Out of Pod Experience

I had so much fun writing this post on the Lenovo Forums,
i thought i'd share it here. Also, by chance, somebody MIGHT be able to help. :)

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Greetings !

I am a proud (well, yes ...) owner of the E530 A3G-Model sporting a 16GB SSD.
Yes, the one with the pulsy, noisy fan. ^_^


The Story:

Last week i thought i'd need a change and try something new. As i'm not really a noob on
computers, i thought i'd set up Win7 x64 SP1 on the SSD. That's ... not that easy,
considering the size, so i've spent the weekend removing irrelevant components ...
... like Natural Language, Speech Support, Language Packs ...
... from the Win7 x64 SP1 Installation Disks.


It took me two days to get it to work, with several testing sessions using VirtualBox,
but then i got it right. I haven't removed any drivers, services or anything actually essential
which could break the system. (I promise!)

So ... after a long session in VirtualBox and installing this system on a small partition on my HDD
to verify it REALLY works, i went going on to install it on the SSD.


Please note that RapidBoot is turned off in the BIOS and i have removed ExpressCache,
which i had previously installed manually, but wasn't actually caching anything anymore,
for reasons i don't understand. Maybe i have turned it off weeks ago, i don't know.

So, i have set up a 3GB FAT32 partition at the beginning of the SSD for the pagefile. It's a habit.
It's a good idea to do this on HDDs, so i kept doing it. Longevity of the SSD was no issue for me,
as if it breaks ... well, then it breaks ... but then it would break in honor, having served me well.

The rest of the SSD got partitioned NTFS, for Win7 x64 SP1, which installed *successfully*.
The installation process went *flawlessly* and it also ran *flawlessly*.

So ... i've started installing drivers from my HDD, which are all in this nice SWTOOLS folder,
onto the SSD. Easy cheesy, clicked through the symbols in my Device Manager and let it
run through the folder, to update the drivers.

The first odd thing i've noticed was that, after establishing an internet connection,
the ThinkPad PM Driver got named into Lenovo PM Driver. Okay, well, so be it, i thought.

All drivers actually installed smoothly. No issues. Nothing. Reboots worked. All good.

Then ... i've started Windows Update. I have done this in the VirtualBox so i knew there were
quite a lot updates to be downloaded (around 280MByte) ... but it didn't get very far.



Here it starts:


The green bar, which indicates searching, kept pulsing. The visible windows were all stuck,
but the mouse still could be moved. I thought ... okay ... that's odd ... but left it for a few minutes.
As nothing changed for 10min, i've reset the system. That may not have been a smart thing to do,
but as not even the Task Manager came up, it was the *only choice i had*.


Now ... i can't recall if the 2101 Error displayed at this time already, but i can recall having tried to
boot into the OS on the SSD again and it took ages. Ages. After 5min watching the pulsing
Windows ButterFly, i thought "Okay, that's odd" and reset the system.


(Actually, after i have written the whole post, i'm not sure anymore if i actually tried
booting onto the SSD now, or if the error came up already. I'm sorry for this lack of memory,
it was past 0100am.)


In hindsight, i know i should have waited longer, but that may not actually
have changed anything. Now i'll never know.


So ... after this reboot ... Lenovo Boot Splash Screen ... BEEP ... msata 2101 blabla HDD2 not found etc.
F***! Okay ... no worry ... let's see. Booted into the HDD OS ... the pulsing butterfly again ...
... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... waiting ... okay i'll have a smoke ... 5min later ... the login sound.

I know this kind of waiting. It's the waiting that happens when a driver delays everything,
for reasons only the driver knows, unwilling to share it with the user.


So ... finally, the HDD OS booted up. I'm glad. I log in ... and wait. BlackScreen. Wait. Wait.
Desktop comes up. System is heavily unresponsive.

I'm starting the Task Manager. Waiting. It starts.
Show all processes.
"System" is at 25%, indicating it's hogging a CPU core ... for unknown reasons.


I open up the Device Manager.
One Exclamation Mark on Yellow Background:

Lenovo PM Driver.


I run the Windows Please-Help-Me-And-Find-Out-What's-Going-On-Program.

It suggests updating the driver ... so i tried updating the driver via Windows Update ... and it did.


Now ... i have *no* idea where that issue comes from and updating the driver did not help at all.
Right now, the exclamation mark again is present, so i simply *deactivated* it in the Device Manager,
but haven't rebooted yet. The PC is still running and i doubt it'll have a serious impact. I already deleted
it from the Device Manager once, just to see it get reinstalled.


So ... this is the whole story, in right order. Complete.


Windows Update, for some odd reason, broke something. I doubt the reboots are part of this,
but there may be a first time for anything.

What's the problem exactly, the SSD not being detected, or the computer taking a long time to boot?

If it's SSD detection issue, try plugging the SSD into another computer to check if it's working normally.
Also try plugging another drive into your laptop to see if the laptop is detecting other drives correctly.

I understood Like 5 words \o/

Oh mSata, yuck.
That's gonna make it quite tricky to find where the fault is.

You really need to find another mSata capable computer to test the drive on, or another mSata drive to test the laptop with. From the information you've given us it would be impossible to tell whether the SSD or the laptop's mSata interface is faulty.

From what you've described though, it sounds as if the SSD has become corrupted during an unexpected power loss and needs reformatting. Can you detect the drive through device manager or disk manager?

It's also a possibility that you have had a BIOS failure, but I think that is less likely.