Thinkpads Forum

Decided a couple of months ago I needed an upgrade from an Acer laptop running WinXP. After a lot of reviewing I decided on the Lenovo Thinkpad E420s and Windows7 home edition. After only a couple of days, I had problems with the computer freezing or getting the BSOD, and have had nothing but problems ever since. Tried various recommended solutions of updating drivers etc, but the computer has never worked properly. Very frustrated after paying out money to buy a new laptop and its such a disappointment.

So rant over with. I would like some suggestions on how to debug the problems in order to figure out how to identify the root-cause and use a reliable fix.

The problems I hit so far:

- Audio problems: no sound, or lately I'm getting some "scratchy" noises when listening to online video.
- Crashing: hasn't happened for a while but I do now and again get the BSOD
- Freezing: happened again today. There was nothing major running on the computer. It just froze. I waited for 10 minutes but it remained unresponsive. Eventually I forced a restart into safe mode. Once that loaded I restarted in normal mode. It took ages and the screen stayed dark for a long time during the start up. I tried opening the task manager at this point to see if i could identify some process that was slowing things down. But I got some error message and the task manager could not be started
- Slow start-up: I tried disabling some of start-up options. doesn't seem to help
- Program list very slow to render: this is a real pain. When i go to 'Start -> All Programs' I have to wait for 15-20s before I can click on a program to start it
- Text cursor jumps - While I'm writing emails, messages on MSN, documents in Word or Open-Office writer, it started happening recently that the cursor automatically jumps to some other part of the page, so I'm writing over something I already wrote. I thought perhaps it was because my hand or thumb might be glancing over the touch-pad, but i've caught it happening where i know this is not the case.


I've tried Windows update, but it tells me everything is up to date.
Ran diskchk, no problems found.
Tried running the Thinkpad update and drivers
Using Resolution Antivirus.


Is there any reliable and safe program from Lenovo that I can run to check all my drivers, settings, registry etc

Lenovo toolbox, and run all diagnostic tests -
http://support.lenovo.com/en_DK/downloa ... MIGR-73783
I'd also learn the model hard drive in the laptop from device manager, go to the manufacturers website and run their diagnostic. Chkdsk is not an all inclusive test.

I'd try a Linux boot CD and see if you still have issues. If so, it may be the motherboard, which would require a warranty claim. You may have gotten a defective one.

Did you completely uninstall Norton/Symantec that came with the e420 before installing that Resolution Antivirus?

if i were you Tony, I'd take out the hard drive, put it in an external enclosure then run the hard drive factory check. if that shows no issues, i'd just do a complete recovery from scratch.