Lenovo Ideapad
February 2022
I had to troubleshoot a Lenovo Ideapad for a friend some time ago. It was manufactured in 2010. He had passed it on to one of his children. Windows 8 was freezing after a couple of minutes then displaying the Blue-Screen-of-Death about a system file error. It required a power off to recover. The issue seems to be with the m.sata ssd drive. The screws in the bottom were so loose that it flexed badly. After taking it apart and reseating the memory and the ssd then tightening the screws things were no better. It booted fine from a LiveUSB and ran without issue. SMART drive data did not show significant errors. I reformatted with gparted and installed a Linux distribution and all was well for a few boots until the bios would not recognize the ssd any more. I suspect a failed drive or possibly a broken solder joint in the drive connector from the flexing. My friend did not want to spend any money for repairs and decided to purchase a newer model. I asked to keep it and he agreed. It is useful to me for running LiveUSB systems.