Horror story: Swapping drive awakens thinkpad from standby!

[etherealtml]

Recently had a very disturbing experience with my thinkpad: I put my notebook to sleep and placed vertically in my backpack. At that point, I could see that I still had my optical drive in my notebook. Expecting to use my Thinkpad away from power outlets for most of the day, I decide to remove the optical drive and swapped it for my ultraybay-slim battery.

Imagine my horror when I got to my first class, I pull out my thinkpad and it is hot as an oven. My Thinkpad is ON, and was in my backpack with no ventillation. Mobile meter says that the CPU got as high as about 65-70C! Luckily, it was only on for about an hour (the length of my commute) but man, I was thouroughly angry: WHY DID THIS HAPPEN???

I discovered that thinkpads will resume from standby if you remove the ultrabay-slim drive. Why? Who knows. Makes it really inconvenient to swap drives to say the least. If the lid on my notebook is closed, how am I supposed to use my PC?? Why then should my PC resume from standby??? Stupid designers #!$@%#$#!%@#$%....

I hope my story prevents anyone else from roasting their laptop.

edit: I should also mention that I had my notebook set to "do nothing" when I close the lid because I use an external keyboard/mouse/monitor at home, but I don't have a docking station- yet. I have since changed it so that my pc will go to standby when I close the lid.

[Leon]

not sure why it's designed that way, but probably no harm done... your temperature was well within spec.....

[mdarnton]

It's supposed to wake up when you do something with it, and you did. If you're going to stow your laptop in an unventilated place, hibernation is the thing you should be doing.

[RCube]

Because that optical drive is seen as a removable device. So to safely remove it while in sleep mode, thinkpad wakes up. I think this is mainly for the OS's sake.

Also you didn't take the tp out of your backpack to remove the drive...if you did, you would have seen the lights go on and also heard the fan.

[lfeagan]

Yeah...It does resume, so that the removable device manager can correctly remove the device. The OS is trying to protect you from doing the naughty things that you are doing to the poor thing. To be polite to the OS, you really are supposed to use the removable device manager to tell it you are wanting to remove it, it will then remove power and unload the drivers so that you can safely remove the device. I am sure you have noticed that when you hit the release switch, but haven't yet pulled on it, that it makes a beep noise after a few seconds. That is IBM's handy software and hardware interacting with the OS and running the removable device manager for you. If you were to pull it out before the beep noise, it could still be powered, possibly causing damage. So, in the future, before just pulling things in and out, it never hurts to Read The Friendly Manual (RTFM). Just a thought....

[MobileGuru]

You shouldn't be carrying the box around suspended in an enclosed space anyway .. that is what Hibernation is for. Just be thankful that there was no damage from heat and learn a valuable lesson.

[primedude]

I don't mean to dog on you here, but I wouldn't really term this a horror story. I saw someone who did the same thing with a Powerbook, and the [censored] thing melted down. The Thinkpad survived no worse for wear, and you learned a lesson without it costing you any money. Be thankful!

[ThinkPad]

I had a similar thing happen to me recently. I closed the lid, slipped it in my bag and started walking. When I arrived at my destination (probably 20-30 mins later) It was very hot. The thinkpad did not go into sleep mode. My hypothesis is that the laptop did not have enough time to go into sleep mode before I put it in the bag and started walking. When I was walking, the hard drive protection kicked in, disabling it from any processing.

[boofoo]

There's an easy way to reduce the likelihood of this problem:

One of the options under Power Options -> Beeps/Alarms is to "beep on lid action." This will make your Thinkpad keep beeping as it tries to shutdown or hibernate while the lid is closed. If it fails to do so, it will just keep on beeping and you'll know something is wrong. I've occassionally had my computer fail to go into standby properly, and now I either do it manually or have this option on so I'll know something is amiss.

[dvorak]

There's an easy way to reduce the likelihood of this problem:

One of the options under Power Options -> Beeps/Alarms is to "beep on lid action." This will make your Thinkpad keep beeping as it tries to shutdown or hibernate while the lid is closed. If it fails to do so, it will just keep on beeping and you'll know something is wrong. I've occassionally had my computer fail to go into standby properly, and now I either do it manually or have this option on so I'll know something is amiss.

It only seems to work when the sound is not muted, I usually mute it when I'm outside so it's not much help.

On a related subject -- I suggest you disable waking up by a timer in the BIOS, although it disables the hibernation when suspended, it helps to protect the drive when it may want to hibernate on the move, note, that it will still hibernate on time when it's on AC.