T530: Wake from sleep error. Mysterious Windows shutdown

I recently bought a refurbished T530 from Lenovo outlet. Recently it got serviced due to its the screen not display when wake from sleep.

Now I am seeing another problem. Actually it happened before the laptop got serviced, but very rarely.

Here is the problem. Before taking a break or something, I usually go to Start and choose Sleep and then close the computer.

When I come back, I open the lid. The screen is on (which is good), but quite a number of times after sign in, I see an error screen:

Windows did not shut down successfully. Please see the attached screenshot of this error.



I have to restart the computer and lose all my previous screens and some in-progress work.

Note that I never chose shutting down Windows and I am absolutely sure about this. I had this work pattern for two years with my T510 and never saw a problem like this.

Did anyone have similar experiences? What could the cause? I did some googling but turned up nothing helpful.

Thanks for any input!

Cheers!

 

Can you just close the lid?

(I just close the lid. When I eventually open the lid, Windows greets me with the login screen. After logging in, I come back to where I was, with application windows on the screen.)

 

The reason that I went to Start and chose Sleep is because the problem first happened many times when I simply close the lid and open it (which is what I usually do).

To verify it happens in other situations, I chose to go to Start->Sleep. It turns out that it happens with this approach too.

Weird.

Thanks for chiming in.

 

I might have found the cause. It appears that my T530 does not go to sleep immediately if I close the lid and click Sleep and then quickly close the lid. I tested a few times making the computer go into sleep by pressing the power button for some time to make sure the light of the button disappear. So far, I have not see any unexpected shutdown. Another thing I noticed (just once) is that my T530 was very hot when I took it out of my bag, which seems to corroborate my "T530 not really go into sleep" guess.

Cheers.

 

Factory restore? Clean install?

 

You mean I should do a factory restore? I already installed quite some software and probably I will not do it.

When the machine was serviced by Lenovo recently, they did not do any factory restore.

You feel that factory restore or clean install is the way to go?

Thanks.

 

You mean I should do a factory restore? I already installed quite some software and probably I will not do it.

When the machine was serviced by Lenovo recently, they did not do any factory restore.

You feel that factory restore or clean install is the way to go?

Thanks.

 

Yes. Or a clean Windows installation.

Well then, focus on your already installed software and ignore the sleep problem. (Shut the machine down when you put it in the bag.)

They could. But with all your stuff still on that drive, you should be glad they didn't. (You should have removed the drive.)

If I were you, I would do one of these things: (1) back up the drive using Acronis, or the similar, and do a factory restore; (2) put in a new drive and either do factory restore or clean install on it.

Or just sell the whole thing.

 

Like this idea

Regarding clean install of Win7 pro on T530 or thinkpads, I searched this website for "T530 clean install" or "Thinkpad clean install", not finding any thread directly useful. Do you know of any good source/posts that can serve as a guide? I am really interested in clean install.

Cheers!

 

If you're using Windows 8, I cannot help you. If you're using Windows 7, search with "hearst guide clean install" (which should return this at the top of the list). Lenovo has an "official" page on clean installation of Windows 7 on a ThinkPad, too.

Get your hands dirty, man. Worst case? Restore everything from your Acronis backup, or just format the drive if it is a new one.

Always save your personal files. (Installed applications? You can always install them again.)

 

Kaso, thanks sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much!

I never done any clean install before, but it is always something attractive to me. Will seriously look at it.

Have a great weekend!

 

Maybe I should ask this question.

Is a clean install on Win 7 Pro daunting task?

 

Sigh.......

 

Sorry that I have asked too much (?)

 

Actually, nothing beats real experience. You can avoid doing it, or you can jump in and do it and get some valuable experience.

As I said, you can protect your current drive by buying a new drive ($50 perhaps) and use that new drive for your "clean Windows 7 installation" experiment. In other words, an investment of some money and about an hour of hands-on work.

If you're using Windows 7 on the T530 right now, you can copy the C:\SWTOOLS folder onto a USB flash drive. This folder contains all the T530-specific device drivers and Lenovo applications. After you have successfully installed Windows 7 Professional from the DVD, you can boot up the system normally, then open Device Manager and go down the list of unresolved drivers, telling Windows to search the subfolders of SWTOOLS on the flash drive for the appropriate drivers.

 

Thanks for all the valuable info and tips!