Thinkpad T420s Owners' Thread

FWIW mine works properly, quiet except when under heavy load, and then only a modest amount of fan noise that's at least as good as competitive machines.

 

Do you have a special BIOS? Most of us can't get past the BIOS post Lenovo logo in 7-8 seconds so getting to a Windows desktop in 10 is impossible.

 

I do not count BIOS time because it's variable and has nothing to do with boot performance -- I count starting with first access to the boot device.

 

Normal users have no way to measure that.

They count from the time they hit the power button to the time they have a Windows desktop.

 

It's actually quite easy -- just watch for the disk activity light at the end of POST.

There's too much variability in BIOS processing for that to be meaningful. My own system, for example, starts with a fingerprint swipe and recognition, then unlocks both my mSATA SSD and HDD, delays that wouldn't be meaningful to systems with no security.

 

It's happened with 3 different PSUs in different places. However, telling bit of info is that wen I'm at home the PSU is plugged into a mains power meter which shows that they mains power usage doesn't change when the computer has its ?15 second? trip to thinking it is running on battery. This points to the problem being in the T420s and could be BIOS or software (both of which were up to date as of April).

John

 

If it were BIOS or software it would presumably be widespread, which doesn't seem to be happening, part of why I think it's probably your hardware.
What I mean by "connector" is in the computer, not the power adapter plug. It could also be a flaky component in the computer's power system.
Try removing the battery, and see what happens.

 

Are you using the Lenovo Power Manager, and have the setting to "Automatically Optimize for Battery Lifespan"? If so, there seems to be some algorithm where it adjusts the full charge capacity. It sets the max charge lower, and then later sets it higher again. If the outline on the battery symbol is green, then it has set it lower. Not sure how the algorithm works.

Batteries performance can be a bit random. My battery had about 72 cycles, and was showing 35Wh, a drop of 20% from the design capacity. So i got my company to swap it under warranty (it was only 3 months old, and we have a reasonable volume of laptops). My colleague however, had about 80 cycles, and 50Wh on hers. and she's not taking specifically taking care of it, and has usage patterns much the same as me.

 

My W510 does this as well, I'm betting it's the PM driver/app...

 

My understanding is that Battery Lifespan mode stops charging at 96%. Charging more fully can reduce the life of the battery. The charge difference is small, and worth it to me. Power Manager will occasionally switch to Full Charge mode (and then switch back to Battery Lifespan mode), probably to minimize the need for recalibration.

Lithium-ion battery degradation should be a steady function of usage, on the order of about 0.1% per full cycle (less for a partial cycle), not random. Loss of 20% of capacity in only 72 cycles (nearly 0.3% per cycle) is abnormal, probably a defective battery. That said, the T420s battery has a rated capacity of 44 Wh (and a Design Capacity of 39 Wh), so your colleague must have different hardware.

For more information, see How to Prolong Lithium-based Batteries.

 

If so, then presumably lots of others would be seeing the issue, which doesn't seem to be happening, so the cause is more likely something else.

 

While you could be correct... I suspect it may have to do with customization of the power manager and hitting the magic combo. I'm just gonna live with it as I finalize a decision on my next notebook. For me it's a nuisance type issue that doesn't hinder my productivity, though it does present "head scratch-er" moments every now and then... (1 - 2 times per day)

 

Yes, I'm using Lenovo Power Manager; however, I have set it to start charging when below 75% and stop charging at 95%. I know batteries don't last forever but this one is decreasing too fast. And it's a Panasonic after all.


btw, same behavior here: Lenovo Thinkpad T420s review

"Panasonic FRU 42T4847 Li-Ion 43.29 Wh 11.10V - ThinkPad Battery 66+ (6-cell) P/N 0A36287 rated for up to 5.5 hr. (not continuous use) after 14 cycles, full charge is only 36.64 Wh, hope it is isolated incident ..."

 

The Design Capacity (as displayed in Power Manager) is probably 39 Wh, making that 94% of Design Capacity, which is not unreasonable after that number of cycles.

UPDATE: That was wrong, my bad, apparently a result of running in Maximum Lifespan mode. In Full Charge mode my Design Capacity is 44.0 Wh, and the Full Charge Capacity is 39.14 Wh after 19 cycles.

 

No, the design capacity displayed by Power Manager is 43Wh. Losing ~7Wh after 6 or 14 cycles looks unreasonable to me.

 

Well that sucks i really wanted a 50 hour battery life with the 9 cell and 9 cell slice and ultrabattery

 

So, after switched from my own thresholds to "automatically optimize for battery lifespan" in Lenovo Power Manager, battery started to charge (it was at 93%), and after it reached 100%, Power Manager reports now a full charge capacity of ~42Wh, a remaining capacity of ~47Wh (!) and a design capacity of ~38Wh. Looks much better - even it's more like a calibrating error or something like this.

I think I have mistaken when I have said that the Power manager reports a design capacity of 43Wh; most probably I looked to full charge capacity, not to design capacity.. My apologise!

 

My colleagues machine is exactly the same as mine. Its a custom configuration for our company and we have hundreds of them, all the same. What is different is the manufacturer of her battery. Mine is Panasonic, hers (from memory) was Sanyo.
Agree my battery had an abnormal loss, which is why they replaced it

 

After careful calibration my own gamma is now at 0.9, a significant improvement over the default setting with my AUO panel. 0.8 loses shadow detail making it unsuitable for image editing. No other adjustments seem helpful. (Settings recommended in T410 display enhancement give it more "pop", but turn highlights and shadows into a smeary mess.)

 

I have just received my t420s from the outlet and it said that it had Bluetooth but i cannot find it anywhere. How can I check if it has it? i looked in the device manager and it doesn't ave any. Where would it be under the laptop next to the wlan card or something?

 

1. Make sure Lenovo Bluetooth software is installed.
2. Press Fn + F5, and turn on the Bluetooth radio.
Hope that helps.

 

I hate all the software installed on a new pc so what i did is i did format and reinstall windows 7 and it wasnt showing up. After installing the hotkey manager I was able to press fn+f5 and it turned on the bluetooth and windows detected it and installed it tx. I did not need to install lenovo bluetooth software.

 

I hear you, but nonetheless strongly recommend that you install System Update, and let it install all the Lenovo specific drivers, skipping the bloatware you don't want/need. Lenovo drivers have modifications that make ThinkPads work better in many cases.

 

I installed all the latest audio,card reader, chipset, ethernet, some intel amt driver, intel hd graphics,intel rapid storage, monitor file, power management driver, usb 3.0 and wireless normal drivers. The lenovo software i liked and choose to install was the active protection system, dolby home theater, hotkeys, and power manager. Is there anything else you recommend?

 

1. Latest BIOS
2. System Update
3. ThinkPad Bluetooth
4. ThinkPad Graphics Driver
5. ThinkPad Monitor File
6. ThinkPad Power Management
7. ThinkPad UltraNav
8. ThinkPad Wireless LAN
9. Lenovo System Interface Driver
10. Lenovo Solution Center

 

Ok i did the bios i was missing that but for the most part i like stuff being managed by windows and like to manually update the driver tx.

 

While Windows Update is a good way to get security updates, it's not a good way to get Lenovo or even generic driver updates -- graphics performance, for example, is significantly better with the latest Intel graphic driver from Lenovo System Update -- and you also miss out on ThinkPad-specific enhancements.

 

hey guys! as a newcomer to the lenovo family and being rather disappointed with my recent acquisition, I'm in need of some advice. can you tell me if it's worth upgrading from an LG panel to a Samsung one?

 

I have the Samsung panel but it doesn't look special, it's just an average screen, I'm fine with it. I have yet to see a LG one but it's hard to believe that there is (such) a big difference between these two screens, I don't think it's worth "upgrading", too much hassle.

 

the viewing angles on the LG are truly awful; there is no sweet spot that i can have my eyes fixed on where some corner of the screen doesn't look distorted... if i had an option to switch the panel with one with better viewing angles, i would do so without hesitation... if the laptop had been bought from the country i reside in, i would have probably returned it; unfortunately, that is not an option...

 

Hi,

I have had my T420s for a few months as my company laptop, and been really impressed with it so far. I ordered it from the UK online shop with a 128 SSD, but I want to add another SSD (remove the optical drive). I have spotted a Crucial M4 512GB SSD but is this compatible? Anyone performed this upgrade? I found a site where I can purchase the correct caddy size but was unsure on the SSD.

Rgds,

qh

 

Yes, that Crucial M4 will definitely work. The UltraBay caddy adapter accommodates SSD of 7mm or 9.5mm height, so you have flexibility in shopping for the best price without the 7mm height constraint of the primary bay.

Welcome to the ThinkPad forum.

 

I need to replace the broken t420s screen. after i took it down, i found the information of lcd panel is
P/N 93p5692 FRU 93p5693

I searched on ebay and found both are available. which one I should buy? please suggest. thanks!

 

You can probably buy either, but I would try to get a Lenovo part.

 

how to find a lenovo part? thanks!

 

A Lenovo part will have a FRU printed on it somewhere.

 

Mine gets very hot...

 

The coil whine ("CPU whine") on my new T420s is the worst I've ever heard. I suffered through it with my T410, but it's much worse on this. I would send it back, but it's out of the return window. So I'm going to get it fixed no matter what it takes, because it's way too horrible to tolerate.

Here are some recordings: T420s coil whine album
I've also posted about this on a thread on the Lenovo forums: T420s coil/"CPU" whine recordings and request for ... - Lenovo Community

For those of you familiar with and who can easily identify the coil whine: does the T420s suffer from this more or less than other ThinkPads? I don't want to just send it in and get the motherboard replaced by someone who doesn't understand and listen for the issue, which doesn't fix the problem, like happened on my T410. It's a waste of my time and their money.

Just thought I'd get some thoughts on this and put this here for anyone else being driven crazy by the whine.

 

Just an update, I added 4GB of RAM to my T420s and also added a Crucial 256 M4 SSD via a caddy in the optical drive bay (see post from 17-08-2012 in this thread). All was working fine until I downloaded a number of updates (around 800MB) via the Thinkvantage system update that came pre installed and now I have found that my wireless card is not working properly, it will work then drop, work then drop then I usually have to reboot. All my other wifi devices, phone, tv, other laptop work fine and my ISP said my line is fine. I though it was due to channel interference but as mentioned all my other wifi devices are good and whatever channel I use, still get the same issue. My bad for only skim reading the update list. When I purchased the T420s I upgraded to the Intel Centrino Advanced N6205 Wireless card, but I'm sure one of the update has caused this issue.

Anyone had this issue, off to check more carefully what I installed? Also is the Thinkvantage software just bloatware? Better to just uninstall it?

Thanks

qh

edit: I installed the Wifi Driver for intel cards For Windows 64bit ver 15.02.0000.1258

I also installed a WiDi driver, could that cause my issue?

 

Before install a driver, You should be active device via Fn+F5 and on it.
A new driver can found at Intel® Driver Update Utility

 

T420s screen swap.

I just wanted to mention that I swapped out the Au Optronics LCD on my T420s for a Samsung one - took 1 month of a saved ebay search to actually find the Samsung part. The Samsung LCD really is much better, I recommend this swap to anyone considering it.

Install took like 10-15 mins - 2 screws to take bezel off and 4 screws to remove screen.

One thing that is notably better is the screen in upscale mode - I sometimes put the lcd in 1366x768 - my eyes are getting older - and this screen does a MUCH better job than the AU optronics.

If you are buying on ebay - make sure you 100% confirm you are getting the actual samsung LTN140KT03 screen

Dennis

 

hey its summer now and everything gets hot, including my laptop. even in light usage it gets up to 70c how can i lower it? or do i need to clean dust off the fan? i tried to remove the back to check on the fan, but its very hard...

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Hello all,

I'm having a problem with my Thinkpad and am wondering if it would have anything to do with this. My T420s was overheating, so I did the usual thing with all my older thinkpads and that's to open it up and put in some arctic silver between CPU/heatsink/fan.

After putting everything back, I noticed my bluetooth and fingerprint scanner no longer worked. I don't think I damaged the physical components as the fingerprint scanner is protected by a large black tape and it's connected to the motherboard by the same flat ribbon cable used to connect the touchpad. The touchpad works perfectly fine. I didn't even remove the bluetooth device, so I don't think it's damaged either.

In addition, the fingerprint scanner light turns on when the machine is off or in sleep mode, so I know power is going to it. It doesn't work to turn on the laptop, though. When I tried to fix, I deleted all saved fingerprints, so I can't really determine if it's because there are no fingerprints or the device is malfunctioning. After loading windows, I can't add fingerprints because it can't detect the device even though it's listed under Device Manager as biometric device with new drivers and reported as functioning properly.

Regarding the bluetooth, the bluetooth light is on during laptop boot-up, so I'm sure the laptop knows there is a bluetooth device. It's right after the HD password checks that the bluetooth light turns off by itself. There is a DOS screen with lots of text regarding an Intel component that will quickly flash just before windows starts loading. It's at that point the bluetooth light will turn itself off.

Now, I'm wondering if there is a BIOS/UEFI issue that is causing the laptop to blacklist the devices? I have tried downgrading the BIOS back 2-3 versions, but no go.

If anyone has seen anything similar in other threads on other thinkpads, please let me know. Never realized how much I loved my fingerprint scanner until I've had to type in my password so many times on the Windows login and Lastpass!

Thanks!

 

I have similar problem with the fingerprint reader. After asking on Lenovo forum, a user reply that it actually some hardware problem. ( link to the thread I post) I'm also having the overheating issue. reapplied thermal paste and I think it gotten worst...need to buy arctic silver then...

 

Anyone have an original T420s hard drive laying around that they would be willing to sell, that they may have replaced with an SSD or something? I am looking for one with these specs: Seagate Momentus Thin 240GB 5400RPM, Lenovo FRU 42T1167. Please shoot me a PM if so, thanks.

 

So I had to pull out my TAB key, but now I can't seem to put it back in. As far as I can tell I didn't break anything when I pulled out the key. Am I just putting it back incorrectly or do I have to order a new key?

 

Just mush it back on. It's a similar technique for any of the keys. Without applying too much pressure, thus potentially breaking the little knobs that snap in, find the sweet spot by moving the key around slightly until it seems to line up well, apply some pressure and see if it gives a little snap and springs back to original position like other keys. If your moderate amount of pressure does not result in the key being seated, squirrel it around a little and try again. Obviously not an exact science but you will get it. Just be relatively careful with the pressure (plastic knobbies are stronger than you may think but let's not test our luck too much).

 

Hi guys,

I don't know if there's still somebody out there, this thread is sort of old.

I'm new owner of T420s Lenovo Thinkpad, bought used, good conditions and all.

Now I'm trying to install winXP-64bit on it, because I have an old XP license key that I'm able to use.

Apart from actually finding a good and clean WinXP-64bit iso, is there something of you who still has the Windows Clean Install Guide for Lenovo T420/s which a guy posted on this forum some year ago?

If not, which issues are quite known to be about installing WinXP-64bit on Lenovo T420s?

Thank you in advance for any hint you'll give me!

FraLi

 

With respect, that's a Really Bad Idea. Windows XP is a security nightmare, and worse, Microsoft support is about the end. You should buy Windows 7 (or 8.1). See Windows 7 Clean Installation - ThinkPad.

 

Hi JNavas, thank you for quick reply!

I don't care about security issue, because I'll run WinXP into full hardware virtualized virtual machine, thus I'll use WinXP only to run my steam games which can't go on ubuntu. WinXP is lighter and less demanding from hardware point of view, so it remains my first choice, also because I already have experience with it.