenovo apps installed though. However, I just don't know which apps and which processes I need and don't need.

 

another thing to try is to remove the malwares with the software malwarebytes (it's a free and you can download from the internet).