Recent Thinkpad Edge 420 Purchase - couple issues

Hello,

I recently decided to return the 11.6" Series 3 Samsung laptop and purchase the Lenovo Edge 420 with i5-2410M, 4GB RAM, and 500GB Hard Drive. The Lenovo was 470 and the Samsung was 499 but only had the i3-2357m. I thought it would be sufficient, but needed more power for my multimedia classes at school.

I like the notebook so far. The keyboard feels great under my fingers even at high speeds but is a bit noisy, specifically the space bar. Also it is built well it seems and I have better upgrade paths than with the Samsung (being an ultraportable).

I am having a couple of issues however...

1. BSOD on first night of ownership.

I have never seen a BSOD on Windows 7 before and was trying to go to sleep and did not get a chance to snap a picture of the details on the BSOD screen. This BSOD occurred immediately after installing MS Office (I used the link in the start menu and a product key I already purchased) - probably not relevant... but still... that's how it happened. Computer was not hot at the time.

2. Hard drive is noisy. It makes a clack-clack-clack noise every once in a while.

I ran a full system scan with the Lenovo suite and everything passed. Do any other e420 owners experience the noisy drive?


Finally, I going to be taking out the hard drive in this unit next week to install a solid state drive. I would like to do a clean install of Windows 7 ... speaking of which I am a little disappointed by the long list of startup utilities Lenovo included when I first looked at my msconfig window. I also understand some of their utilities are what make the Lenovo brand famously reliable. Is there a common consensus on which of the utilities are okay to lose and which need to be kept? If I do a clean install, will I be able to download what I need from the Lenovo website?


Thanks for any replies/assistance/opinions on these issues.

 

BSODs can be caused by many things. Do you remember what the error code was?

 

Well received my second BSOD within 14 hours of purchase. This time while trying to download a game on Steam..

I'm not sure why but I managed to forget to snap a picture of the screen again. I ran Windows Memory Diagnostics and it found no problems. Started up the computer again and now every time that it gets past the Windows loading animation the screen goes black for 3-6 seconds before going to the login screen.

After getting past login screen Windows freezes.

To me it seems like a problem with the hard drive... but I don't know.. Ironically, we bought a Thinkpad Edge 14" two years ago and experienced the exact same symptoms. Eventually that thinkpad's hard drive went out. But it took months of random freezing/crashes before it gave out completely.

Perhaps I should just return/exchange this with Office Depot. I've been searching for people who have the same issues with this machine and have not yet found any documentation on problems.

I also have not installed any junk... it's like new. Only legitimate programs have been installed. This is a problem for sure.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about BSOD unless they're happening all the time. (A little unnerving getting a new laptop and having them though.)

Since you're getting an SSD, I wouldn't worry too much about the HDD. If anything, I would tell Lenovo you're hard drive might be dieing and see if they'll ship you out a new one. Couldn't hurt to try as it's a CRU.

How are you planning on reinstalling Windows 7 on the new SSD? The needed drivers and Thinkpad software is on the support site. Is there a partitioned drive that has all of your drivers? That would save you a ton of time not having to download most of them one-by-one.

 

I ended up getting 3 BSOD's within 15 hours of purchasing the computer and went to Office Depot for an exchange. I'd say you should be really worried about a BSOD if it's new and you have not installed any software/hardware that could have caused it. If the machine were brand new to the market using some next-gen hardware it might be more excusable as BSOD could simply be driver related and fixed with an update.

I would say it was definitely defective as the "Quick Hardware Check" HDD tests are running much faster on the new machine I have just replaced the previous one with. Also, the new machine is not making any noises from the hard drive (if you put your ear up to the chassis you can hear it whirring away but none of this "Clack-Clack-clackclackclack" stuff that the other drive was doing. It sounded like there was a little guy with a typewriter inside of the computer rhythmically pounding on typewrite keys.

I will be sure to update if this system exhibits any similar problems and I will be sure to do all the same things I did to the previous system to this one...

I hear what you're saying but in spite of running a multitude of tests on the system I could not be positively sure that it was just the hard drive that was bad... which is ultimately why I returned it. Who's to say the hard drive wasn't bad due to the whole system being dropped at some point and I'd rather just have a new system with my new system

As far as installing the SSD... I am just going to download the Windows 7 operating system from Microsoft/Interwebz (which is legal as you own a copy of the OS when you buy it with the computer) and then use my product key from the bottom of the computer.

It might be easier to clone the hard drive but there are a number of valid reasons not to do so including that you will not get the max possible speed from your SSD. This is because the two technologies are set up differently and when you install Windows on an SSD the normal way every byte will go in the most efficient location possible. But when you clone to the SSD you are far more likely to get everything arranged exactly as it was on the traditional HDD which was efficient then but not anymore.

I hear of people cloning their drives in reviews of their SSD purchase and being amazed with the :45 boot time but on a proper SSD I can boot in about 20 seconds tops. But part of that ties into the next paragraph-

Also I only want the Lenovo utilities I find useful. For instance I can hit Win+L to lock my computer rather than having my webcam come on every time the keyboard is inactive for a while to see if I am still there and then lock my computer for me. It's a neat idea but I'd rather run a streamlined OS. The same principle applies to many of the other Lenovo utilities I would prefer to be without.

 

Nice one here, I also own a E420 and had to claim warranty on the hdd. It was also making the noise and couple BSOD, though I install a lot of software. Now that I think about it, I don't experience BSOD anymore. Though I've updated the BIOS and uninstall RapidBoot.

Would love to hear your opinion on how you streamlined the OS

 

Yeah, hard drives go bad so I don't really blame Lenovo. It is unfortunate thought that both times that I have purchased a Lenovo laptop for personal use that the hard drive has been bad. But I purchase a large number of computer parts on a yearly basis and consider this somewhat of a statistical anomaly.

well I would be happy to post my story once I get the new parts. I ordered an optical drive replacement hard drive caddy for the laptop and will be installing one SSD along with the 500GB HDD. I will post my experiences asap, hopefully it does not take too long to arrive.