Help with X230 freezes

[rlweiner]

My X230 keeps locking up and it's driving me nuts. So far I've:

• Updated all device drivers
  Increased RAM to the maximum
  Scanned for malware
  Turned off Link Power State management
  Tried all options for AHCI Link Power Management
  Enabled Momentum Cache
  Disabled Superfetch, TPShocks, and Express Cache
  Run stress tests on the RAM and SSD
  Tried various power management options (e.g., Maximum Performance vs. Energy Saver).
  I'm current with the BIOS and all Windows updates.

The freezes seem totally random. Sometimes I can go a week or two without one, sometimes they happen daily. They have happened when I'm using the computer and when it's been idle. They've happened when the laptop is plugged in and when it's running on battery. They've happened when the screen is on and when it's been dimmed by the power manager. This is a work computer. It's not used for anything particularly CPU intensive.

There are no events in the Event Viewer just before a freeze. There's no BSD -- the computer just locks up. It doesn't respond to any keys except the backlight function key. A hard reset is the only cure.

My setup:
Windows 7 Pro SP 1
16 GB RAM
1TB Crucial CT1000MX SSD

What more can I try?

One complication: When I originally migrated my data to this machine, it suffered a disk failure and I had to reformat the drive (which I subsequently replaced with the Crucial SSD). I didn't have the recovery partition, so I used recovery media from a Lenovo T430, then updated the BIOS and all drivers. That seemed to work fine, but I know it could be the root of the problem. In any case, I can't create X230 recovery media.

[brchan]

Using the recovery media of a T430 with an X230 is likely the root of the problem. Also, if the recovery media was designed for systems with HDDs and not SSDs, it may have complicated the issue even more.

If you haven't already, I would run memtest. Additionally, burning a linux live iso to a usb/dvd and booting from it can help you determine if the issue is in software or hardware.

[rlweiner]

Thanks. I've run memtest several times, and SMART tests on the SSD. No problems have shown up.

I haven't tried booting from Linux. The X230 can go for a week or more between freezes. Will booting from Linux tell me anything right away?

[hhhd1]

Have you considered that maybe the SSD itself is the issue ?
Has all those errors only started after adding the SSD ?

see if you can use an alternate SSD/HDD temporarily, to see if the same issue happens or not.

[rlweiner]

Yes, my first thought was that it was the SSD. I've read lots of articles about freezes due to SSDs. Many of the things I've tried were suggested by Crucial tech support and various fora. Crucial denies that it's a hardware issue since the SSD passes all tests and the problem is so random. I still suspect that the SSD may be the culprit, though.

One of the steps I'm considering is cloning my system to an HDD to see if the problem goes away. But before spending a day cloning the disk I thought I'd see if there are easier things to try.

Thanks!

[Brad]

I ran into a bad keyboard on an X230 exhibiting a similar issue.

If you have another keyboard give it a whirl.

Brad

[rlweiner]

Thanks, Brad. I usually use the laptop in a docking station with a USB keyboard. The freezes have happened in the docking station, using an external keyboard as well as out of it, using the built-in keyboard.

Also, when frozen the laptop doesn't respond to a mouse -- neither a USB mouse nor the trackpoint.

Does this sound like the problem you had?

[evening_hunger]

The painful part of such breakdowns is that one needs a good tactic to nail the issue. Breaking down the problem seems to be an option. So for example, you can try to work sans ssd for some time and see what happens. work without the battery. work only on battery. work without the keyboard. work without usb. And so on. A long time ago I had a similar issue, it was a CPU loose in its socket, the system froze anytime it happened. Obviously it cannot be your problem, as x230 has a soldered cpu.

To give you any constructive info. Well, I dunno about Windows, not a specialist. But you could help yourself using Linux and its diag capabilities. For example, running some live system, like some live Ubuntu (from an usb key or something) and monitor the system until/if it fails. Had I been there I could try if it help you:) but as it is, the only thing coming to mind would be e.g. to trace the output of such command:

Code: Select all

sudo tail -f /var/log/{messages,kernel,dmesg,syslog,daemon.log

so basically what this does is print out various logs. IF your system is frozen as a reason of anything OS-detectable, this could be in logs or dmesg. Thus redirecting such a command to a file sitting on the usb drive:

Code: Select all

sudo tail -f /var/log/{messages,kernel,dmesg,syslog,daemon.log > /media/user/mydrive/artefact.txt

should result in a file with some info even if the system freezes. Well, due to extfs spec it can fail also (the system may not unmount USB and the file contents can get lost inside a buffer) but that's a shot I would take.

Perhaps as a Windows user what you could take out of this is the very idea of using any monitoring program outputting to a file-that-might-survive-the-crash.

Hope that helps/inspires

[rlweiner]

I removed and reinstalled my keyboard and mouse drivers, and haven't had a freeze since.

I also disabled Momentum Cache on the SSD, as suggested in the Crucial SSD forum.

It's been 4 days -- too soon to say the problem has been solved. I'm feeling optimistic, though.

[rjwilmsi]

Traditional (i.e. in older generation) SSD freeze issues were disk stutter, the machine is unresponsive for some number of seconds, maybe up to 30, while the SSD managed its free space (blocks to be erased, data to be moved etc.), then whole machine works fine again. That's not what you describe and no current generation SSD from one of the decent manufacturers has this issue unless you deliberately spend hours torture testing the drive.

The way you installed Windows doesn't sound ideal, image for a different machine? No way I'd have done that. A clean install is probably the way to go if your driver changes don't work (with a plain Windows 7 disk, these used to be legally downloadable from the Microsoft Digital river site; you don't need a Lenovo recovery image, you can install any Lenovo drivers that you really need later).

[rlweiner]

I was ready to declare this problem solved, but it happened again today. At least I made it 10 days without a freeze.

I should have written earlier that I'm calling this a freeze, but the event log shows it as a shutdown with error 6008. The most recent error message is "The previous system shutdown at 4:11:38 PM on ‎3/‎6/‎2016 was unexpected." However, the system is still "running". The fan is on, the backlight works, and the power button is illuminated.

Here's the full event log:
- System

- Provider

[ Name] EventLog

- EventID 6008

[ Qualifiers] 32768

Level 2

Task 0

Keywords 0x80000000000000

- TimeCreated

[ SystemTime] 2016-03-07T00:47:28.000000000Z

EventRecordID 400630

Channel System

Computer X230

Security


- EventData

4:11:38 PM
‎3/‎6/‎2016


290759


E00703000000060010000B0026000100E00703000100070000000B00260001003C0000003C0000000000000000000000000000000000000001000000985C0300


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Binary data:


In Words

0000: 000307E0 00060000 000B0010 00010026
0008: 000307E0 00070001 000B0000 00010026
0010: 0000003C 0000003C 00000000 00000000
0018: 00000000 00000000 00000001 00035C98


In Bytes

0000: E0 07 03 00 00 00 06 00 à.......
0008: 10 00 0B 00 26 00 01 00 ....&...
0010: E0 07 03 00 01 00 07 00 à.......
0018: 00 00 0B 00 26 00 01 00 ....&...
0020: 3C 00 00 00 3C 00 00 00 <...<...
0028: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0030: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........
0038: 01 00 00 00 98 5C 03 00 ....˜\..

=====================

I tried updating the Intel IDE and Crucial SSD drivers, but they're already current.

Intel's driver update utility did identify an update for the wireless network adapter so I updated that one. But since I haven't been using wifi most of the times when the system has locked up, I doubt that's the problem.

[rlweiner]

I may have solved the problem. At least, it's been 12 days since the last freeze. My latest approach was to use Snappy Drivers https://sdi-tool.org/ to look for driver updates. It identified 2 dozen updates or better drivers. I installed them all (after setting a restore point) and haven't had a problem since. Fingers crossed...