Thinkpads Forum

The green, bottom-of-the-screen, pop-up graphics don't come up anymore when I adjust volume level, screen brightness, or turn on the keyboard light (light and adjustments work fine). I think they stopped when I was installing and uninstalling some virus programs and a firewall to try, but I'm not sure if it happened before that. I just updated to Power Manager 5.20, but I had the problem prior.

Any ideas where I can look to fix this? Thanks.

Typically it gets disabled by one of the "PC Tune Up" type apps that get bundled in with virus programs sometimes. It thinks that it is making your computer faster by disabling services, but it can take away features you use.

Several ways to check for this. You could click start and type in the box msconfig.exe. Then select the Services tab. Sort by Manufacturer column, go down to Lenovo, and verify that check marks in the services you need, especially the "Lenovo Hotkey Client Loader."

If that doesn't help, then get the Hotkey drivers from http://support.lenovo.com/ and reinstall.

Thanks, Jayton. I tried your suggestions; didn't see Hotkey in the msconfig list. I went to the link and updated Hotkey, but that didn't change anything. I checked with an autorun program and Hotkey and the driver are running.

I found TPOSDSVC.exe (on screen display generator for thinkpad) in one of the HOTKEY folders. When I doubleclicked it, the displays returned. They were the newer type with white bar and black border which I had forgotten I did have before. When I rebooted, they did not work and doubleclicking the file again did not turn them on. Long story short, I uninstalled the "Fn - on screen display" and "Full Screen Magnifier" which has to be unistalled first it says. I reinstalled the older version 5.21 (green display) which now seems to be working. (Scratches head)

Slick_tu wrote:I reinstalled the older version 5.21 (green display) which now seems to be working. (Scratches head)

I think the Lenovo engineers either don't understand regression testing, or perhaps they just don't care.

Once I get Windows 7 installed on a ThinkPad with the Lenovo drivers and software, there are certain Lenovo updates I will not do, as it oftentimes breaks things. I have experienced problems upgrading to newer versions of Power Manager, ThinkPad Bluetooth, UltraNav, Access Connections, and the hotkeys.

Yes, I agree. I won't upgrade Access Connections becuase of that. I think I will leave the rest alone, too; since things are working well, why fix it until it breaks?