W701 weird boot issues, DPC latency, audio skipping/stutter
Posted: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:16 am
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.
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.
