Nasty Problem With OCZ Vertex 3 SSD on Lenovo W520 Solved

Updated: at 11:18 PM

Recently, I posted about the new SSD drive I have for my Lenovo W520 Core-I7 smokin’ fast notebook computer (OCZ Vertex 3)  Clearly I was in the honey moon period because everything seemed blazingly fast. However, reality set in and the computer started hanging, refusing to boot all the way, have pregnant pauses, etc.  I called OCZ tech support and they suggest reload a fresh version of windows (now that’s a big help!).  I then posted to the Lenovo forums asking for advice on anything special I need to do when reloading. Instead, I got what seems to be the answer to my problem from a user by the name of “Gan” from Norway.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/W-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Need-to-Repave-my-W520-with-Windows-7-Ultimate-Use-Vanilla/td-p/439787

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I finally got home from a long week of travel, did a full backup of my computer just in case the registry hack failed, and applied the registry fix discussed in the article here:  http://geekmontage.com/texts/ocz-vertex-3-freezes-locks-up-stutters-and-crashes/.

I can say, after using the computer for a few hours, I have not had one hickup.  I’m hoping it stays that way.  For anyone else who thinks they have the same problem, here are some of the issues I was having:

  1. W520 would boot slowly and about 1 out of 5 times hang forever after reaching the logged in screan (wait cursor when hovering over startbar)
  2. Outlook would hang in the middle of typing messages, often for more than a minute
  3. Eventlog errors referring to location iaStor
  4. Visual Studio 2010 would get really slow and hang
  5. Many others

Here is what my current stats look like.  This is a newer version of CrystalDiskMark so it may not be comparable to the previous version I ran.

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For the moment, I’m a happy camper.