x120e Owner's Thread

The trackpoint pointing stick is it's own ribbon cable to the motherboard and the trackpad is another one to the motherboard. The upper buttons for the trackpad are part of the keyboard but they don't work either because the ultranav driver simply won't even load since there's nothing there for it to see.

I can use a USB mouse no problem.

I've tried taking the good keyboard and trackpoint out of another machine and putting it on the broken one, that had no effect, I put the hard drive into a good x120 and the driver loaded up normally. So the problem is definitely with the controller on the motherboard.

 

OK. My thought was bad cable connections to the two pointing devices, but you've effectively killed that line of thought (dead). So yeah, it sounds like a problem with the controller. Not good.

 

I so dreaded the thought of calling Lenovo customer service that I took one more crack at this noticed that internal to the trackpad, on the under side of it, there are a couple of ribbon connectors, one of them is the smallest ribbon cable in the whole machine and it has no sort of mechanical lock down it is simply held to the contact pins by a piece of tape. Well that was in there a bit askew so it may have been shorting two pins together. I reseated it and applied some glue and guess what, everything works again. So if people are having intermittent issues with the Trackpoint, completely counter to the way the two look to be separate, there is a cable in the Trackpad assembly that may be the culprit.

 

Interesting--you did this just now?

 

Ya, they are fairly easy to take apart compared to most Thinkpads, almost all the screws are the same size.

 

Yep, I knew that (first thing I did on mine was remove the bottom cover and replace the HD with an SSD...but I haven't had to remove the keyboard yet, and hope not to have to do that!).

Well, looks like you saved yourself some downtime, anyway.

 

Makes me wonder now if all the USB ports on the ones I sent back originally just weren't plugged in at the factory.

 

@tankd0g: Could be. Mechanical flaws are more likely than electronic ones here. OTOH, if NONE of the USB ports worked, I would be concerned. Especially because those are likely to be circuit-board mounted rather than case-mounted, so cable issues are less likely.

 

Some news, I took it to the service last tuesday and I've called them today. They have already ordered a new logicboard and hopefully it's arriving on monday, so its just a matter of time...

 

@f8290 : That's great news. Any explanation from them ?

 

Hey, anyone purchased a 6-cell battery on eBay - I was an x120e early adopter, so mine came with the 3-cell (high capacity).

Also, any suggestions to improve battery life? I could upgrade to SSD, but don't want to pay the dinero to do it right now.

 

Two straight-forward things are undervolting, and using tpfancontrol to run the fan a little less.

 

Have you undervolted ? if yes, how much time has it been since you undervolted ?

 

I'm not sure how much extra battery life you get with an SSD; clearly it has to be something. However, the battery life pales when compared to the peace of mind that comes with knowing your computer has no fragile moving parts!

 

SSD's do not necessarily offer better battery life.

While they use a consistent level of energy, traditional drives use more and less, so if the average is equal too or better than the SSD, moving to an SSD doesn't gain you anything.

Install less RAM, use the Lenovo battery life tools, and dim the display.

 

SATA3 SSD-drives nearly drain as much energy as 5400rpm 2,5" drives.

 

Interesting. I have my power plan set up so that my [SSD] drive is never "off." I wonder if turning it off would effect any savings? And how much (my guess is "not very much") if at all would this slow down access?

 

I just bought an x120e 05962ru recently. E-350, 4GB RAM, 7,200 rpm 320GB HDD.

When I first played with the machine out of the box, it seemed faster. But, after installing all the Windows Updates, Lenovo updates, and basic software like Firefox, Microsoft Security Essentials, and Office 2010, the machine has become significantly slower. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I used to have an hp dm1z so I know an E-350 machine can't be this slow.

Overall sluggishness (on Lenovo's Maxiumum performance plan):
-Lenovo Power Manager takes 23 seconds to open once I click the icon on the task bar. It still takes 19 seconds when I close it and open it again.
-ThinkVantage Toolbox takes 70 seconds to open and scan all the various boxes like Storage, Network, Hardware, etc. It takes 60 seconds the 2nd time.
-Clicking on the start button, 5 of 14 start menu programs pinned don't show their icons until a couple seconds pass. When expanding "All Programs", most program icons are blanked out at first.

Slow boot/start up time:
-Every single boot log ID 100 is "critical".
-It takes just under 5 minutes for all services to initialize, settle down, and bring the CPU to hover between 3-7%. For the first 3 minutes, the CPU
stays within 50-75% usage.
-Microsoft Security Essentials, Malwarebytes Pro, and AMD Vision (formerly Catalyst) are the 3 most common CPU hogs when the laptop first starts according to Process Explorer.
-The Event Viewer shows a boot time of 125 seconds and Main Path boot time of 80 seconds, so about 3.5 minutes for it be ready to use.

UPDATE:

After doing a clean boot with all non-MS services+startup disabled, my boot time is at the "error" level instead of "critical", at 98 seconds for boot time. I still can't pinpoint what the issue may be so I have don't have any error messages for booting.

 

@desimc89:

Do you have the CPU seriously throttled down in your power plan? Admittedly, my machine is running from an SSD, but I get 39 seconds from pressing the power button to the login screen, maybe another 35 seconds to load everything, including Outlook, TPFC, etc. Maybe less, because Adobe popped in to tell me of an update (which I skipped). My CPU Max is set at about 80%, in case that makes any difference. At any rate, my system is up and stable at 1:15. I am running 32-bit Windows Ultimate, E-350, 128GB SSD.

Since you purchased the machine recently, I'm betting used--is it possible that the prior owner had throttled things down in the power plan, even though it's called Max Performance?

Which log are you looking at--I can check mine.

 

My parents x120e is loaded with 4gb of ram but of course, only 3.5gb is usable due to the graphics. I am finding that they are down to 800mb free since they like to open a million firefox windows and other stuff opened. They also rarely shut their pc down and just have it on standby instead.
I am planning to pick up an ssd for them in the near future to speed things up. Wondering if I should grab another stick of ram to make it 6gb while I am at it.

 

Tell them to work on their computer habits first

In all seriousness though, 6 GB will work just fine. The X120e and its E-350 does not benefit from paired memory, so there's no difference in performance as long as the extra stick you add is of the same speed.

 

Yes, though it was used, I did a factory reset using the Lenovo recovery partition. Then, over the course of a day, I installed every single critical and optional update through Windows and Lenovo. In addition, I used ninite to install essential programs to keep the system nice and light. Finally, I just uninstalled Microsoft Security and delayed as many programs from starting up through Soluto.

Can any non-SSD users comment on how long it takes to open Power Manager, ThinkVantage toolbox, and boot into Windows (where everything is smooth and initialized)?

I know an SSD would speed things up, but my dm1z also had an E-350 and 7200 rpm HDD, and I rarely thought I was missing out by having a traditional hard drive.

Btw, the log I'm using is "Event Viewer" (type into the start menu). Click on Applications and Service logs -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Diagnostics-Performance -> double click on "Operational" -> look for any 'critical', 'error', and 'warning' messages. Event IDs designated 100 are the key since they contain exact boot time information under "boot duration".

 

You're right in that regard--not that much of a difference. My machine was configured the same as yours when I got it, but I wanted an SDD (I'd previously put one in a little Acer Netbook, and was pleased with the result). For me, it's about the peace of mind in not having something mechanical in there, since I often haul the machine on bike rides, etc. I've always thought spinning disks were a kind of stopgap.

Nothing I can help you with here; I cleared the log (I had forgotten just how much stuff Microsoft tracks) and shut down the machine and did a cold restart. 0 events. Boot time was approximately as described in my previous message.

 

I did a cold boot after seeing your post here. I have the same config as you, just that my machine is 0611. on the harddrive it took 35 seconds for everything to load up. I will put in my SSD to check what difference does it make.

 

Not exactly sure what you problem might be, but when I did a fresh install I only installed 3 or 4 drivers and avoided the Power Manager and Toolbox. Everything still runs as it should without the clutter. I think the only thing I'm missing is a popup on screen for brightness/volume changes.

 

So I went back to windows 7 from windows 8 on my x120e, and now I can't seem to get the hotkeys to work, I have installed the driver for it like 4 times, Finally the volume pop up comes now when I use the function key but the only other function key that works is the brightness keys and the sleep, this is sooo frustrating, I had it all working perfectly before I switched to windows 8, so mad at myself for deleting the server backups I had of the W7 computer. popup does not show for caps or brightness.

I have spent many of time on the current driver install page and I can't get it to work, maybe I will start from scratch and try again. Power manager, at least the latest version really sucks, it says I have no battery installed, when I do, so I removed that(it was a waste of a program and I remember when it first came out this was the program that caused audio buzz). I know the computer is over a year old now but it seems ridiculous that I am having trouble finding old drivers that will work. Whats funny is I can find all the appropriate hotkey files in the program files directory and I can manually open them and try to adjust the settings, but the function keys still don't work.

Any suggestions?

 

I don't have any trouble with drivers. For the hotkeys, make sure you have both the driver and the On Screen Display (OSD) install.

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/8jvu20ww.exe

You could also install this guy:

http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/systemupdate43-2012-5-11.exe

The update manager is pretty good about figuring out what you need and updating it.

 

Hey all...

So I've been updating my video driver on my x120e with standard Catalyst drivers from AMD's site.

This has worked fine, until version 12.3. From that point onward, whatever Catalyst driver I install, the Catalyst Control Center reports that I am running version 12.3 and that a newer version (12.4, now 12.6) is available, even though I installed that very version.

I removed all ATI drivers from the x120e, rebooted, reinstalled, and got the same result.

Does anyone know if the Fusion chip in the x120e is only supported up to version 12.3, and later Catalyst versions dropped support for it or something?

- Tim

 

Yep, I just noticed the issue yesterday as well. Still on 12.3 as reported in the Product Summary, but I was prompted to install 12.6. For now, I'd just ignore it, as there's probably something funky going on with the version numbering over at AMD. Rest assured that Fusion will continue to be supported by AMD, especially since they're still selling the nearly-identical E-450.

 

Ok, just an update for those who remember my case.

After almost 3 weeks finally lenovo told me that the replacement fan is arriving to my country's support service on july 29th so.. waiting.. waiting.. and more waiting..

Will be almost 5/6 weeks without my x120e..

thank you lenovo

 

OK--new (minor) problem. It's been hot here in the NE US. Last night, I noticed a small black dot on my lap--one of the X120e rear feet (the ones mounted on the 6-cell battery) had come off. When I flipped the machine over, I discovered that both were missing. Since my house was north of 90F, I suspect the heat of softening the glue.

So now I have only one rear foot, and I haven't been able to find anything about these small parts on Lenovo's site. I may just get some self-stick rubber and cover the battery's lower bump with it, but I thought I'd check here first.

Anyone have any helpful info?

 

Got some anti-skid stick-ons at Home Despot. They don't look as nice as I'd hoped, but they were cheap and fast and do the job. Which means this solution is 3/4 of perfect!

 

I read in this thread and some other threads and forums as well that people might be interested in changing the not so gud quality panels on the x120e. so I bought a ASUS Ux21A IPS panel of a friend whose ultrabook was damaged beyond repair.
Now my mission is to fit that panel into the x120e. I have some ideas & will do the custom work myself.

Will update the thread with pictures once i begin working. Any pointers from you guys are highly appreciated.

Thanks

 

Anyone else updated to Catalyst 12.6 drivers?
I just did, and because I have been in a discussion about WEI nums on another big nerd forum, I thought I'd mention.
I got a 0.1 bump in both my Graphics numbers after the update. That's always a relief, cause on an older ASUS in my lab, which has the Nvidia dedicated 9300m, it went the other way, by -0.2 after updating the Forceware stuff ... yikes. and those numbers weren't very impressive to start with.

 

I didn't check before and after numbers, but my x120e definitely feels faster after this catalyst update.

shan2129> definitely keep us posted on your ASUS 1080p IPS panel swap project.

-Brian

 

yep... its small, but its there. I noticed the same thing on my 5570 card in my lab mule desktop - I'm getting 6.7 WEI on both graphics measures on that one, and that is a cheap, humble, low-power card but does an outstanding job on video - just like the e350 but turbo charged.
the colors look better on this release also.

yay ati.

 

Just keeping you up to date (at least those who remember me) my Logicboard(motherboard) replacement is arriving on july 29th. I left my x120e on the service on june 13rd so.. thank you lenovo for keeping me without my notebook for 45 days (at least)

 

Whats the differnce between the x130e and x120e? I have a x130 wtih 8gb of ram and a e-450. Hope its fast. Can it run dad? Keyboard lightup?

 

the mechanical design is significantly diff. both get good reviews. e-450 will give about 0.1 bump/relative on WEI if setup properly. latest catalyst is terrific [12.6]. Install SSD and 8GB - enjoy. you will want to install Win7 from scratch with the SSD and make sure you get the sata/ahci driver loaded

 

How do I get the "Fn" key to work? It will not respond to any input on brightness or sound etc... How do I get it to work?

Since I updated my x130e the trackpad doesn't seem to be functioning as good, in fact it's almost impossible to use the trackpad as it barely picks up my fingers?

How can I speed this thing up?

 

Replied in the other thread.

(The Fn issue don't, only the failed driver.)

 

Catalyst/ATI/Radeon drivers 12.6 or 12.7....
I made a surprising and disconcerting discovery.... I had run the 12.6 Catalyst install a week or more ago, and did not notice any errors.
Then, I get a message via the updater that a new version 12.6 is available.... . So, checked in the display profile and sure enough, still running an old driver from 2011.

So it took a lot of stubborness, but the short story is that I could never get the "discover" function to accurately identify my stuff using the 12.6 package and I tried both the "normal" one and the "Mobility" one.
Had errors of various kinds. I finally resorted to painstakingly removing every driver that windows 7 might auto-install for the 6310... it kept finding them. Got all that done so that all win7 could find was generic vga driver. Uninstalled the Catalyst software installer. Renamed all the ATI/AMD folders that had anything to do with Catalyst, then used Catalyst to uninstall everything it could find and set it to "Custom" so I could see the list.

12.6 never worked. I re-downloaded several times to make sure I was not getting a corrupt download. each time it would install everything but video, and would not give any errors in the log.

Downloaded the 12.7 Beta [this was after all the other steps]. once again used the Uninstall function. restarted, then INSTALL, using Custom so I could see if it correctly ID'd everything and it did.
Now up and going.

it shouldn't have been dramatic.

I'm curious to see if other E-350 x120e pilots think you have 12.6 installed, and would you mind checking the driver version just to see... just for fun.

 

I've been completely unable to update the Catalyst software for mine. 12.6, 12.7 beta.. no matter which one I use, or how I use it, it always says I still have 12.3 installed.

AMD really needs to improve their software. It seems the only sure way to likely get 12.6 or 12.7 is a clean OS install which shouldn't be required. I don't have the time to waste on something like that so I guess I'll have to wait until another future update.

 

maybe I was not plain enough. if you follow these steps you'll get it done.
- If you have Ccleaner, open it, select tools, uninstall programs, and "run uninstaller" for the amd/ati installer entry you see in your list of programs. for whatever reason, the windows control panel 'programs' function will not show an uninstall option.
- whatever package you have laying around... 12.6 or 12.7 or any of them, re run it and choose "uninstall". Choose "Custom", and when it discovers and lists all the stuff, check all of it and uninstall it.
- restart/reboot
- go to Device Manager [select 'computer', option "manage", then "Device Manager".]
- find the Display adapter in the list, open it, choose "Uninstall device" and CHECK THE BOX for Delete DRIVER. that's right.. uninstall the display adapter and driver.
- when done, reboot. What win will then do is find the best driver it can. it may find another ATI driver and install, probably older than the one you just removed. If the screen goes from looking awful to looking 'normal', that's what happened. Do the above step again - uninstall the display adapter and delete the Driver
Do this three or four times if necessary until the only driver it can find is a generic VGA Adapter which will display an awful 800x600 resolution.
- Now, run the 12.7 [whatever] Install package again, Install, choose "Custom" and make sure you see it discover the Graphics Display hardware and put it in the list. Should be the second or third item "Install Graphics Driver" or words to that effect. Select the entire list of available items and Install.

you should get well.

 

I never got 12.6 installed either. It installs, says is done, but reports 12.3 or 12.4 (not at the computer but it's one of those). I read it has to do with support for this chip...there wasn't any updated driver for this chip, so although other components update, the driver does not. I have heard 12.7 does contain an updated driver for this chip.

I did the whole "remove everything" bit as well.

- Tim

____________________
Sent via TapaTalk

 

yep tbessie, et al. its buggy. I have an email/form Tech support issue in with them now, with screenshots etc to illustrate my point about 12.6.
12.7 works. 12.4 works.

Unfortunately there is a killer bug in 12.7 i just found today, of all things in playing Flash via youtube in HD.... I was trying to pull up HD History Channel items and the invoking of several controls [like fullscreen toggle, resolution/Quality change... caused the whole system to freeze with no way out except power-off.
No errors ever get to the Windows system event log 'cause the freeze pre-empts the os's builtin monitors.

another battle for another day.

but lest anyone think that Intel's junk works better... they have yet to implement a simple/ubiquitous way to plug in HDMI displays without a major struggle. I bet fully 50% of the "intel HD xxxxxx" owners who have TRIED to attach external high-def/blu-ray monitors/hdtvs have failed, if not 80%. they just 'live with the limitation'

 

I would like to testify and state for the record that the X120e is a little monster of a machine.

It's an E350 version with 6-cell battery, 4GB RAM and a 128GB SSD.

On July 13 I was riding my bike at 6:50 AM to the local coffee shop to get some writing done. The machine was in my messenger bag with some pens and paper & c.

A pickup failed to stop at a stop sign and hit me, knocking the bike out of control, and I crashed. Broken right elbow. Broken right foot. Head of right femur snapped off (I have now had a total hip replacement). Broken computer? Nope. Not a scratch. And given the way everything landed, it landed pretty hard.

Maybe any computer would have survived the crash unscathed. I don't know. But this one did.

 

@Wintermute7 : My god, It's a good thing to know that despite of your bad bad crash & severe damage you are ok. Take Care.

 

Yeah. I'm almost out of rehab and then I have to think about SLOWLY getting back to work. The worst thing about the whole experience was lying in bed; you lose muscle tone (and by this I mean even the strength to do small things) very quickly.

The second worst thing is BOREDOM. I really want to see a change of scenery...

I can get around on a cane pretty well now, so I'll probably go home later this week, but "officially" I'm still supposed to use a walker.


Makes you feel OLD!

 

I can understand to an extent what you must be going through. I am 25 and I had to spend 6 months on a chair ( broke my left tibia, my jaw and other bones in an accident. That was the worst period of my life. I wish you all the best for your healing process & pray that you get back on a bike sooner then expected.