Thinkpad T420 Owner's Thread

Hi.

I have bought a laptop first time. It is Thinkpad T420 with windows 7. I don't know what are things I need to do before I start using it. It is still lying in the box. Can anybody help me. Sorry for posting such a stupid question, but I don't know much about these things.

 

1. Install the battery.
2. Plug computer into mains
3. Press the power button
4. Do whatever the computer asks you to while setting it up.
5. Use the utility under the Thinkvantage Tools to create a set of recovery disks
6. Use the computer

Don't worry about the advice in the first post of this thread if you can't understand it.

John

 

Thanks a lot Saved me some time.
And yes I meant fn+F8 not F5.
Thanks a lot

 

Thanks for your reply. It is really helpful for me.

 

Hi everybody. Was browsing ebay for thinkpad stuff, and stumbled apon this:
9 cell Battery for Lenovo ThinkPad E40 E50 T410 T410i T420 T510 T510i T520 W510 | eBay

A 9-cell battery for 40 US dollars.

Is it safe to buy cheap batteries from ebay and use them in my T420?

 

The problem with generic eBay batteries is that you don't really know what you're getting. If its not an OEM sourced battery most likely the Power Manager will constantly pest you that you're not using a genuine battery, secondly the performance of unknown batteries can greatly vary and may degrade far sooner than expected due to cheaper sourcing of battery cells.

It's also likely that these batteries are not thoroughly tested properly with approved bodies so you could risk damaging your laptop or even endanger yourself should they overheat, short circuit or even explode in some extreme scenarios.

Personally I only look for genuine sourced batteries for peace of mind, for the T420 the 9 cell part numbers are 42T4799, 42T4801 and 42T4912 though I would avoid the first one (42T4799) as its a Sanyo and they're known to be very questionable in durability. You maybe able to find some of these genuine batteries on eBay though I would carefully read the description to make sure it is as they say and not a "compatible" battery.

 

I'd second what Hearst said. Don't play with fire with those batteries.

 

There *are* third party batteries that are well-tested and are from reputable sources.

They generally aren't very cheap though -- and they're nowhere near as abundant as the random generic units on eBay -- so I'd only really recommend them for machines that are old enough that a new, "genuine" battery isn't an option.

 

We've used Ray-O-Vac branded ones in some of our Dells. Less expensive, but I can't say I'm all that impressed. Their plastic casing is prone to cracking in the ways that OEMs don't, and I've had a higher defect rate where cells just failed early on some of them.

I also can't guarantee that the same cells will be used from batch to batch; the lack of consistency leads me to still say OEM batteries are best, and that is what I use when given a choice, which includes my own ThinkPads.

 

I'll second those. Be sure to run BOTH the Lenovo AND the Microsoft updates. They cover different things and both are important to getting the best performance and battery life out of your new machine.

 

Hearst, cn_habs and ThinkRob: Thanks for the advice!

 

Hi All,

I've got a real dilemna on my hands, having taken my business abroad with me on a new T420 only to find that im blue screening constantly and can't find the solution for love nor money.

It's the Dual Graphics version which i've upgraded to a 120GB Intel 320 SSD and done a fresh install from scratch. I've also added 4GB RAM to the machine.

Intel says the drive is fine, Memtest says the memory is fine. I had long suspected the graphics drivers (not too small when first installed) but alas i've since re-installed the optimus pack and still no joy.

Basically the issue is that when landing on the login screen the system will BSOD after a couple of cursor flashes. It will then boot back round and more often than not will load up fine the second time. Indeed it has recently taken 3 cycles before booting properly.

As yet, I haven't really experienced the BSOD while the system is active at all. Only at the login screen as mentioned.

The error code reads: Stop 0x0000003B (0x00000000c0000005, 0xfffff80002f6ccf1, 0xfffff8800a618610, 0x0000000000000000)

If anyone has any ideas of where to go next, that would be sincerely appreciated.

 

Hi all, just want to ask a simple question:
is the expresscard slot 2.5Gb/s or 5Gb/s？
Thank you~

 

There are some off-brand T60/T61/T500 batteries that I've gotten on Amazon that are every bit as good as the original Lenovo ones: good plastics, great lifespan, full SMAPI support, etc.

But you're right: unless you've got a line on a good source, it's usually easiest just to get them from Lenovo.

 

Start by taking out that RAM. See if it stops having trouble. I take it there are two modules installed? Try running on just one at a time, swap them into the same slot. I'm leaning toward it being a RAM issue.

Did you install your own SSD too? That shouldn't be an issue unless the drive has problems.

Did you make a set of recovery disks when you bought it? You could try using those to set it back up to factory fresh and see if that solves it.

And have you booted the machine into Safe Mode? Does it still throw the BSOD?

 

You should find out if it's a driver causing your BSOD.

You need to get a crash dump, I made another post somewhere on here, re the registry keys to add to your system which will allow the crash dump to be generated.

Then you can upload the crash dump to the osronline site:
Instant Online Crash Analysis
And it will tell you which driver is responsible for your crash.

Google will tell you which piece of hardware your "bad" driver is responsible for.

Then you can update the driver, to try and fix the problem.

 

I'm confident in memtest's ability to root out bad sticks, assuming you let it run for at least one complete pass, so I doubt you have a RAM issue.

Looking up that error code, it's a "SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION," so I'd start with disabling 3rd party services such as AV or so-called "helper" services one by one until the issue disappears. Unless they were recently updated, you can probably skip disabling any Lenovo services, but it's not impossible one of them is conflicting with another 3rd or 1st party service.

You can view installed services by hitting up the start menu and typing "services.msc" and hitting Enter. If you want more information about who is the provider of a given service, you can use the Autoruns tool from the Sysinternals page here. **Be advised though, that poking around with this tool can mess up other things. You may want to wait until your business trip is over before really getting into this.**

When you run the Autoruns program, it will spend some time scanning your OS. After it is finished, click the "Services" tab to see a list of what it found. There are checkmarks along the left that will enable or disable entries in the list. However, if it were me, I'd find the name of the 3rd party service, and use the services.msc control panel to simply Disable the suspect item. If you find it fixes the issue, you can look for an update, or uninstall the software that uses the service.

 

Your faith in memtest may be misplaced. I've had it fail to detect bad ram on more than one occasion, on different systems as well.

A few searches online show that BSOD as having be related to memory. Yes, some have been for drivers too.

It's an EASY check, pull the RAM and see if the repeatable error goes away. Pretty simple. If so then it's entirely possible that memory may be either bad or incompatible (for any number of annoying reasons).

And given the hassle of booting, failing, booting again, why not just cut to the chase and pull the RAM to see if that boot loop goes away?

Of course, checking the services that run at on startup is always a great idea. But he'd have to get a stable boot going first. Safe mode would be ideal as it avoids having a lot of other stuff run. Better to see if the OS will boot with some stability into Safe Mode first. If not then digging through services is perhaps a chase of the wild goose kind...

 

I have a seagate HD in my t420. Once in a while it will click and make a beep noise once. Then the drive works fine. It does it every now and then. Should I be concerned about it, or is this normal for this drive? Thanks

Edit: also, once in a while the head get loud you can heard it across the room. After restarting the computer the heads noise goes back to normal. This has happen twice.

 

What's the health status of the Seagate HD? Seagates tend to click in operation but I don't recall any hard drive that makes a beep noise so I would give it a check, try using programs such as CrystalDiskInfo to see the drive status as a precaution.

 

Just ran CrystalDiskInfo and it said it is in good health. Hopefully it will last for me. I'll keep a check on it. Thanks for the help

 

It's a bit deceiving, but even though the error has the word "service" in it, doesn't mean it is related to a windows service specifically. MSDN tells us that the error is being caused when tranferring control from user mode to kernel mode (SYSENTER), this could be caused by anything. Disabling random services won't help the OP.

I would still generate and analyse a dump to narrow down the issue, it'll take ten minutes, and will at least give you an idea of exactly what driver is failing here.

 

I didn't advocate disabling "random services." I specifically pointed out 3rd party code is most likely to cause an issue. I provided a method whereby the OP could filter out Microsoft's own services and get down to the stuff most likely to be causing the issue.

There's nothing wrong with taking the memdump and analysing it.

Perhaps a driver is causing an issue. I just think that, in light of stability in the rest of the machine's running, it actually is a service to blame, and not a driver. By the time the UI is up at the log in screen, all drivers are already loaded and running. But services are still being brought up. Perhaps a corner case with one of these is causing an exception.

To the other guy who didn't like Memtest: I've been using that program in a professional environment for 8 years. In my experience it's rock solid, and if RAM is a problem it has never failed to reveal that to me. YMMV.

 

Many thanks for all the responses guys. A much better response than on the Lenovo forums!!!

I removed the RAM (which I had convinced myself must be causing the problems) only to find that the same issue continued straight away.

Alas, i've since stopped worrying about it and it appears to have gone away. I won't count my chickens too soon but in the last 5 cold starts/reboots it hasn't occured.

As soon as it does though i'll be sure to post the log details as request.

Once again, many thanks for the kind replies.

 

Disabling services one by one and rebooting, and then waiting would take ages. Far quicker to analyse the dump.

All Windows services run in user mode, you cant cause a BSOD from user mode, if it's not hardware failure, it will be a driver causing the bugcheck and not a service.

Also Rapidboot suspends some drivers loading until after boot is complete, and after winlogon has executed.

And just because a driver has "loaded", doesn't mean it's stable, if it's part of say the network stack and is being passed IRPs as a part of that stack, and doesn't handle them correctly, it can cause a bugcheck any time after the system has booted.

 

Evening Guys,

I'm struggling to get any sort of memory dump info from the system. Having changed the settings to allow a small memory dump, it's not creating the 'MiniDump' folder when rebooting/BSODing at startup.

Any ideas?

 

Hi everyone,

I do not know if this is the correct forum to post this question so please redirect me if it isn't.

I purchased a T420 model 4178-6VU with nvidia Optimus. I also got the intel 80G msata drive installed.

I am quite happy with the laptop... it is the first Thinkpad I have ever owned and I don't know what took me so long.

I installed Fedora 16 (Linux) on the laptop and it truly shines.

The problem is that I cannot get any thing to display on an external monitor (I am using only the intel graphics card) via the display port to hdmi monitor. I am wondering if the intel card cannot see the display port at all. I have not tried the db15 port as none of my monitors has a db15 input.

Has anyone had this problem? Is there a workaround?

Any help appreciated.

 

Never mind.

I did a clean install of Windows 7 and optimized for the ssd. I can now run Fedora full time in Virtual Box.

Thanks.

 

I recently bought a ultrabay and a SSD is on the way. Should I have the ssd in the main or ultrabay? I would like for it to be in the main, but I worry for my HDD in a less secure place.

 

Use BitLocker.

 

Goodmorning everyone, last night I cracked my T420i's screen by accident. I am considering replacing it but does anyone know the cost? It is still somewhat usable because I'm using it right now. Also, will it get worse if I don't replace the lcd?

 

Have a look at this thread, someone was in a similar situation to you and managed to change his screen on the T420 with satisfactory results.

 

^ I'll check it out thanks Hearst.

 

Just ordered the screen. Will let you guys know how it goes when it comes in! Thanks!

 

Not the type of security I meant.

 

If you're worried about having a HDD in the Ultrabay Caddy as in causing some undesired vibrations/movements then I don't think you should worry. I have such setup in my T420 and it has been fine, plus I tend to carry my T420 around a lot too. Of course we're not talking as if you're dancing with the T420 but if you treat it normally and with due care then the SSD/HDD combo you suggested shouldn't have any consequences.

 

I know that. But physical security and the replacement cost is trivial compared to the cost of having your private data in the hands of a nefarious individual.

 

I have a new T420, and have had it for about 10 days. I too am exasperated with the crazy 1600x900 screen on this thing. Previously and even this week, I bought T42's for my family. I measured the two screens and the T42 has 100 square inches of space, the T420 is only 86 square inches of space. Not only that, in most applications because of the 16:9 aspect ratio, 25-40% of the screen is wasted !!

T42 : 11.5 x 8.625 = 100.625 sq inches
T420 : 12.375 x 7 = 86.625 sq inches

When I edit a powerpoint slide deck it's like editing on a 4x6 index card.
When I try to write code I can only see 36 lines of code - not a whole function!

BUT IT PLAYS GREAT MOVIES AND 3D GAMES !!

JUST THE THING FOR A *** BUSINESS ?!?! *** LAPTOP ????

So the screen on this laptop is exasperating, it should have been at least 100 square inches which means a 15.1" display, roughly. I am in my late 40's which means my eyes are less light sensitive and so focusing on tiny dots that are only 0.86 * (1440x1050 / 1600*900) = 90% as large is difficult. On some websites such as Yahoo finance, the title bar and firefox bar takes 1/3rd of the screen space !!! There seems to be plenty of space above (0.8") and below (1.2") and on both sides (0.5") for a bigger display.

This machine doesn't hibernate reliably (which means that sometimes I close the lid, put it away in my backpack, and when I get it back out again its SUPER HOT because it's been running full blast in my backpack.) Our IT services guy blames the SSD w/encryption and disabled hibernation.

Our IT tech did something "essential" to the scratchpad to make it less sensitive.

The CD player keeps popping open, i may glue it shut or use duct tape.

Other than that, it seems like a reasonable computer.

 

Sounds like you would have been happier with the T520 or W520. The optical driver problem is getting reported all over. The most common fix is to remove it and insert a HDD adaptor and second drive instead.

 

Google search "Toddler Keys". It's a small app that will allow you to software lock your CD drive (as well as your keyboard). Works great for me.

 

Or to replace it with a slot-loading drive that doesn't have the button in the same place...

 

FWIW Toddler Keys works well on windows on a T420.

 

I like what you did with the slot loading DVD drive... If there was a simple plug and play that did not require modification to fit under $15, I would probably do the same.

The design of the 420's DVD drive button is just plain terrible. There is no defense for it. After owning my 420 for six months, it is by far my biggest complaint.

My T61 never had this problem because the button was slightly recessed and on a flat edge, not a corner.

The only times I ever used the DVD drive was to create Lenovo rescue media and to install Lightroom. The next Thinkpad I buy will be in June 2013 and probably have no optical drive at all.

 

How about no DVD drive at all? How about space for another hard drive? I've only used my DVD drive only once.

 

It is plug 'n play, size and connector-wise -- you'll just need to sand a small bit off of the bezel. If you don't have a Dremel tool you can use a pair of scissors or tin snips and some sandpaper...

 

When I purchased my T420 late September, I couldn't think of anything it lacked that I might miss later (well, perhaps USB 3.0). Now, I regret not having an audio jack. I occasionally need to get sound louder than the onboard speakers are capable of. What's the most cost effective way to send sound to external speakers? Will the sound jacks on Lenovo Docks actually work?

Please don't mention USB speakers unless you can personally guarantee they work on the T420 under Win 7. The set I have plays the test sounds in the Control Panel apps but will not play audio, I believe due to Win 7 requirements for audio. They have a audio jack that of course, I have no place to plug into.

 

Assuming your external speakers can take in phono leads a 3.5mm to Phono cable is a cost effective way to get sound from the front audio jack of the T420, I use this for mine if I want to connect it to my 5.1 surrounds.

 

OK, I am officially an idiot! My eyes had never wandered to that small area between the DVD drawer and the front of the unit. I had no idea there was a line out jack there. My desktop speakers work fine plugged into it, but the cheap Logitech speakers I had bought at WalMart do not. I'm good to go now, thanks for the reply.

 

I just bought a used T420. It's in great condition but the battery life is about 3.5 hours on a full charge that's with the brightness dimmed all the way. Supposedly T420s get about 6 - 8 hours? Or is this under extremely ideal conditions?s

 

Is it a 6-cell or a 9-cell battery? Even if it is a 6 cell you should get better battery life. Go to the power manager and check the battery's condition. Since it is used maybe it isn't in the best condition.