Sometimes… I Just Hire Someone Else To Fix The Box

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[Mr. Austin]

Life is short enough without me trying to solve problems on a new computer and dock, neither of which should have any problems to begin with. So today I hired My Computer Works to begin solving the issues I mention below at length. The tech, Robert L., who worked for me actually knew what he was doing, which I find uncommon these days. I was on the phone with him, watching what he did remotely, and from start to finish we were live for around 2.5 hours. Their prices are quite reasonable. The list of needs I discussed is at the bottom of this post.

If you hire them, please make sure to thank me on Ask Woody. I’m not getting paid for this. I paid them. Thank you.

And he knew more than I do about computers, which I also find to be uncommon among almost all of the techs I’ve talked with for more than several years. Lenovo’s techs are most frequently, completely inexperienced. I don’t expect to call them unless the need is super simple, or strictly hardware-related.

So far, all the problems seem to be with Windows, except for the headset stand issue on the long list below. Color me surprised! I was perfectly willing to palm a virtual stone or three and hurl them in Lenovo’s direction. I’ll test how things play out over the next few days & weeks. But today was a good start. What Robert did to begin to again set this new machine aright was to:

A. Run SFC /scannow from a command prompt. This seemed to solve the system going prematurely to black on both monitors without first launching the screen saver.

B. I pointed out an old, long-gone Ethernet profile, which he deleted. He reset the network settings to get the box and dock to properly recognize its Ethernet connection, rather than defaulting to Wifi. To get the network profiles back to where they should be, he also ran the Windows network troubleshooter.

C. He turned off hibernation because Windows is not launching in a timely manner the programs I listed below. He said the the former hybrid sleep mode had been removed by Microsoft.

So, if their work actually solves the needs I list below, then the only dissatisfaction I’d have about this ThinkPad is that its cooling fans sometimes get loud enough to be distracting in a vid meet or during a talk show recording.

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“I’ve a Lenovo ThinkPad P16 Gen2, and Lenovo Universal Thunderbolt 4 Smart dock, both purchased new and put into use in September 2023.

The laptop is used in the dock, with the laptop’s screen closed. I’m unsure whether these symptoms are coming from the dock, or instead from the computer itself (or both?) –

1. Although the screen saver is set for 10 minutes, the screens often go black prematurely, frequently in less than one minute, without going to the screen saver. This can happen quickly, while reading web pages (like one on dock reviews or in Outlook 2019 when I’m reading or even editing e-mails. E.g., while reading an e-mail, first the primary screen went dark, and moments later the 2nd screen went dark. When it has happened fresh mouse and keyboard inputs have awakened both screens. *But* this morning after the computer was started from a cold boot, and used for a few minutes, it also did what it’s supposed to and started the screen saver. Then 25 minutes later it again went to black screens right after using it.

2. Once a month or so, after a longer absence from the computer the computer it seems that the dock forgets how to turn back on one or both of the Viewsonic monitors attached to it (via DisplayPort) black screens. Multiple keyboard or mouse inputs to awaken the screen(s) don’t always bring up a log-in screen. Disconnecting and reconnecting one of the monitor’s cables *at the dock* usually brings both monitors back on-line, and displays the log-in screen. But sometimes even that doesn’t work, and the computer must be shut down and restarted using the power button on the dock.

3. The dock also seems to regularly and inexplicably disconnect my USB 2.0 powered headphone/charging stand (holding my Bose QC35 IIs). When I remove and replace the headphone/charging stand cable it easily powers-up the stand again

4. Often, while typing an e-mail in Outlook 2019, the screen display does not update the text clearly; it instead shows garbled characters for a moment, until I scroll up or down in the e-mail, which refreshes the Outlook e-mail composition window.

5. The computer doesn’t tend to launch automated programs on time (R-Drive Image, BackupOutlook, IDrive), but it does launch them within several hours, usually after it logging into it again. The launch times are set inside each program. Lately, IDrive’s log says that my internet connection is broken or intermittent when the computer is unattended; I wondered if this is a result of the machine not awakening from the ridiculously ineffective Windows 11 hybrid sleep because the connection is otherwise very good.”

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

• This topic was modified 1 year ago by Mr. Austin.
• This topic was modified 1 year ago by Mr. Austin.
• This topic was modified 1 year ago by Mr. Austin.

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Fred

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Mr. Austin wrote:

He said the former hybrid sleep mode had been removed by Microsoft.

I don’t think so; but it was only ever intended for desktops, not laptops:

Hybrid Sleep mode is a combination of the Sleep and Hibernate modes meant for desktop computers. It puts any open documents and applications in memory and on your hard disk, and then puts your computer into a low-power state, allowing you to quickly wake the computer and resume your work. The Hybrid Sleep mode is enabled by default in Windows on desktop computers and disabled on laptops. When enabled, it automatically puts your computer into Hybrid Sleep mode when you put it into Sleep mode.

Hybrid Sleep mode is useful for desktop computers in case of a power outage. When power resumes, Windows can restore your work from the hard disk if the memory is not accessible.

What Is Hybrid Sleep?

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Mr. Austin

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In Windows 10 many of the problems you described are caused by the default settings in a laptop to conserve the battery (aka: use less power to make the battery last longer before needing recharge) and I suspect it is the same in Windows 11. If you use the laptop while connected to a power source (such as docking) for the majority of the time and are not concerned with how long you can use the laptop on battery alone, then changing those default settings can greatly improve the performance and alleviate many of those problems.

The instructions below are based on Windows 10. I do not have a Windows 11 setup to test to see if those settings are in the same place, although they are basic to prior versions of Windows.

Connected USB device is forgotten by Windows and unplugging/plugging the device seems to reactivate it such as your USB headphone charging station.

To fix:

Right click the Start Menu icon and select Device Manager
Click to expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
There will be several listed, but you need to find the controllers and not devices. Right click each item list and select Properties for that USB item. If you see a Power Management tab in the Properties select it (the controllers will have the power management tab and the devices won’t.)
After selecting the Power Management tab click to UNcheck the box to the left of Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power. Click Apply to save your setting.
Go thru the USB listings and uncheck that setting on any controller that has the Power management tab.

To fix other power management limitations:

Open a Run box (WinKey + R) and enter powercfg.cpl an press the Enter key.
Under Choose or customize a power plan select High performance. May have to click downdown arrow to display that option.
Click Change plan settings to display that settings page.
On the Change plan settings page select Change advance power settings.
The screenshot below show this window as it occurs on Windows 10.
You may need to change several of these settings.
For example: Click the + next to USB settings to show the USB selective suspend setting. click the + next to this setting to display the setting (Enabled). Click the Enabled setting and select Disabled from the drop down list. Click the – to close the setting.
For each setting listed such as Wireless adapter or Graphics check the setting and change to Maximum Performance. You can also prevent sleep mode from settings in this window.
Be sure to click Apply and OK to save your changes.

 

May not solve all the problems, but will help with many of them.

HTH, Dana:))

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Mr. Austin

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Thank you! Those are worthy ideas. I grew tired of fiddling with this machine is why I hired someone else. But if their support proves to work then maybe I’ll ask them to find and re-enable “always-on power” to the USB connection specific to the headset stand. That way I wouldn’t have to fish around for it on my own. There have been no inconvenient disconnections with other USB devices.

Also this machine has lots of fan noise so I’m not inclined to re-enable High Performance modes in the Device Manager. I.e., before I hired My Computer Works I fished around on the interwebs and found a vid by a guy who showed how to reduce fan noise on Lenovo boxes like this one. There are two settings in its BIOS (High Performance and Balanced?) which govern fan speed. Sure enough the fans quieted some when I switched the BIOS to Balanced from High Performance.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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These settings made in various sleeping modes are nice, and good at hand to use…..
Though sleeping and thinking the laptop was sleeping too. No way,
Microsoft chooses to switches off and on to their wellbelieve and maintenance and telemetry, installing whatever and whenever Microsoft chooses to.
Now I simply switch MY laptop/pc off as I please, and this socalled maintenance can be done when I am present, and be able to stop what I do no want.

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In case Microsoft foments a catastrophic OS failure, I’ve two different, daily drive image backups stored in two different locations. So I just let Microsoft do its machinations about patches to their patches of patches. If their software truly breaks itself I just restore a full drive image. And update my files and other data from my cloud backups through non-Microsoft companies.

And I use O&O ShutUp 10++ to ride herd on Microsoft’s telemetry, which tends to report things about our computers, which are exactly none of their beeswax.

My approach to Microsoft’s clowder of cats’ shenanigans also differs from what I think I see from many others.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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b wrote:

Mr. Austin wrote:

He said the former hybrid sleep mode had been removed by Microsoft.

I don’t think so; but it was only ever intended for desktops, not laptops:

Hybrid Sleep mode is a combination of the Sleep and Hibernate modes meant for desktop computers. It puts any open documents and applications in memory and on your hard disk, and then puts your computer into a low-power state, allowing you to quickly wake the computer and resume your work. The Hybrid Sleep mode is enabled by default in Windows on desktop computers and disabled on laptops. When enabled, it automatically puts your computer into Hybrid Sleep mode when you put it into Sleep mode.

Hybrid Sleep mode is useful for desktop computers in case of a power outage. When power resumes, Windows can restore your work from the hard disk if the memory is not accessible.

What Is Hybrid Sleep?

Thanks. That’s helpful and it was also nowhere apparent in anything I found about it on the web.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Mr A, please don’t quote entire posts. Highlight the text you want and then click the Quote button.

cheers, Paul

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Mr. Austin

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For the USB, dock, and display issues I would recommend making sure the system BIOS is up to date along with the the dock Firmware. The Laptop was purchased shortly after its initial availability and there are always a long list of issues that are identified/fixed after the product is initially released.

An updated system BIOS (1.10) was released on 27 December 2023 for the ThinkPad P16 Gen2 (21FA/21FB) with a fairly long list of fixes. (System would have most likely been shipped with version 1.02) I don’t see anything in the release notes that directly correlates to the issue being described but the OEM’s rarely document all of the fixes/changes in the release notes.

The ThinkPad Universal Thunderbolt 4 Smart Dock (40B1) had updated firmware released (1.0.06) on 2 November 2023 with long list of fixes depending on the firmware version currently on the dock. The fixes are related to the USB hub and DisplayPort controller primarily.

The Lenovo OS image should have Lenovo Vantage or Lenovo Commercial Vantage preinstalled to check for Laptop and Dock updates directly from Lenovo servers and allow selective update.

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Mr. Austin

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Thanks, ZombieStew. The system uses its original Lenovo OS image. The Lenovo Commercial Vantage software has been running automatically since the box was new. It was after a late April Lenovo update that the problem where the screens go to black without going to screen saver first appeared.

An update about this machine’s situation is this – after the first My Computer Works tech did his stuff three days ago, the quick-to-black screens returned the following day. He’d disabled hibernation and the problem still returned. And I’d disabled the nifty iRotate screen pivot utility, but that didn’t stop the black screens. So I re-enabled both of them.

Today I talked again to a second My Computer Works tech. We ran diagnostics which came back OK. He did a web search and noticed that lots of techs and customers have posted on Reddit about Lenovo’s sketchy dock performance. He’s wondering if it’s the dock.

But, for now as a test he disabled Sleep and disabled powering off the screen while the box is on AC. I’ll try it this way for a day or two. So far, today, the screens have stayed lit while I’m working, although they will still go to screen saver. So at this writing it’s hard to say it’s the dock, or the Windows OS, or the display drivers, or all three.

And he also identified a group of six Generic USB hubs which can automatically disable their own power. I can disconnect the headset stand plugged into the back of the dock, and reconnect it, and find out which one of those hubs connect to it. Then I’ll test disabling its “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power” feature, and see if that succeeds.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Fred

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Update 5-27-24 about the Black Screens issue:

Thank you, fellow geeks for your suggestions.

Both the My Computer Works’ fairly experienced techs with whom I talked, and the woefully inexperienced Lenovo community tech with whom I exchanged messages, declared that a reinstallation of Windows would be required to solve this problem.

So via Quick Assist I engaged a remote Microsoft tech who “guarantees” (his word) the reinstallation will solve the problem. He downloaded Windows own ISO, and I launched it. He knew the computer and dock were new last September. He didn’t ask to use an original “factory image”, nor did he ask if Lenovo had tried to fix it, nor did I volunteer those ideas.

He sent me a link on how to disable CoPilot, for which a Registry hack was recommended. So I wrote it using that link. But when you read that thread it’s anything but clear that the hack will work.

Now I’ll see what happens. I figure this computer needs solving one problem at a time, and its OS publisher needs to have accountability.

If what he did and recommended succeeds, then I’ll next find out why the Lenovo dock seems to have difficulty bringing up both screens at cold boot or restarts. That way Lenovo could have no other recourse than to identify whether its dock is causing the problem. A reader’s note for you about this:  On the very front of the dock, it has a label that it’s powered by Microsoft Azure.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Mr. Austin wrote:

On the very front of the dock, it has a label that it’s powered by Microsoft Azure.

The reference on the dock to Microsoft Azure powered is the cloud-based management component of the Lenovo Smart Dock series. If configured, the dock can be managed over the internet through an Azure instance. That feature is generally targeted at large business/enterprise customers rather than individuals.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/videos/nvid500429

Mr. Austin wrote:

I figure this computer needs solving one problem at a time, and its OS publisher needs to have accountability.

While Microsoft may bear some responsibility for some issues, issues like you are describing on your devices are more often on the OEM that built the product. The OEM builds the drivers and validates the hardware they sell. Microsoft certifies the drivers submitted to them by the OEM as being compatible with the Windows OS. Compatible with Windows does not mean there are no issues the OEM missed in their driver development for the hardware they built and sold.

A clean install of Windows can be a good troubleshooting step for difficult issues at it gets the system back to a known state. Just need to make sure all of the required drivers from Lenovo get installed again as a missing driver can create just as many problems as a bad driver or even hide an issue. I would caution you from depending on getting required driver updates from Microsoft through Windows update. While it can work and is convenient it can make troubleshooting more difficult due to the less than concise description Windows update gives for the driver updates. I have also seen where drivers and firmware delivered through Windows update have caused issues on systems rather than fix them.

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Mr. Austin

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Thank you @ZombieStew. I take your points well and understand. And I didn’t know the Azure label was meant for enterprise IT admins. My potential faith in Lenovo’s technical support skills is limited to only the system diagnostics it could suggest to run or not run.

Right after I rebooted from the reinstallation, I checked the Lenovo Vantage Console. It shows that the system is up to date, and the next automatic update check will happen in a week’s time. Those things seem to bode well.

So after the Windows 11 Pro reinstallation I nuked my R-Drive Image files to start that over. It’s set to run two daily images to two different drives. So I’ll have 14 images before Lenovo’s Vantage update commences, on which I could likely depend.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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brrr, sounds taking a lot of energy; it shoundn’t be like that.

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Mr. Austin

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It has been! But for a few peculiarities this new system has worked powerfully, and I’m very happy to have it!! I usually wait a while before my replacing my daily driver:

My last one was sold to me new as a “VR ready”, water-cooled desktop Windows 10 desktop tower, which I drove from September 2019 until September 2019. It was a plenty powerful, gamer’s clone box with 32 GB RAM, and it ran well! I gifted it to a great friend who manages recreative float tanks for their daily driver.

I switched to this mobile laptop so I could backpack it whenever I wanted while traveling, which we do lots now!

I noticed your Ask Woody signature – and I dug it! In 1980 I performed singing telegrams, often in costume, for lots of fun and some profit . The parties to which I was invited were amaaazzzing!

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Fred

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Update 6-1-24 about the black screens (when both external monitors decide to go black and go to standby):  Lenovo is replacing the Thunderbolt dock for this machine under warranty. I’ll see if this makes a difference. Meanwhile I’ve disabled Sleep on the machine.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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TechTango

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Update 7-11-24 about the machine not awakening automagically to run programs like IDrive.

1. A new Thunderbolt 4 dock and new Thunderbolt 4 host cable, provided under warranty from Lenovo didn’t solve that problem.

2. Today a green Lenovo tech asked me to try disabling the User Presence Sensing in the UEFI. That failed, too.

3. All that’s left as a solution (said Lenovo) is to reinstall the OS (re-image it) *with a factory Lenovo image*. That will take me some weeks to arrange because I’ve lots of software on this machine, including things to stop it from “phoning home”, like O&O ShutUp 10++. I’ll put all the stuff I need onto an SSD and nuke the existing OS with Lenovo’s OS Digital Download.

Now, for all you truly tech-savvy types, the only thing which will be done differently this time, next time — is that I won’t be using LapLink PCmover to quickly migrate from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 11 Pro. When I did the migration last Fall I didn’t have extra days to invest in installing all my software and settings one-by-each.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Mr. Austin wrote:

So via Quick Assist I engaged a remote Microsoft tech who “guarantees” (his word) the reinstallation will solve the problem.

Howdy out there! Guess what? Reinstalling the OS didn’t work. This need will get figured out.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Fred

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Pffff, that’s not wat you were waiting for…
Can it be a BIOS setting preventing the upgrade?
What about setting the Bios to the fefault strings?

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Thanks Fred. I’ve been into the UEFI BIOS to nose around and I think that’s not the need. The green tech yesterday checked with his team and disabling the User Presence Sensing in the UEFI BIOS failed to change the results.

Twice, in 2019 (Windows 7 Home to 10 Home) and 2023 (Windows 10 Pro to 11 Pro) I’ve used Laplink’s PCmover Pro. It tends to leave little, unresolved driver issues laying around. In 2019 I got Microsoft support for the somewhat innocuous sound driver issues it left from switching from a big-name computer maker to a lesser-known computer maker. This time Microsoft’s support failed (if you look over my notes).

So I’ll wipe and reimage the machine with Lenovo’s blessing. That way when it works I will have followed my experience and their instructions about their brand of box. I’ve a feeling the re-imaging will work. But in case it didn’t, by following Lenovo’s instructions I would swap the machine out for a proper replacement.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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Fred

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Wish you luck,
and hope that the little xi-dwarf will stay asleep

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