Thinkpads Forum

Hi
My dad have a T520, and when watching DVDs it suddenly began to slow down for some second, then to play the movie at the right speed. I can hear that the drive spins up, right after the slowdown - like it is spinning down (= slowdown), and then spins up again.

Its quite annoying.

best regards

Have you gone into the Lenovo Power Manager and adjusted the "optical drive speed?"

I always set mine to "silent" so my T400 doesn't sound like its ready for take off! Give this a try

Good luck.

Hi, thank you for the reply. I have already tried all different speeds, but it didnt help

Best regards

That is strange. Do you have an external optical drive you could try to rule out hardware? Have you tried going into BIOS and setting the "silent" mode there?

Is there anything else wrong with the T520 you are using? Any quirky behavior at all besides the optical drive?

I have experienced the sounds you describe also which is remedied by power management settings. When I set my optical speed to "silent" in power manager it returns a uniform silence when playing DVDs. I do not hear any inconsistency or noticeably loud spin up or down of the optical drive.

Have you tried contacting Lenovo and asking? If your dad's T420 is still under warranty the DVD drive should be a CRU (Customer Replaceable Unit). This means that if you ask they could send you a replacement DVD drive and you could install it yourself.

Perhaps other members might have some possible diagnoses. Good luck.

Look in the power manager and select "advanced". Under system settings, check the setting for "automatic optical drive power down".