Lenovo ThinkPad X250 power issue - Reset required.

darthpenguin · 2017-02-10 02:46:35

Hi All,

I have a ThinkPad X250. My problem is that sometimes the system will not power on. Occasionally -- sometimes once or twice per day -- I open the computer and the Fn key, F1 key, and the F4 key all have their LED lit up. There is no light on the power button and pressing the power button will not power up the machine. The way I work around this is to pull the main battery. The computer is still drawing power from the secondary battery so the 3 keys are still lit up. I use a paperclip to hit the power reset switch which is under the laptop beside the battery bay. After I hit the reset switch I can then put the battery back in the laptop and power on the system.

My question; I was running Ubuntu 16.04 on this system and I did not have this problem. The problem only started after installing Arch. Is this some hardware failure or is it possible that something in Arch (maybe some package or the kernel) is causing this problem? How can I troubleshoot? Any ideas where to start?

To make things worse this problem is not reproducible. It appears to happen randomly.

R00KIE · 2017-02-11 12:54:39

If you could test with the ubuntu version that worked then you would confirm or eliminate the possibility of hardware failure. That said it could be something different the newer kernel in Arch is doing that breaks things, try using the lts kernel for a while and see if you still have problems.

Being a lenovo owner myself and knowing first hand how many problems the system's firmware can have what I can highly recommend is that you keep the bios/uefi firmware up to date.

darthpenguin · 2017-02-11 16:24:37

Thanks for the reply.

I thought of using the LTS kernel. I installed it the day before I started this thread and it did seem not resolve the problem. But I didn't realize that I needed to update my grub.cfg to boot the LTS kernel. So I guess that explains it. I'm running LTS kernel now. I'll have to monitor the situation and see if the computer goes into that strange power lockup mode again.

Good idea about the BIOS. I'm currently running a BIOS version released in Sept 2016. The most recent available BIOS version was released in Dec 2016. So I'll run that update as well.

In case the problem is resolved I wont know unless it doesn't happen for some time (say a few weeks or a month just to be sure). Weather or not the problem is resolved I'll update this thread.

Thanks.

Edit: Damn. I cannot update the BIOS firmware. All the available downloads at Lenovo's support site are only for Windows systems. And the Bootable ISO BIOS update utility seems to be a 23MB empty ISO file. *shrugs*. Anyone know how to update the BIOS/UEFI of a Lenovo X250? Otherwise I just have to hope that the LTS kernel has solved my problem.

Last edited by darthpenguin (2017-02-11 18:02:53)

R00KIE · 2017-02-11 18:23:57

Burn the iso and try it.

Arch Linux

#1 2017-02-10 02:46:35

Lenovo ThinkPad X250 power issue - Reset required.

#2 2017-02-11 12:54:39

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad X250 power issue - Reset required.

#3 2017-02-11 16:24:37

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad X250 power issue - Reset required.

#4 2017-02-11 18:23:57

Re: Lenovo ThinkPad X250 power issue - Reset required.

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