W701 weird boot issues, DPC latency, audio skipping/stutter

[droolface]

Hey Thinkpad people. I really hope someone or several of you could help me solve this issue with an otherwise well-loved W701. I got it not too long ago from ebay. All seems well with the machine. It came with an i7 quad core 1.6ghz processor and the standard 1gb Nvidia gfx. I've since upgraded the CPU to the 1.73ghz quad core i7 and upped the ram to 16gb pc3-12800 - thinking these improvements might fix the audio stuttering. All the problems existed before and after the upgrades. I made sure when reassembling the unit that every connector was solid, every ram slot checked, new arctic silver thermal paste on both CPU and GPU. Am running Win7 64 bit. Latest BIOS, etc.

No difference. Here's a summary of the issues:

- BOOT: intermittently nothing happens when powering on after getting to the 1/0 light and bluetooth light. It just sits there indefinitely without powering up the screen. Same on battery as plugged into the 230w power supply. I need to hold down power to shut off and go through the cycle a few times till it completes boot. I've tried the secret remove battery and hold down power etc to discharge the capacitors. I've checked all the USB ports for shorts. Nothing appears to be awry. Even more frustratingly, the problem occurs also randomly on restart. Such as during updates, etc. So I need to hard reset and hope the updates resume on power-up, catching the Win7 booth failure message. This issue happens basically every time I use the machine for any period of time. It's highly frustrating.

- AUDIO, DPC latency: Any sort of audio playback - local itunes media, streaming audio, streaming video, flash / silverlight / you name it. Horrible stutter, freezing pops, buzz. Typical high DPC latency stuff. I've run the DPC latency debug program and see lots of spikes happening pretty much all the time. I tried the suggested method of disabling hardware and drivers one by one to detect the issue by process of elimination. I can't seem to isolate any magic bullets.

- a 3rd problem actually, WLAN cuts out: also randomly the WLAN card (intel AGN 6300) just seems to die. loses all connections, totally unresponsive. Flipping the radio on/off switch does nothing to help. Neither does the Fn-F5 version. The only thing that helps is disabling the device and re-enabling it. This brings it back up for some random amount of time until it goes down again. Doesn't seem to happen with the ethernet NIC.

I only seem to be left thinking I need a new system board... but before dumping the $$ into buying one, which may have similar issues, I thought I'd put out a plea to you all hoping someone can help. I've also thought about replacing the GPU card... since as far as I know it might be that too... and that's cheaper to start with. But I don't want to go sinking lots of $ into this and possibly end up in the same boat.

I've searched and searched and no one else seems to have reported this sort of set of issues with their W701's. At the same time, I also picked up a W700 recently and it works GREAT. NONE of the same issues. Not to mention the Core 2 duo extreme CPU I threw into it makes it run even faster than this Quad in basically every respect.

I'm REALLY frustrated here. I want to use this machine as a hardcore development workstation, but I'm left up in the air. Thanks for reading... I hope someone can help!

ps- Forgot to mention, I've disabled most if not all the power-saving options thinking they could be a problem. Disabling one or two in the Nvidia software seemed to reduce the DPC latency spike, but not enough to solve the problem. Running power manager at max performance. Max performance across the board in BIOS. Disabled power savings on PCIE and bus, etc.

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the Forum.

Are all your drivers up-to-date?
Putting in another graphics card does nothing for audio or WAN, though it may solve boot problems.
As to the CPU swap: going from 1.6 to 1.73GHz is only a theoretical improvement of 8%. Expensive bragging rights...

What was the description on eBay that made you buy that machine?
Was it sold for parts, with something not functioning, or what?
I'd return it for a full refund if I were you.

[FryPpy]

WLAN cuts out: also randomly the WLAN card (intel AGN 6300) just seems to die.

Hello there.
My advice - try to rip off (unplug) this WLAN card. Dying WiFi can brake brains of notebook owner with strange behavior.
More hints - try to unplug (not disable in device manager) all unpluggable pieces of hardware (WUSB, Wacom + XRite + touchpad + FPreded, MDC, BDC, memory sticks one by one - or test it with Memtest86, WebCam??). Even HDD or DVD and try to boot with live USB and test your issues.

Is some of this glitches come with the new CPU?

Was it sold for parts, with something not functioning, or what?
I'd return it for a full refund if I were you.

W701 is rare thinkpads - so there is not much options to acquire good one:( Some times it is better to fix well known thing than to wait for another one...
Bad things - there are no well known glitches of W70x because of they rarity:(

PS
Power brick to my W700 will come to me today

[droolface]

Welcome to the Forum.

Thanks!

Are all your drivers up-to-date?

Yes - have done all Windows and Lenovo updates, including using the latest version of Lenovo update, etc. Also have tried directly updating Nvidia driver, Intel drivers, etc. No dice.

Putting in another graphics card does nothing for audio or WAN, though it may solve boot problems.

I know of a working system pull for $50 that is tempting just to try as an elimination step. But one step leads to another, and another...

As to the CPU swap: going from 1.6 to 1.73GHz is only a theoretical improvement of 8%. Expensive bragging rights...

Wasn't so much for bragging rights as killing two birds with one stone: get a bump in speed and see if a bad or badly seated CPU was contributing to these problems.

What was the description on eBay that made you buy that machine?

This is the original listing. Overall I'm quite happy with it, and have pampered it pretty well since I got it, replacing anything easily replaceable. Plus, in the process I learned the hard way that the LCD assembly and base cover for the W700 and W701 are totally incompatible. Was able to find brand new ones and tried swapping them onto the W701. Only after completely disassembling it and beginning to reassemble did things really start to not fit together (facepalm). BUT that wasn't the start of these issues, there was no change before or after the disassembly and reassembly.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-Thin ... 1630085092

Luckily I got a really good deal on a W700 soon thereafter that was a perfect use for my new LCD and base covers, so now I have a practically brand new W700 for about $250:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-ThinkPad ... 1717120917

My advice - try to rip off (unplug) this WLAN card. Dying WiFi can brake brains of notebook owner with strange behavior.

I think I will try this next. I have a replacement AGN 6300 I can swap in.

Is some of this glitches come with the new CPU?

Nope, same before and after!

THANKS GUYS! Will report back once I've tried the new WLAN card. But please, keep the help coming, anyone reading. I'm not super confident the WLAN swap will fix this. I also have heard about DPC latency issues causing audio problems for other W-series machines. Some W510 or W520 owners I believe had had similar troubles. Of course, does that mean the root cause is the same? No idea. But it does remind me uneasily of something like the ROHS lead-free solder fiasco with the T4x series system boards. I wanted to collect a good working example of each model series T40, T41, T42, T43... and I had to buy 3-4 machines EACH in order to get one with a healthy system board. I didn't want to bother with reballing when they are so cheap these days. Anyway - the point is, maybe there is some commonality in these W-series generations causing issues like this that has flown under the radar due to the relative scarcity of these machines. I guess maybe we'll find out. At least I can report being very happy with my W700... working flawlessly.

[droolface]

Well folks - here's the current status... I swapped in a replacement intel AGB 6300 WLAN card and no improvement at all. =(

[droolface]

Well I finally gave in and decided to pay the $150 for a replacement motherboard for the W701. The decision was made easier when I realized that the motherboards for sale by the vendor I purchased from are brand new and factory sealed. Plus it was the exact right board for my system (to anyone who, like me, thought maybe the W700 and W701 mb's are interchangeable... nope).

After changing out the mb I can confidently say that this was the cause of the DPC latency issues. I suspect that the original system board had some corrosion due to liquid damage. It must have been extremely minor, since the system was working in most ways.

Here's a before pic of trying to play some music...
http://i.imgur.com/WtSPjwo.png

and here's an after pic of the system purring along.
http://i.imgur.com/MXrF2ec.png

The issue can officially be considered closed. Thanks to everyone for your input!

[RMSMajestic]

The issue can officially be considered closed. Thanks to everyone for your input!

Well, don't throw away your broken board. I'm thinking of changing the graphics on W701 and the experiment might result in the death of several W701 before a success.

[droolface]

The issue can officially be considered closed. Thanks to everyone for your input!

Well, don't throw away your broken board. I'm thinking of changing the graphics on W701 and the experiment might result in the death of several W701 before a success.

Hey - I think I still have it if you'd like to play with it. Happy to donate it if you cover shipping. PM me if interested.