Lenovo G580 Troubleshooting

The laptop is unresponsive and shows no sign of power.

Make sure the adapter is plugged in and the charging indicator light is illuminated on the laptop. If the indicator is not on you may have a faulty power adapter, consider purchasing a replacement.

If the laptop does not retain power after charging or will only power on when connected to an AC power adapter you may have a faulty battery, consider purchasing a replacement.

Unplug the AC adapter and remove the battery. Hold down the power button for 20-30 seconds, and then re-insert the battery. If the laptop power indicator lights up when powered on, but the display remains blank you may be experiencing motherboard failure.

The laptop will not establish a connection to a wireless network.

Ensure Wi-Fi is enabled on the device, and flight mode is toggled off. Make sure the device is connecting to the right network, and the correct password is being entered. Check to make sure the router and modem are functioning appropriately. If all the conditions mentioned above are met, the drivers of the laptop may be outdated. In order to resolve this, click the start menu and type “device manager” into the search bar. Upon opening the device manager locate the network adapters section and expand it. Next right-click on each adapter to uninstall them. Afterwards right click and scan for any hardware changes in order to locate the most up-to- date drivers and reinstall them.

If the router and/or modem does not display the required lights as specified by the internet service provider, ISP, it may need to be restarted. First unplug the router or modem for 10-15 seconds. Then plug it back in and wait for the lights to reappear. If this fails to work contact your ISP for further troubleshooting.

Sometimes certain recently installed apps or firewall may be the undo cause of network problems. In order to test this theory first, safe mode must be toggled on. To do this restart your laptop while holding down the shift key from the sign in screen. After your laptop restarts again select troubleshoot > advanced options > startup settings > restart. Once your laptop restarts select F5 to enter safe mode with networking. After putting your laptop in safe mode attempt to connect to Wi-Fi again. If connection to the Wi-Fi is now possible, the issue is most likely a recently installed app. If it still does not work, try disabling your firewall while still in safe mode as it may be restricting access.

When using the keyboard, some of the keys do not respond.

If an external device is being used as a keyboard, ensure that the device is plugged in well. Try unplugging the device followed by plugging it back in.

As a result of repeated use, some keys may become stuck in the depressed position on the keyboard. In order to remediate this issue, find a thin object to pry the key back to the upright position.

Should none of the keys be permanently depressed, but the keyboard still not respond, try first to reinstall the keyboard. If that fails, purchase a new keyboard and install the new one. Please find a guide to do so here.

This occurs when the keyboard is set to a different language or region. For example, even though the U.S. uses the “QWERTY” keyboard layout, if a person from France came to use the computer and set the keyboard to French, hitting the qwerty keys would result in azerty. To change the language and region settings, navigate to the control panel, select region and languages, ensure all tabs are set to desired settings.

Upon startup, the fan starts and the power light indicator turns on, but the display remains black.

The most common cause of this problem is the display being accidentally turned off. To test this, press Fn+F2 to re-enable the display.

If the display button is not the solution, open up the computer and remove the RAM sticks. Give them a gentle wipe down, and then reinsert them into their proper positions. You can find a RAM replacement guide here.

In order to determine whether the monitor of the laptop needs replacing, try connecting an external monitor, if available. If the external monitor works, the display of the laptop must be replaced.

The optical drive (CD player) will not play CDs, or it will not open.

The issue may not be with the optical drive itself, it may be the disc. Ensure that the disc is clean and without scratches. If those too conditions are met, try playing another disc, the content matters not. If the second disk works, a new CD is required for the original, desired disk. If the second disk does not work, try playing both in a different device.

When pressing the button on the disk drive, if the light does not flash, and the drive does not open, try again while the computer is plugged in. If this works, a new battery is required. If it does not, try using another power cord.

If the light on the drive flashes when pressing the eject button, but the drive does not open, the issue lies in mechanism of the component. Follow this guide to double-check that the device is properly placed. If it is, follow the same guide to replace it with a new one.

The computer, as a whole, stops responding. The interface does not react to key presses or mouse clicks. The solutions found in the Freezing Applications section can also apply to Non-Application specific freezing.

Before coming to the conclusion that the computer is frozen, double check the mouse. If you are using only the trackpad hit the Function key that turns the trackpad on/off. If you are using a wired mouse, try plugging it in again. If you are using a wireless mouse, try replacing the battery and plugging in the dongle again.

The CPU of a computer is like the human body; it must be kept within a specific temperature range. In order to keep the temperatures correct, a fan is attached to the processor using thermal paste. Should the CPU overheat, the frozen computer will either immediately shut down, or the monitors will display faulty graphics. If this should occur multiple times, it is most likely that the thermal paste must be removed and reapplied. To do this, thermal paste must be purchased. Then, after having removed the fan from directly on the CPU, gently scrape off the old paste. Place a small amount of thermal paste, the size of a small pea, on the center of the processor and gently press it down using the fan component that covers the processor. By doing this, the thermal paste will spread to cover the whole part.

When running specific applications, the computer begins to act sluggish, and the application ceases to respond to commands. If it does respond, there is time delay between inputs to the application and outputs from the application. It is determined to be an issue if the problem exists for more than just one isolated incident.

Before beginning the specific repair of the device, further diagnosis is required. Please follow these simple steps before proceeding to the correct subsection:

1. While running the application, press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open the Task Manager.

2. Navigate to the Performance tab

3. Look at the usage percentages for CPU Usage and Memory

a. If one of the percentages is above 80%, please refer to the corresponding subsection for correction advice.

b. If none of the percentages are above 80%, the issue most likely lies with the Graphics Processing Unit, GPU

4. End Task of the application in the Application tab of the task manager

5. Based on results, refer to corresponding subsection

Due to the nature of the laptop, there are no external graphics cards that can be replaced or added. As such, if the issue is found to be that the GPU is being overworked, try going into the application again. Locate the settings menu for the application and lower the graphics settings. This is a very common issue with video games and some video rendering software. The lower the settings, the more the application should respond. If it still does not work, research the program and determine the minimum required graphics. Should the graphics require anything other than Intel Integrated Graphics, it will not run properly on this laptop.

If the memory is found to be above 80% in the task manager performance the following may be the cause.

Having a lot of tabs and windows open is really heavy on the RAM of a computer. The way that RAM works is by having memory randomly accessed, as opposed to sequentially, which allows for the computer to read it faster. Each tab and window requires memory space. Because this memory space is only required temporarily, this memory is stored in RAM, which deletes itself after shutting down applications and the computer, as opposed to the hard drive. As such, if an application is running slowly, and you have many other windows open, try closing the unnecessary windows. This should clear space in your RAM and allow for smoother processing of the program.

The standard Lenovo G580 laptop comes with either 4, 6, or 8 GB of RAM. Some applications require a lot of RAM to run. For example, a recently released video game, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, can demand around 4GB on its own. If the computer, therefore, has 4GB of RAM, it will be unable to run the game as it will require, on its own, 100% of the laptop’s RAM, leaving nothing for the remaining processes of the computer. The solution to this is installing more RAM. Install, in this case, refers to the manual installation. There are website that claim to allow you to download more RAM, but those are fake, and often contain malicious software. The Lenovo G580 allows for a maximum of 16GB of RAM to be installed. For a detailed installation guide, please see here.

The CPU in the laptop is an Intel Celeron, i3, or i5 which should be good enough to run basic programs. As such, replacing the whole processor is not necessary. There are, however, certain applications that are incredibly processor heavy. These include: new games with a lot of rendering, 3D rendering software, and video encoding programs. If you are using one of these programs, an i3, or a Celeron may need to be upgraded to an i5. Make sure that the new processor is registered in the motherboard BIOS before switching.