Thinkpads Forum

Bought a back up w510 and got the system transferred to the "new" machine. Finding out now why the previous owner unloaded it. It has problems with the USB's.

1. If anything is in either of the left side USB's, the system hangs on boot when the wifi light comes on. It never goes off, and the THINKPAD logo stays on the screen until the system is unplugged and the battery is removed.

2. The system will boot normally if nothing is in either of the left USB's. It boots just fine if something is in the back USB.

3. The printer will not accept a job from the left USB's. In fact, when I'm looking at the printer devices screen, the green check mark indicating default status for the printer changes to a yellow exclamation mark triangle when the printer is connected to either of the left ports.

4. The printer works just fine from the back USB.

5. The mouse works fine from any USB slot.

I'm not too excited about going long term with a machine that has only one functioning printer port.

I don't suppose there's a chance that there is some CMOS setting that could be causing all this, is there? It's my understanding that the USB's on the left of my w510 are USB 3's. I thought that might be the problem...perhaps some driver issue.

AFAIK you have 2x USB3.0 (blue), 1x USB2.0 (yellow) and 1x USB/eSATA ports (type unknown).
Check your BIOS in Config/USB if Always on is set to Enabled, if so, change to Disabled.
Also, check that BIOS Startup/Boot does not have any USB entry before your "real" boot-drive.

USB 3.0 prior to Ivy Bridge (W530) is implemented using a 3rd party chip with lots of software issues.

The USB/eSata combo port is USB 2.0

And yes, clear the boot priority list from all the junk.

I learned something new, didn't know the W510 had USB 3.0

I actually didn't encounter any issues with the NEC uPD720200 USB 3.0 chip that pre-Ivy-Bridge Thinkpad used. You need the drivers installed, obviously, but other than that, it has always worked great. The uPD720202 on ExpressCards is another story. Lots of issues with that one. What has been your experience?

However, in this case, I suspect there may be a hardware failure on the uPD720200.

If you bought your machine on eBay, open a claim to return it for a refund, reason: "not as described".

Since java is apparently required, now, to access messages on this board, I'll only log on from someone else's machine. This being the case, I'll only be logging on once a month or less.

I'm trying to make the machine work, as I don't have time to go through all the installation stuff again unless the machine is pretty dysfunctional. Since I last posted...here is how it all shakes out:

1. the ESATA port and the port at the back of the machine will allow print jobs to flow normally. That was the minimumally-acceptable scenario. I wouldn't keep the machine if only one port would print, for obvious reasons.

2. The 2 usb ports on the left side of the machine work just fine, but I can't print with them.

3. I have found that the mouse dongle is the problem with boot failures. I have 2 wireless mice. If the dongle for either of them is in one of the usb3's on the left side of the machine, it hangs on boot with the lenovo logo displayed on the screen...and the wifi light stuck on. I have wifi turned off at the physical switch and via cmos. Pull the dongle, and it boots just fine. Ditto with other devices plugged into either of those 2 ports (i.e., the machine boots just fine with, say, a scanner or external hard drive plugged into the side ports.)

The SAMSUNG SSD seems to be working fine. All the software made the trip except paperport, which required a chat with their tech support to get a new activation number. I know that uses up one of my activations...so if I ever reach an impass with that company, I'll switch to a competitor's software and leave them in the dust.