Can I save my laptop?
 

Lenovo Legion Y520. i7-7700HQ 2.8GHz. 16 GB RAM.

The manufacturer's warranty runs out in 2 days.

Overall I like it, but it crashes excessively. It was merely annoying until two weeks ago, when it happened at the end of the session--and at the beginning of the session last week.

I rarely saw more than four clients in a week, so that is one crash during less than 4 hours.

Since I was just using video conferencing and not physically interacting with the laptop I didn't realize how hot it was. I later measured the outside at 117°, but it was in the nineties outside, and probably a bit warmer in my shed. The ceiling measured 101°. I am sure that more insulation would do more. So would airflow. I have a powerful shop fan, but it didn't seem to lower the temperature well enough on 3, and it was still too loud on 1.

I honestly may install a ceiling fan in the shed! :)

Installing a vent in the back wall would allow cross-flow.

My research said that fans only do so much when the ambient temperature is excessive.

I bought a laptop cooler, but it is still crashing.

I forget the error code that I have often seen, but BlueScreenView says that ntoskrnl.exe was involved. This page says:

1: Update Your Drivers. Microsoft says leave that to Windows, their crack team of crackpots verify every driver before Windows installs it, but my laptop is crashing now.

I run Driver Booster 7a, which says that my drivers are up-to-date, but if I pay it will update another 21 drivers.

What?

The page recommends installing their updater, which installs one update at a time and then makes you wait longer and longer--often four hours or longer.

I updated everything, though, although MalwareBytes now blocks the program.

2: Run a Scan with the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool. I ran this several months ago for the same problem and I ended up using other tests. I ran it, which took over half an hour, and couldn't find any test results. It just finished and restarted. The information is supposed to be in Event Viewer, but it didn't show anything. All that l found for "I ran the test, but cannot find the results" is "Do it again."

Three tests.

Zero results.

I guess that I will run that test that I have on a flash drive.

3. Run sfc /scannow as administrator. If necessary, run CHKDSK /f /r and then sfc /scannow again.

4: Reset Overclocking Settings for Your Devices. I have never tried to overclock.

5: Install Windows Updates. I did this when I checked my drivers.

6: Perform a System Restore. That escalaated quickly!

7: Check Your Hardware: Replace your RAM and SSD.

What do I do if it still crashes with new memory and storage?!

How do I get my memory test results?!

Well, I am going to find and run that other test. Do you guys have any suggestions? I need something capable and stable for work!

For overheating issues, open up the laptop and examine the components, redo all the thermal pasting as that might've failed if it's overheating. Kinda hard to overdo it with thermal paste. Upgraded fans might help if you can do that on your laptop. Might need to do a backup and reinstall windows/linux.

If it's under warranty and an overheating issue, it needs to be addressed by Lenovo. There might be BIOS settings or a Lenovo utility that can set the cooling mode. Essentially it sets the fan speed based on various temperature thresholds. Some modes are advertised as "quiet", which simply runs the fans slower more of the time.

Did it crash the first few months of ownership?

I installed RAM that should have been compatible with my work laptop, but it caused spontaneous reboots about once a day. Ended up removing that stick of RAM and never had issues again.

If I have a spare laptop I'll PM you. They're probably 6 years old though.

There's your problem. 640K should be enough for anybody.

You could address the fundamental limitation of the system — Prepare and reboot from a Linux thumb drive.

"I run Driver Booster..."

Lol, reformat the laptop and start over again. It's the only way to be sure you've gotten completely rid of the damage that crapware caused.

Seriously. Back up your files and bookmarks to a thumb drive, and totally reinstall. Download the Lenovo driver/software tool for your specific machine. If your machine is still crashing, it's a hardware problem. Heat should not crash any modern Intel processor, just cause thermal throttling.

I agree with this. Don't install any "cleanup" or "speedup" software, most if it is just there to spy on you. Windows updates its own drivers.

~

Generally speaking, a laptop should be able to deal with high ambient temperatures. My suspicion is that this is either a hardware fault (needs replacement under warranty, nothing you can do) or software corruption (reformate with a clean copy of Windows).

Open Windows Event Viewer, expand "Custom Views", and select "Administrative Events". When it bluescreens, there will be a code associated with the particular way it crashed (not just that it was the kernel). This is an old BSOD code list and many of them may not apply anymore, but it might give you a lead on what exactly is failing. My opinion though, this is something Lenovo should fix. A computer should not crash. I've had PCs run continually for the better part of a decade without a reboot or a crash.

https://www.overclock.net/forum/5-in...code-list.html

http://shouldiremoveit.com

I reference this site all the time with regards to any application I'm unsure of. PCs often come with bloatware garbage software which should be uninstalled. Worst of all is poorly functioning software we purchase an intentionally install. Even reputable companies have products I find lots of issues with, like Norton/Symantec (apologies freebeard).

Ehhh.... They laid me off in 2002. I'm more a fan of Kaspersky.

Not so much as a reboot? No system upgrades in a decade? I thought I was obsessive about uptime.

When moving servers at my old job, there was one that probably had been up for a decade or more. I powered it off, moved it to the new location, powered it on, and it had a drive failure. One of the disks wouldn't spin up. It was a non-issue though because it was RAID-1 and the redundant disk was fine.

I'll go months without rebooting my laptop. That's with hundreds of Chrome tabs open.

It's under warranty, insist that they fix it (I'm assuming you already checked it's not caked with dust).

On a somewhat related note, I have a strong suspicion high operating temperatures makes laptops inherently less reliable than desktops. My Thinkpad X220 became practically unusable at year 6 with the CPU fan always on maximum and the simplest tasks taking forever. I've seen this happen to all kinds of notebooks, but much faster to cheapo ones and refurbished laptops, while my desktop machine ran without a hitch for many years on the same motherboard and CPU.

I typically find computers get "slow" when they have a silent hard drive failure. For whatever reason, seek times get outrageous. Hard drive usage shows very high in task manager even though throughput is low.

Since you're seeing the CPU fan maxed, it might just be thermally throttling because the heatsink is packed with dust and hair. Either way, this are fixable issues.

I have had an Intel X25M SSD in there for most of its life though, I thought those don't die silently? It's not anywhere near full and I never wrote much stuff to it, so garbage collection and wear leveling shouldn't be the problem. I don't think the CPU would consume large amounts of power if it's just waiting on the hard drive.

I also did clean out the fan. The older Thinkpads had 35W TDP processors and big heavy heatsinks compared to today's low voltage wimpy offerings. I don't really understand the obsession with thinness, it makes thermal management much more difficult, while not really providing any tangible benefit.

You are in a really hot room using that, I looked the model up online, and noticed a Nvidia GPU sticker... A high powered GPU (big heat) in a laptop (no cooling) running for work (high load, long run times) in a 100F room.... (high stress) I think the CPU would throttle down to low power mode at 150F/65C, only 50 degrees headroom... I think you should return it ASAP if its not to late, you ran that thing hard for the time you had it. yeah.. abuse that warranty... buy a desktop with big fans or a Toughbook

Laptop in Question
Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ Processor
6M Cache, up to 3.80 GHz
has a 45W TDP low power mode is 35W TDP (I will bet it runs at 30W unless you are outside in the cold) https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1598768060
looking it up more... damn $1500!! You could buy a Civic for that!!!
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1598768236

**** The Y520 had cooling problems ****

Grab your personal files and do a full windows restore.

Or don’t grab your files and do a windows restore while keeping your personal files.

If it’s still doing it after, then you might have a hardware/heat issue. I personally doubt it though.

Before anything else, if it's an hdd replace with ssd. 2.5" hdd's have terrible lifespans, also much less ability to shed heat in a laptop.

While replacing, blow the laptop out with air.

It came with a Samsung 256 GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD.

You know the funny thing is I had a Samsung 960 EVO in my current laptop...it died spontaneously at year 2 and lost a bunch of my stuff :/

Hilarious?

I checked everything that you guys suggested short of taking apart my laptop or reinstalling windows. Four drivers have errors that I was unable to fix. I was about to restore windows when I realized that I had not saved my passwords. I guess that I could have exported them from my desktop, but I rebooted just for the passwords.

It looks like my 8 GB flash drive had the windows memory test and a password resetter. The 32 GB only showed up as 240 MB and had Memory Test 86 and Windows Diagnostics. There was a setting there for restoring Windows, but I repartitioned and reformatted it in order to back up my files. There wasn't enough room, so I tried to compress them, but then my hard drive started running out of space.

If I need a new hard drive I would like a larger one, but I am confident that I could clear out gigabytes.

The extended warranty would just give me another 256 GB one.

It looks like the external SATA connector that I had been using died, but I had another. The second hard drive seemed to work, so I started copying things over, paused it, set up in my office to see a client, and then copied the rest during the session.

What do you mean by "Four drivers have errors that I was unable to fix" ?

I connected my laptop to the 43" television last week to plan activities for new clients and I couldn't use my keyboard with my desktop afterward. I bought a new keyboard, but couldn't find the old one, so I used the new one with my laptop, and then neither keyboard worked with my desktop!
I tried most of the 8 USB ports!
The Num Lock light was on, but when I tried to find help online everything was about Num Lock and the numeric keypad. I removed that part and everything required me using Windows!
How do you log in without a keyboard?!
With the on-screen keyboard, of course!
Once I was logged in I tried to use each keyboard and noticed some kind of error tone each time that I hit a key. I searched for that and it said to disable Filter Keys.
That did it!
Who turned on Filter Keys?!

This:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1598928409

Once I gained access to my desktop I went to install Memory Test 86 and Windows Diagnostics on the 8GB flash drive, but Lenovo's site doesn't have a download link for their recovery utility. I looked up how to restore and again found vague references about my Novo button. Apparently there is a tiny recessed button next to my ports on the right side. It looks like I need to shut down again, push the button, and reinstall Windows.

What is the worst that can happen?!

Oh. Hey. Before I go, I figured Lenovo must have included something with Windows, so I started looking at everything named Lenovo. Nerve has a turbo button for my fans!

I found a Lenovo Diagnostics Windows, which said that Lappy failed.

It says that it or I canceled the Microphone Interactive Test.
The PS/2 keyboard test returned a warning. I don't have a PS/2 port!
Somehow my trackball failed the Press Precision Test. It told me to single-click, double-click, and then repeat. However, my touchpad did not respond, so I turned on my trackball. Then it showed a torus and had me move the mouse cursor around it, staying inside the lines.

Somehow I am terrible both with this trackball and my desktop's mouse.

I am worse with the touchpad! :)

Then it seemed to repeat the torus test, but my mouse cursor disappeared. When I moved it enough it showed up on my second monitor.

Eventually it timed out.

I do not know what the deal is, but as you can see, there are two bad drivers for my trackball. For some reason dragging and dropping rarely works. I am absolutely holding the buttons for the entire second or two that it takes, but it acts like I released and then clicked again.

These are new batteries!

That was "HID-compliant mouse." Then it shows "Synaptics Pointing Device." The first two passed, then it says that it failed the Press Precision Test, and declares that it is defective.

Then for the SSD Device Read Test, three tests for on-board graphics, three tests for the GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design, two tests for ethernet, and three tests for wifi it says "Test aborted because a system event that could compromise the outcome has happened."

To use system restore you must specify which Windows installation to restore. Restart this computer, sele
 

I need to buy a USB 3 flash drive for my desktop. It took forever to create my recovery drive. Now I get this error when I try to restore Windows. When I told it to troubleshoot startup it says:I cannot turn it off, it just goes to sleep!

You know how laptops with batteries that you cannot remove have pinhole buttons to restart them? Lenovo calls that the Novo button, except there isn't a button there, just a hole!

Except it only tries to boot off of the network.

I guess that I need to figure out how to do that.

You know...with nothing to go on but your posts...it seems you manage to break everything you touch!

Just an observation. Keep on truckin'!

You should be able to download a recovery image from Lenovo:

https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/ht103653

I've decided to never buy a USB flash drive again.

Now I'm using an SD card to USB 3 device. SD cards are so cheap these days that I'd rather just use those than have a collection of flash drives. It maximizes versatility since I can still use the SD cards in cameras, laptops, dashcams, or anything that takes 'em.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....AC_SL1500_.jpg

I bought a plastic "wallet" for holding SD and microSD cards so they don't wander off.

Hey Stubby, can I borrow your car--and your computer? :)

Sam, should I return the hard drives to their rightful computer first? :)

Red, I do not have any idea how many years ago I last used an SD card. I think that I only use flash drives a couple of times a year.

Walmart sells a two-back of 32 GB USB 3.0 flash drives for $18. I am going to create recovery disks for each computer.

Unexpected Store Exception
 

I woke up Lappy and was greeted by this:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1599040711
I don't know that the desktop hard drive and Windows installation were good, but they never gave me this error, so they are good enough!

That probably leaves the RAM, right?

Tom's Hardware: How To Fix Unexpected Store Exception Error In Windows 10 says:

1. Fix Corrupt System Files with Reimage Plus. Aww! You guys don't like me downloading stuff! Is there a way to do this with Windows?

How would the same files be corrupted on both installations, but only affect the laptop?

It still sounds like hardware to me.

Edit! I can hardly find any positive reviews of this program. I would stay away!

2. Revert to Windows Defender.

Those two steps are supposed to minimize further crashes, but if necessary:

3. Disable Automated Driver Installation and manually reinstall the audio driver.

Well, Reimage has been at 70 - 80% for the entire time that I wrote this. I am leaving it running while I lose consciousness.

That's where I'm a pirate!

How many viruses did you download to crash your computer? :p

Scan Complete! 423,827 Viruses Found! A New Record!
 

[Alarmed] Waaugh! That is not a small number! That is a big number! What am I going to do?!

Wait. No. Zero viruses and no malware.

Nice try. Notta chance.

virus - Homestar Runner Wiki

Following Windows Report's suggestions.
 

UNEXPECTED STORE EXCEPTION error [Fixed by experts]

1. Update Windows. I checked. It said that it was up-to-date as of 4:40pm, but I told it to check again, it said there was an update, I told it to download, and it took over an hour, but if any conventional Windows setting causes an error it is a hardware problem.
2. Reinstall antivirus software. I used Avast and liked it well enough. It wasn't happy to go, but I said that I was going to bring it right back. I rebooted to finish the removal, searched for "Download Avast," and found a long page without download links.
   
   I will use Windows Defender for now.
   
3. Check your hard drive. It is there! I saw it the other day! :D We are talking ChkDsk and SFC, right? I haven't done that on this hard drive, but I did it on the other one.
   
   It doesn't say to check it. It just talks replacement.
   
   I don't throw parts at problems!
   
   SFC said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations." ChkDsk said that it was fixing something, but as usual, the logs are not where they are supposed to be, so I ran SFC again, and it still doesn't show anything.
   
   Event Viewer showed a bunch of errors, though!
   
   Everything that I found said to search under Applications in Event Viewer for "Wininit," but that did not work, although "Chkdsk" did.
   
   As before, it seemed to clean up stuff, but fix any errors.
   
4. Check your BIOS configuration: "Once you enter BIOS, make sure that SATA configuration is set from IDE or RAID to AHCI." I did that, it couldn't boot, it loaded Troubleshooting, and couldn't fix the problem. After two attempts I changed it back.
5. Disable Fast Startup and Sleep features. Done.
6. Uninstall the problematic driver. None.
7. Remove your temporary files with CCleaner. Heresy!
8. Disable File History. Verified disabled.
9. Use the High Performance power plan. Already set.
10. Upgrade/downgrade BIOS. I downoaded the Lenovo programs to check for updates. It doesn't show any, so how do I roll back the Bios?

No credit for the obscure reference?

I had good management tools when I worked for Symantec through the transition from Mac OS 9 to 10. But now I don't seem to need them. (famous lost words?)

They don't help with my biggest problem, water on the keyboard, though. :(

Do I even know how to think in the box?!
 

I think that I have now written three updates that I haven\'t posted because I was focused on fixing Lappy.

Since I couldn\'t turn off my laptop, which I needed for everything, I took apart the case and disconnected the battery. I really don\'t like that design! There is some dust in there, but it isn\'t bad, although I will be blowing out both computers in the morning. [I did]

So, I swapped SSDs, and both boot. I had windows check and for some reason it wants to update a bunch of drivers now. The laptop does, too. I should get the power cable!

So, now what? :D

[I found a different diagram which identified the alleged Novo button as just an LED, and the Novo button is on the other side. Don\'t poke out LEDs, people!]

Jakob, do all of the characters talk funny? I think that I have only seen memes, never an actual clip.

Memory Management
 

I feel disappointed with https://wwwhelpdeskgeek.com/help-des...ment-bsod/amp/. Their solutions are boring and mundane!

1. Run the Windows Memory Diagnostics Tool. I keep doing that! It would be nice if I could get test results, though!
2. Check Your Drivers and Update Windows. Already done.
3. Check for Corrupted System Files. Already done. SFC and ChkDsk.
4. Reset Windows 10. I should probably return the hard drives to their rightful computers first. Hopefully it works this time.
5. Replace Your Hardware--RAM and if it continues crashing, the hard drive. This line is weird: "If you’re unsure if your RAM is faulty, but the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool has detected issues, download and run MemTest86 to perform a more thorough test of your RAM to confirm if the errors are down to hardware failure."
   If you have confirmed memory errors, why would you wonder if the erroneous RAM is bad?

Curiously, I have not seen this error before.

I\'m not following any of this; it\'s all over the place.

If the laptop is under warranty, the best advice I can give to a novice is to backup personal data and do a system restore back to factory delivered state. If the problem persists, you likely have a hardware issue that needs to be addressed under warranty. Best to open a case with the manufacturer while there is still warranty left, that way it can be referenced later if the warranty expires but a hardware problem is identified. They will honor the warranty if the problem was documented during the warranty period.

If not under warranty, pull one of the sticks of RAM out and see if it continues to crash. The idea is to see if the problem is related to a particular RAM module.

In my experience, BSoD type crashes are usually the result of a hardware problem, and usually related to a bad memory module.

If by "All over the place" you mean that I have logically and coherently followed suggestions from one page after another, then yes. In #1 I followed instructions for ntoskrnl.exe errors, but my problem, which nobody has told me how to resolve, is that I ran Memory Diagnostics 3 times and all that Event Viewer says is that I scheduled the test to run immediately.

It doesn't show any results.

Now for the second post that I never formatted to post: