g530 – The Third Half

G530 Flicker Saga: The End?

Well, I hope everyone has had a great Solstice, and will continue having a wonderful holiday season with Christmas in a couple days. Up here in NY it’s been pretty rainy and a little on the warm side, with little snow. Hopefully we’ll have some for the 25th, as that would be fairly appropriate. And hopefully when the inevitable lake effect comes we’ll all be safe. If you’re reading this from somewhere out in the western US where they seem to be getting our winter weather, I wish you the best.

Anyway, as you may have seen me post here in the past, I’ve had some interesting issues with my Lenovo G530 laptop. First, the screen became wobbly and shaky. Then, it started to flicker. The first of these was easy to fix, the second very annoying, and almost as easy to fix. Well, I write now because the dreaded LCD flickering has returned. Now, it’s been a while since I posted about it last, but in truth the fix lasted for maybe three weeks. Figuring the cable had come loose, I repeated it, giving me another couple weeks. Finally, a couple weeks ago I reseated the video cable only to have reliable operation for maybe a few hours before the flashing came back. It seemed that the work around involved slapping the display repeatedly in certain locations along the sides, which served to jostle the wiring back into place, as well as relieve some of my frustration. Then last week, after doing this for a while, I got fed up with this. Here was the result:

Now, you might think that that was a little bit harsh. But, I disassembled part of the screen and put it back together again. I figured that somewhere in there something was in a bad position, and just needed to be tweaked a little. And, it worked! Since doing this I’ve had no flickering. You might be wondering what, specifically was the problem. Well, I still am too – all I did was take it apart and put it back together again, and it seems fine.

Now, given the popularity of previous posts a nice guide is in order. However, there are a few things to keep in mind before going through this and attempting it yourself:

After taking pictures, I realized that I probably could have gotten some better ones for illustrative purposes. So, I recommend that you take a look at Lenovo’s page with take-apart instructions for this unit. Also, look over the entire graphic carefully before attempting anything, just to get a general idea.
You need to first follow the instructions for getting at the screen hinges, as well as reseating the video cables. The first of these is more important. Use it to get at the hinges; don’t tighten them as we’ll be unscrewing them. The second is less necessary, but I recommend it to have easier access to the cables, and because you may as well reseat those while you’re tearing this thing apart.
There are a tone of small screws and such in this. You probably already know this if you’ve taken it apart before, but it bears restating. Find a clear, hard surface like a kitchen table to work on this, and keep track of your screws. It should go without saying that an appropriate screwdriver set is a must (though you’re probably good if you’ve done this before).
Be careful when removing the screen bevel (after unscrewing the screws under the little rubber feet). Use a small, flathead screwdriver and beware of power and data cables, as well as the camera up top.
This isn’t a bad time to clean the laptop screen while you’re at it. I used a paper towel I dampened, and added a drop of dish detergent to it. Try not to get and soap or water into the sides of the display. Take another damp paper towel to rinse it.
Finally, this procedure is a bit more involved than ones before. So, BE CAREFUL. If you aren’t comfortable doing this, seek assistance. And of course, do this at your own risk; I am not responsible for any damage to your laptop, yourself, or any other possession.

So, here it is:

Good luck. This may help you, or it may not, but if the flickering has really been getting to you it’s worth a shot. Overall, if you’re thinking of buying a G530, I’d recommend against it. It’s pretty nice for a crappy machine, but it is a crappy machine. But if you’re stuck with one, at least it’s not impossible to take apart.

Lenovo G530 Suspend Problem

It seems that my most popular posts here deal with fixing some common issues with the Lenovo G530 laptop, namely with the screen hinges, as well as the screen flickering. Well, judging by the comments it seems that these have helped people (even though you will probably have to repeat the screen flickering one, as the cable can come lose repeatedly). I am glad they are of use to people; the G530 isn’t the fanciest laptop, but if you can deal with some of these things it certainly gets the job done.

I am having a particular problem with this machine, though, that I have not been able to sort out. It deals with suspending to RAM, or I should say, the inability to do so. What is supposed to happen is that I activate suspend, and the machine almost completely shuts off save for a blinking, blue LED. Opening the lid then resumes the machine almost instantly, bringing me back to where I was. (Yes, I’m sure most of you know what suspending to RAM is, but I’m just trying to be complete.) However, when I actually try to do this, the machine shuts off, instantly. No flashing light, no shutdown sequence, it just turns off as if I removed power and/or battery. Turning it on again makes it boot up as if I had opted to reboot. After a while I got used to just turning the machine off when I didn’t need it, but this is kind of annoying, and I would like to fix it.

Now, first things first. As you can probably tell from this site I am a GNU/Linux user, and do in fact run Ubuntu on this laptop. In fact, overall it runs well. I bring this up because of many suspend issues which have plagued many of the distros, however for about the first year of having this laptop suspend to RAM worked beautifully. (Hibernate did and still does, but suspend is more convenient.) But to verify this I tried installing Windows XP (along with the hardware-specific drivers supplied by Lenovo on their site), but encountered the same behavior. Same with other distributions.

Next, I figured on a lark that maybe this would have something to do with the battery, which when I first noticed this behavior was on its last leg (ie, 20 minutes of power). I replaced the battery, but this did not help anything. I tired looking in the BIOS, but couldn’t find anything that suggested a problem. I tried updating the BIOS, but this didn’t work either. I even tried alternating the RAM sticks, as well as using only one at a time. (It is suspend to RAM, so I figured there might be something there.)

So, how about it, anyone else seen this sort of thing before, shutting down cold instead of suspending? Maybe not even with this particular laptop? Any ideas, thoughts, something I may have overlooked? I will try to make something of an effort to look into this again myself, probably starting with running memtest86 on the machine (something which I did not do, and may reveal something more about the memory). But, I would appreciate any input. And if I come to a solution, I will of course do my best to report it here, with a nice pictorial guide if applicable.

Lenovo G530 Screen Flicker

Well, I have no doubt that my trusty Lenovo G530 will still be functioning after the rapture. It’s getting a bit flakier in its old age, but it’s still chugging along quite well. However I do, of course, have to tend to it from time to time.

If you have one of these you might have gotten the telltale flicker of the LCD screen. Sometimes this seems to accompany the loose screen hinges. Well, it is slightly related; this problem is actually caused by a loose video cable leading to the monitor. For me, it wasn’t actually that hard to fix, basically amounting to a connector that needed to be reseated. (Another cause could be the cable itself, which would be bad, but it’s probably just the connector.) To fix it, just remove the keyboard, disconnect the video connector, and reconnected it. Once again I have prepared a handy graphic to guide you (though be sure to check out my post on fixing the screen hinges and check out the graphic there first; you’ll need to take those steps to get to the screws here):

Be very careful, as the parts in here are kind of delicate. Particularly don’t yank the keyboard too much. Pry the video connectors out with a screwdriver (carefully), and then just stick the back in. The problem could be as simple as crud on the contacts, and just doing this can work wonders.

This fixed the problem for me, your mileage may very. Of course, do this at your own risk (ie, I am not responsible for damage to your laptop), but if you’re careful there’s not a lot to mess up.

UPDATE: This may not fix the problem permanently. If the problem comes back and maybe even gets worse, I have a new post with a solution that may be a little more effective.

Fixing Lenovo Screen Hinges

In case you’re just tuning in, I have a Lenovo G530 laptop. It’s not bad, though a little on the cheap side. It hangs in there, and while I sometimes dream of upgrading, I want to get more time out of it. Having just ordered a new battery (after about a year and a half of use I now get 26 minutes out of it), I have turned my attention to the next improvement: the screen hinges.

These became loose at some point. The laptop opens and closes just fine, but wen it’s open the screen will wobble and sometimes mess with the wiring, causing all sorts of weird, scary flickering I can do without. (Note: This still happens sometimes when the laptop is shaken, but it’s nowhere near as easy.) I’d been thinking about fixing this for a while, but had put it off in fear of having to disassemble the whole machine. But this weekend I sat down to have a look, and it’s really not that bad. Here’s how I did it; it’s not that hard, but keep in mind that you do this at your own risk. (IE, I’m not responsible for any damages, etc.)

First, remove the battery. This will reveal four screws you remove. (Note: SAVE THESE.) Next, open the laptop and push gently on the area where the screws were, allowing you to remove the plastic cover between the keyboard and screen, which also holds the multimedia and power buttons. Next, look for the screen hinges; in my case it was the screws holding them down that needed tightening. I did that, reassembled, and it was fine.

Here is a pictoral guide:

Of course, this is condensed; you can also go to Lenovo’s site for more fun take-apart instructions. But hopefully, this will save someone some time.

Gentoo Not Detecting CD

Alright, so in case I didn’t mention it before, I am running Gentoo again on my desktop. Things are good, compiling is fun, etc. However, every once in a while there is a little snag. Just recently (yes, around 1:30 AM, it’s a night off and I got sidetracked), I had reason to burn a CD (which I don’t do very often). Well, I stuck the CD in, and Gnome didn’t pick it up. IE, I installed Brasero to burn it, and it wouldn’t detect the CD in the drive. That sucks.

As I also run Ubuntu, I’ve gotten used to having things picked up and configured for me, from CD drives and USB hotplugging, to things I never knew existed. Well, I knew I’d had this CD problem before and had fixed it. Turns out all I had to do with edit /etc/fstab and comment out a line I had for mounting /dev/cdrom. (If you run Gentoo, you most likely know what I am referring to here, if not go browse their documentation.) After that I just took the CD out and a few seconds later put it back in again. Brasero picked it up and I was off.

In case you’re curious, this CD is a Windows live CD. Yes, you read that correctly, apparently it can be done. It’s for my laptop, a Lenovo G530. I want to update the BIOS, and while I think there are hacks for sticking the BIOS image on a bootable DOS USB drive, I wasn’t entirely confident in that. (Their site gives you a Windows-only BIOS flashing program. You can extract the BIOS file itself, though.) So I looked up how to do the live CD, and set it up in a VM I had on my laptop and transferred it to my desktop, with its faster CD drive. I used BartPE to do it.

Why would one update the BIOS, you ask? Well, my laptop, a Lenovo G530 has this nasty habit of beeping whenever I plug the power cord in. Or take it out. Or when the battery gets low. The sound is loud and annoying, and while muting the sound stops it, this a) only works when the system boots up and b) means that if I want to have any sound I have to put up with it. I usually just mute temporarily, or plug the cord in when it’s off. But sometimes I’ll be on battery and listening to music through earbuds, when the battery will be nearing the end of its charge and all of a sudden a deafening beep will resonate through my skull. Well, my laptop runs version 1.08 of the BIOS, while the new version, 1.10 supposedly fixes this.

Also, I removed the the hard drive from my machine first, just so the booted Windows didn’t mess with it. I also took out the battery, not sure if that makes a difference. (Someone recommended it when updating BIOS.) So after this hopefully I won’t have to touch Windows on bare hardware for a while.