Yoga 3 Pro Freezes Constantly

[Maurdekye]

I've had my Yoga 3 Pro for about a year now, and so far it's served me incredibly well. Just recently however, it began freezing randomly during use for no discernable reason. The screen would lock up, any sounds playing would either stop or repeat indefinitely, and I would end up having to restart it. It slowly began happening more and more often, until I decided to refresh my OS from the built in recovery partitíon that comes with the laptop. After finishing and deleting a couple unnecessary bloatware programs, the problem only seemed to just get worse somehow. Now, it freezes once every 5-10 minutes, and I can barely get any work done on it. Do I have any other options besides sending it back to Lenovo? I can't easily go without my laptop for that long.

 

[Realtor1]

We Also have had this problem with our Lenovo yoga 3 pro.....future son-in-law (IT guy) came over and as stated above the after disabling the network adapter and installing an external wireless usb adapter, the problem is solved...Lenovo supports does not even admit this problem exists! the unfortunate part is we now have to have the external usb adapter but it beats restarting the computer every 10 minutes!

 

[helpdesk894651]

Confirmed, same issue here and it was persistent after factory wipes or even MSFT ISOs.
Disabling the Broadcomm wlan card in BIOS seemed to resolve it so far, tilting the screen
forward would also cause it to freeze instantly and not be able to boot normally.

Grab a USB to Wi-Fi or ethernet adaptor and see, ended up being the fix for me after several
re-images.

 

[helpdesk894651]

Let me know if either disabling or updating the Broadcom 802.11ac Network Adapter driver helps anyone else. Just right click it under Network Adapters and then click "Update Driver Software" or you can try disabling it from there if no update is available. For me, it updated to version 7.35.338.0, which was released 12/10/2015, so it's a pretty recent update.


I tried this solution and so far it has worked out for me. It is an odd problem considering that if I even try to "enable" the Broadcom adapter, the system instantly freezes.

I'm having to tether my computer to my phone to get an internet connection (USB, Bluetooth).

Does anyone know of a more comprehensive solution to this issue? Has Lenovo offered a fix or update?

This thread was very useful; thanks to everyone!

This fixed it for me! Tiny USB-Wifi chip is the plan, losing 1 of two USBs might also entail a USB hub.

 

[jona.m.rodrigues]

Hey !

For what it add,I'd like to share my experience on this issue as well: I have the yoga 3 Pro since 2 years now, and I confirm I experience the same kind of issue.

Now, I am using Linux Ubuntu 16.04 as an OS, and the system does not freezes completely: only the touchpad gets out of sync. SO basically I can still use the touchscreen, the key board etc... The touchpad is completely frozen until complete reboot. If it were some firmware/driver/software problem, I guess some commands (particularly in Linux where we can access a bunch of commands to the heart of the system) would be able to relaunch the touchpad. So far, I tried quite all commands including Reboot. But the freeze is not "released" until complete shutdown + restart: this is the UNIQUE solution to get the touchpad live again...

That being said, I think total shutdown allows some static electricity from being completely released where other solutions can't discharge it (rebooting keeps the laptop under electrical tension). So my best guess is that this problem is pure hardware mess.

To illustrate further, I changed OS 5 times: windows 8.1, windows 10, Linux Mint 17, Linux Mint 18, then Linux Ubuntu 16... I experienced the problem with ALL OS....

As a log for anyone who sees this, `dmseg` command on Linux shows this message the second after touchpad freeze:

[ 2060.782668] i2c_designware INT3432:00: i2c_dw_handle_tx_abort: lost arbitration
[ 2061.786144] i2c_designware INT3432:00: controller timed out

where `i2c` basically refers to the touchpad, it explicitly says that it "lost arbitration".

Now given all previous comments, where I see some solutions advocating either driver updates and some of those things, I cannot say updates won't solve the problem either. In fact, what I think is that those updates work at preventing some conflicts between the original problem and the OS (like creating specific cases that would know the problem and send some commands to reload .dll or reload some sub-programs) to create the illusion that the problem is gone.

Finally, before reading this thread I thought I was alone and it was my fault because of preferring Linux over Windows or some dumb assumptions like this... But indeed, after some trials, I too am affected by the `don't touch the screen` problem.
So I believe the problem is more likely to be a hardware conflict with that cool functionality (we all felt in love with) that allows the screen to be flipped in several modes. Some sensors must have been stuffed into the hinges or something like that, and those could come to make interference noise together with the bluetooth/wifi card, leading to a rare conflict: then depending on the OS you are using, this panic translates into various weird behavior.

Even with this long post, I unfortunately don't have proper solution for now. For the record, I switched the Broadcom wifi card with the Intel one: same thing... I am left to try to maybe open the laptop again and reposition stuff around to see if something changes until I finally decide to throw this Lenovo crap to the trash bin !!

Cheers

 

[samdex1]

I've had the exact issue with freezing laptop every time I move the screen. I checked various sites, started trying to update the wireless card driver, with no benefit.
I checked another thread and it was suggested that this was caused by loose components inside the laptop. I was about to open up the laptop, but noticed that the screws were lose. I tightened them all, and it seems to have fixed the issue. It's been 3 days and no issues yet.

 

[vabene1234]

So i have not finallay solved this issue, but as jona.m.rodrigues says i think its a hardware issue.

A while back while trying to fix this for the first time i found a Post in some Forum i cant remember with someone saying he put some insulating tape on the bare contacts on the wireless adapter, so i bought some screw drivers.

The result ist not 100% but i definitly saw a decrease in crashes.

I am no electrical engineer, but i think if one findes the correct places in the laptop and insulates them the problem should be resolved.

One unproven theory of mine is that it must have something to do with some screws or connections getting loose, because every post i read described the problem as something that appeared after quite a while of using the laptop.

EDIT: I just opened my laptop, took out the wireless adapter and USB unit, put everything back in and put a little bit of silicon on top for insulation, for now it works quite well, but i have been at this point already and it just went back to crashing after a few weeks (last time i was just using insulating tape).

 

[selvyn.wright]

Hi Guys, I've had my yogo pro 3 ultra book for about 2 years and it started freezing earlier this year. I noticed that it froze when ever pressure was applied to the surface area between the keyboard and the hinge to the screen. I used to own a yogo pro2 and found that froze whenever the screen was opened or closed, so assumed it was faulty wiring again within the hinge mechanism. But it's not.

I opened up the device and located the ribbon cable at a central point towards the back of the machine. At least 70% of the device is the battery, the remain space is the motherboard and other devices. I thought that maybe the ribbon cable to the screen was loose as it was on the yoga 2, so placed a small piece of cardboard on the area where the ribbon cable is attached, it fixed the problem temporarily. But when I applied pressure the surface area again it froze again. So I expanded the cardboard surface area to cover all of the motherboard but not the fan, this fixed the problem. I've no more crashes. The depth of cardboard is about 1mm. There is obviously an issue with pins or something with these devices.

Ps. you hardware/electrical guys might be able to figure out what's really going based on my fix!!

 

[devilchins]

So here is my update after Lenovo repair.

They said there was a fault with the displays COAX cable. Basically it was loose/faulty and every time the laptop moved the cable couldn't handle that. They've replaced the cable and say they stress tested the laptop and it no longer had the fault. I'll let you guys know when I have it back though if the fault continues. Hope this helps someone else as well.

Haven't read this when I "fixed" mine.
Yup it was indeed the COAX cable and/or the wifi cards that's loose.
Remembered I removed the whole wifi cards and put it back together. connect the coax cable in slightly different orientation (one cable on top of other).
So far after 2 months, it haven't freeze since.

 

[devilchins]

I've had my Yoga 3 Pro for about a year now, and so far it's served me incredibly well. Just recently however, it began freezing randomly during use for no discernable reason. The screen would lock up, any sounds playing would either stop or repeat indefinitely, and I would end up having to restart it. It slowly began happening more and more often, until I decided to refresh my OS from the built in recovery partitíon that comes with the laptop. After finishing and deleting a couple unnecessary bloatware programs, the problem only seemed to just get worse somehow. Now, it freezes once every 5-10 minutes, and I can barely get any work done on it. Do I have any other options besides sending it back to Lenovo? I can't easily go without my laptop for that long.

So here is my update after Lenovo repair.

They said there was a fault with the displays COAX cable. Basically it was loose/faulty and every time the laptop moved the cable couldn't handle that. They've replaced the cable and say they stress tested the laptop and it no longer had the fault. I'll let you guys know when I have it back though if the fault continues. Hope this helps someone else as well.

Haven't read this when I "fixed" mine.
Yup it was indeed the COAX cable and/or the wifi cards that's loose.
Remembered I removed the whole wifi cards and put it back together. connect the coax cable in slightly different orientation (kinda make sure the black and white cable are not on top of each other as mine was).
So far after 2 months, it haven't freeze since.

 

[glundby]

I have had the freeze probems for years! Typically it comes back after clean install after 1/4 to 1/2 a year. Lately, on newer install of Win10 it has been stable for a looong time. However in stead it is impossible to make the sensors work for the 2in1 modes, and portrait/landscape and so on. The interesting observation is that under newest umbutu it works so the hardware is OK.

Initially when still under warranty, I sent it for repair. It came back, lacking most driver updates, and with a non functional power key. The BIOS had INVALID in type, serial and so on.

Under Linux ubuntu i have been investigating log files, and have seen big quantities of disk rereads. Under Lenovo diagnostics everything allways looks perfect. My theory is that the disk hw and/or the drivers had some very low level problems not showing in the diagnostics, and that gradually the disk, on very low lewel got gradually corrupted and loaded corrupt SW into OS level drivers and created freeze!

Since it now seems to work, the drivers included in newer windows may have fixed this. In the process they have killed the 2in1 functionallity.

I'm now 99% using the 3 pro in Umbutu where it behaves quite well. However I wrote this using the newest 18362.10005 win 10 just to show it is still kind off working.