Student-Contributed Wiki

An awesome team of students from our education program made this wiki.

A device may shutdown or reduce performance to prevent damage to the hardware.

Verify that your device is sitting on a flat surface. Blocked air vents can cause a lack of airflow, which will lead to overheating. If you must use your laptop on an uneven surface, consider investing in a cooling mat.

Clean the dust build-up on fans. A congested fan can lead to the device overheating. To clean out the fan, follow our fan replacement guide to remove the fan. Then, use a compressed air duster to carefully dislodge and clean dust.

If cleaning the fan does not fix this problem, you may have a broken fan. Check out our guide here on how to replace a fan.

Keys are sticking to the keyboard or missing; the keyboard is not responding.

Filter Keys are enabled by default which could cause a problem that makes the keyboard unresponsive. To turn off the filter keys take these steps:

  • Right-click Start and open Control Panel.Click Ease of Access, then clicks Ease of Access Center.Click Make the keyboard easier to use.Under Make it easier to type, uncheck the option Filter Keys.Click Apply and then OK to save changes.

An out of date keyboard driver can cause the keyboard to not respond. Update the driver manually or download an online application to update it automatically.

If certain keys are stuck, you will need to clean them out. Check out our guide here on how to remove and replace keys.

The laptop will not respond or show signs of powering on.

Press and hold the power button for 25-30 seconds, then press it once more. This will clear build-up within the computer and restart itself.

Check that the power cable is plugged into the computer and the charging light is on. If the light is not on, the power cable is most likely defective. You might consider buying a new power cable.

If the laptop only powers on when connected to the charger, the battery is likely defective. You may need to disconnect the battery and try rebooting with the charger plugged in. If the problem still persists, you may want to buy a new battery. Check out our guide on how to replace the battery.

Computer is running slow.

Your laptop may be running slow because it’s not using the latest Windows update. To update Windows:

  • Select the Start (Windows) button from the bottom-left corner.Go to Settings (gear icon).Select the Update and Security icon.Choose the Windows Update tab in the sidebar (Circular arrows).Select Check for updates, if there is an available update it will begin downloading automatically.

Your laptop may be running slow because it’s not using Lenovo’s latest drivers. To update the drivers

  • Look for Lenovo Vantage in the Windows Start Menu and open the program.Click Check for updates and notifications under the ‘System update’ header.Check the selection boxes for the updates you want to perform.Click Install checked items to install.

Your laptop may be running slow because it doesn’t have enough RAM (especially if your version only has 4GB of RAM.) If this is the case you’ll want to purchase more RAM and follow our guide here for replacing the RAM.

If your laptop is using a Hard Drive (HDD) or if there is too little storage on your SSD it may be running too slow. If this is the case you will want to purchase a larger SSD, to do this follow our guide here for replacing the storage.

The screen on your laptop is black with the computer on.

Verify that the display hasn’t been disabled on accident. To do this, press the “Fn” key in the lower-left corner of the keyboard and the “F2” key in the top-left corner at the same time. If the screen is still black, the issue is elsewhere.

To reset the video driver, try pressing “Windows Key + CTRL + Shift + B” keys in order to fix your screen. After this, restart the computer and the display should light up if this was the problem.

The screen periodically flickers on your laptop.

Open up Task Manager by pressing “Ctrl+Shift+Esc” keys on the keyboard at the same time or right-click the Windows Start button in the lower-left corner and click Task Manager. If Task Manager is not flickering then it is an app causing the problem. Some common apps to consider updating are Norton AV, iCloud, and IDT Audio. Check some of your other apps to see if windows users have encountered similar problems.

If the task manager flickered on the step before, considering updating your display driver.

  • In the search box on the taskbar, look up device manager and then select it.Select the arrow to expand Display adapters.Under Display Adapters, right-click the adapter, then select update.