2012-02-16

BSOD on Lenovo ThinkPad W510 w/Intel SSD

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad W510 with intel SSD (about 75 Gigs). I’ve been having a lot of bluescreens, but now I think I’ve solved the problem by a firmware update on my SSD.

My first problem was that I do not have an alternate boot device: no floppy and no CD/DVD drive, so I had to make a bootable USB Flash Drive, and boot from it. Here’s how to do that: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2009/12/-the-usb-flash-drive.ars, or even like this: http://johnpapa.net/BootFromUSB. Come to think of it, it’s always nice to have an alternative boot device available, as a sort of Windows rescue disk.

So after that I downloaded the Intel Firmware Update Tool: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18363.

Copy the tool to the flash drive.

Boot from flash drive, then run the tool. Booting from the flash drive might require you to enter into the BIOS setup to change the boot sequence so that an attempt to boot from the USB device is made.

No BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) for 2 weeks now, and I used to have them at least once a day, one day I had one every hour or so.

Here’s an alternative path with full description:
http://communities.intel.com/thread/8906

Hope this helps someone.