Lenovo ThinkPad W520

Note

I am also maintaining this content at GitHub and it may be more up to date.

GPT / MBR Partition Table

I was unable to get the most recent version of the BIOS to boot from a GPT partition table. Everything worked fine once I tried an MBR ("msdos" in gparted) partition table.

Wifi issues

• Update wireless drivers:
  • TODO
• Random Disconnection
  • check "dmesg | grep wlan0" will probably be complaining about "wlan0: deauthenticating from MAC by local choice (reason=3)"
  • Arch wiki hints at solution: Wicd#Random_disconnecting
  • My Solution:
    • Disable power management of pci-express in BIOS
• Wicd cannot obtain IP address
  • Wicd#Failed_to_get_IP_address
  • Use dhclient instead of dhcpcd:
    • pacman -S dhclient
    • Set wicd to use dhclient:
    • in wicd-curse press 'P', select external sources, and then select dhclient

Nvidia Optimus issues

• TODO
• see:
  • Phoronix
  • Nvidia Forums

Sound

• Worked out of the box, but was choppy. This helped:
  • PulseAudio#Choppy_sound

Other

• Boot up issue with UDEV timeout
  • cat /var/log/boot | grep -i pci reveals udevd[169]: seq 1352 '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.1/0000:03:00.0' killed
    • Found similar issue here Arch Bugs Report
• Disable annoying system beep
  • Insert "blacklist pcspkr" into /etc/modprobe.d/pcspkr_blacklist.conf
  • Reboot or rmmod pcspkr