Intermittant system stalls - T510

Since day one, I'm getting these system stalls. Not regular intervals, but consistent. They last about four seconds. Everything stops including the CPU activity graph in Process Explorer then resumes again. There is no spike in CPU or I/O that I can see. It is not unique to any particular application. Googling is not turning up anything specific that helps.

Any ideas or similar issue?

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I guess similar has happened to me. It is always when I am hovering over one of the icons in the W7 toolbar, especially the windows live messenger icon. It seems to sometime freeze when it tries to show the window previews. It is never for 4 seconds though, I would say ~2 seconds has been my longest "freeze".

 

In Power Manager, do you have the optical drive set to automatically power down after a while? When I was running my factory install of Windows Vista, the entire system would for some reason lock up for a few seconds after the ODD powered down.

Since installing a clean install of Windows 7 Professional, though, I haven't had that problem.

 

Ok. this is a serious matter. Please download the DPC Latency Checker and run it in the background.
It can be a software or hardware problem.

This might also help if we need more in-depth testing of the services/processes running.

It might be something as simple as power saving setting for a specific device (wireless, infrared,etc) or as bad as faulty chips.

 

The system does power down the ODD automatically. I've looked for a setting in PM but haven't found it. Can you point me more specifically to where it is? They may have removed it as they did the battery charge levels settings in the latest models. I am running W7Pro64 by the way.
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I'll do some testing as you suggest tonight. I have run DPC Latency Checker based on other threads and did not find anything other than green though.
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So the checker was showing green bars even though you experienced the problem again?

 

Well, first, to see if that is the problem, open your ODD and then close it (to get it to turn on). Now, go to the Safely Remove Hardware item in the System Tray and eject the drive. Then, a few seconds later, see if you get the system hang you describe. When this issue occurred for me, even the mouse would stop moving.

To disable the ODD power off feature, open the Advanced view in Power Manager, go to the Power Plan tab and expand the System Settings dropdown. Now set Automatic Optical Drive Power Off to Disabled on AC and battery.

 

Are you saying that this is a "known issue" in ThinkPads?

 

No, I don't think so. I haven't heard of anyone else with that issue, and I haven't had that problem since I upgraded to Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. Just this issue sounded kind of similar to the problem I was having before (which I worked around by setting the ODD not to automatically disable).

 

I found the setting, but preventing ODD from powering down did not change this behavior.
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Can you confirm no Latency spikes during those occurences?

 

The problem has been present from day one.

Currently, DPCLC has occassional yellow bars, but they do not correspond with the stalls. I don't see any significant change in DPCLC when the stall occurs.

That other procedure is a bit much to undertake just now. Perhaps this weekend if I don't find anything else that helps first.

Thanks.

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Have you tried the system restore or even a fresh OS install?

 

Well, what I think I will do tomorrow ....

I received the system with the 500GB drive. I imaged that before setting up Windows and replaced it with a 500GB encrypted drive. So I can just swap hard drives and configure windows as if I just received the system. It will be a good troubleshooting system whenever something crops up to help tell if it is a HW or SW issue.

 

Sounds like a good idea. Looking forward to see your findings.

 

I had a very similar issue with my T410. It started happening after I did a clean install, so I'm not sure if it would have been present if i didn't do a clean install. The laptop would run fine for hours but at random intervals it would freeze for a couple of seconds and then return to normal. During these periodic freezes nothing would respond including the keyboard, mouse, etc. I searched high and low for a solution. I tried running DPC latency checker and it didn't report any latency spikes during normal operation or right before, during, or after a system freeze. I tried disabling non essential items in the device manager one at a time but the issue still persisted. It didn't have anything to do with my ODD since I don't have one, I have a second HDD in the UltraBay (the issue also remained with the HDD in the UltraBay removed). Then after more googling I decided to uninstall the UltraNav driver and install the generic Synaptics driver and that has seemed to solve the problem. I haven't had a system freeze for days. You may want to try the generic Synaptics driver and see if that helps you. I'm sure the T510 and T410 use the same TouchPad (at least I'm almost sure). You can find the Synaptics driver here from Station Drivers. Also, the generic Synaptics driver will let you configure the TrackPoint. Hope this helps.

 

It helps indeed! Sounds like the same issue. However, I am already running the generic Synaptics driver. Though it makes it more likely that the culprit is that. I am running 15.0.9.0 and I notice that the latest on the site you linked is 15.0.10, so it will give me a chance to uninstall and reinstall that driver and see what happens.

Thanks for the info. I'll post my results tonight.
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So, you don't see the disk activity light blinking a lot or staying on solid during the "frozen" moments? Because it could be the system busy dumping stuff to or retrieving from the page file, for example. Are you running anti-virus, firewall, internet security, or other utilities that run in the background? They could lead to it.

One last thing: are you using a bluetooth mouse? I notice that my Microsoft Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 occasionally "hangs up" for a few seconds, but during that time, the trackpoint and trackpad still respond fine. I rarely see this on my T510, but used to experience it frequently with the same mouse on my old Toshiba laptop.

 

I can confirm that this still happens to me at random intervals when I hover the mouse over icons in the Taskbar with the gerneric Synaptics driver installed. However, the freezing seems to only happen when I hover over the icons in the Taskbar as reported by kiwikat.

 

I have switched my Windows 7 theme to a basic one which does not have the taskbar thumbnail preview and I have yet to experience a system freeze when hovering over the icons in the taskbar. Of course this disables any Windows 7 Aero functionality but it avoids the annoying system freeze I think its worth it. Hopefully someone will discover the actual root of the problem causing these short 2-4 second freezes.

 

2-4 second freezes sounds to me a lot like a bad driver(s). Since Win 7 is relatively a new OS, drivers initially offered may have issues. Reinstalling OS and getting the latest drivers may solve the issues altogether.

 

Update:

I uninstalled the synaptics driver and installed the later build. No help.

I updated the BIOS to one that just released a week or so ago. No help. (It is supposed to help with keys transposing when typing very fast as reported by some with the W510).

I've yet to swap the drive out to test a factory fresh windows install to see if the problem is there.

I agree that it is likely a driver issue and hope that updates as they come will solve the problem. I haven't checked Intel for a later graphics driver which I will do.

The freezes reported here when hovering over a particular icon sound like a different issue. My system freezes randomly, not just the pointer, but everything (for a few seconds).
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Yeah you've got some sort of software or driver issue. I loaded up MSN and signed in, then opened up iTunes and a handful of control panel applets, and I've got FireFox running with a few windows with several tabs each, and when I hover over anything on my task bar, including MSN, the previews are virtually instantaneous (maybe a half second?). EDIT: or a second at most.

 

Well, after a day and a half without the intermittent freezes, I can say with 90% confidence that replacing the video driver fixed it. I use the latest Intel driver from here:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...+Graphics&ProdId=3231&LineId=1101&FamilyId=39

Since installing it normally gives an error message about the driver not being compatible with the OEM machine and to use the latest Lenovo driver, I had to resort to guerrilla tactics. I uninstalled the driver via device manager and had the driver files deleted. After restart and back to device manager, I installed by pointing to the folder where the new Intel drivers were. Installed fine. The only thing that I seem to have lost is the onscreen brightness gauge, but I would much rather give that up than have those pesky freezes. I figure the next Lenovo driver update will restore the gauge and likely keep the freezes at bay as well.

Happy camper!!

I hope this ends up helping others as well.

Cheers!

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I updated my video driver to the latest Intel HD graphics ones posted over at Station Drivers here and have not had any systems freezes since, while hovering over the taskbar icons or not. I have lost the onscreen brightness gauge as well. I guess using the generic Intel drivers breaks this functionality. Hopefully this is restored in the next Intel HD graphics release by Lenovo as pstrisik mentions.

 

Good deal! Sounds like a general fix for the stalling issue in its various manifestations.

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