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A Bug in Lenovo System Update Service is Driving Up CPU Usage and Prompting Fan Noise in Laptops and Desktops, Customers Say (lenovo.com) 50

Posted by msmash from the bug-reports dept.
New reader allquixotic writes: Since late January, most users running a pre-installed Lenovo image of Windows 10 has been bitten by a bug in Lenovo's System Update Service (SUService.exe) causing it to constantly occupy a CPU thread. This was noticed by many ThinkPad and IdeaPad users as an unexpected increase in fan noise, but many desktop users might not notice the problem. I'm submitting this story to Slashdot because Lenovo does not provide an official support venue for their software, and the problem has persisted for several weeks with no indication of a patch forthcoming. While this bug continues to persist, anyone with a preinstalled Lenovo image of Windows 10 will have greatly reduced battery life on a laptop, and greatly increased power consumption in any case. As a thought experiment, if this causes 1 million systems to increase their idle power consumption by 40 watts, this software bug is currently wasting 40 megawatts, or about 1/20th the output of a typical commercial power station. On my ThinkPad P15, this bug actually wastes 80 watts of power, so the indication is that 40 watts per system is a very conservative number.

Lenovo's official forums and unofficial reddit pages have seen several threads pop up since late January with confused users noticing the issue, but so far Lenovo is yet to issue an official statement. Users have recommended uninstalling the Lenovo System Update Service as a workaround, but that won't stop this power virus from eating up megawatts of power around the world for those who don't notice this power virus's impact on system performance.
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A Bug in Lenovo System Update Service is Driving Up CPU Usage and Prompting Fan Noise in Laptops and Desktops, Customers Say More

A Bug in Lenovo System Update Service is Driving Up CPU Usage and Prompting Fan Noise in Laptops and Desktops, Customers Say

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  • So (Score:3)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday February 09, 2021 @12:47PM (#61044336)

    Uninstall the stupid update or get rid of the service? OEM update services do little besides push bloatware.

    • Uninstall the stupid update or get rid of the service? OEM update services do little besides push bloatware.

      Lenovo's System Update pulls firmware, drivers and minimal software specific to things like touchpads, cameras, Wifi and power-management. While this story is about an unfortunate bug, Lenovo's default image for business computers is very light.

    • With Lenovo software, once you remove it, typically hardware functionality will go away. I know with our ThinkPad E15s the Function keys will do nothing once you uninstall Lenovo Vantage (their update tool/service.) On older laptops if you didn't have their software the CD drive was disabled.

    • Uninstall the stupid update or get rid of the service? OEM update services do little besides push bloatware.

      To be fair they also remove programs, like my bootloader when I update the bios.

  • It's also been an issue with Lenovo's Yoga software for years now. Every Windows update I have to manually replace the .exe file with a fixed one to keep it from eating 20-30% CPU at all times

  • Maybe Lenovo decided to do a bit of mining at their customers expense.

    • This is what I think is happening (I dont own a lenovo anything so its theorycraft)

      That service has a spinlock in a routine that contacts lenovo servers, but those servers arent answering, so it spins, and spins, and spins....

      Think of the service like VGER from the original Star Trek movie.

  • ...because I own a Lenovo laptop FANLESS...

    So, it doesn't affect "Lenovo laptops", but just the ones with fan.

    • If it is the latter, let me tell you that you still have half of the problem:
      Your laptop may not get loud, but it will still consume more energy than normal and battery runtime will be shorter.

    • Melting solder does really hurt if it falls on your lap.

    • It doesn't affect my Thinkpad, or my wife's Thinkpad Yoga, because we run linux. And they both have fans.

    • It affects you too. Just in your case it is performance and battery life, not noise. Fanless laptops are not engineered for constant 100% CPU operation. If you have a thread like this, after a while the CPU goes into thermal throttle and the laptop performance tanks. Depending on how bad is the CPU hog and how good is the cooling/thermal management this may be shortening the life of your laptop too.

  • Lenovo has HORRIBLE customer service! (Score:3)

    by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Tuesday February 09, 2021 @01:37PM (#61044558) Homepage
    There's a bug in a few of their notebook lines where the notebook can't wake up from sleep. I submitted a ticket after having to remove the bottom case of my notebook to disconnect the battery 3 times in one day last week. Their response was; "We're sending you a box to send the notebook back to us." When I called and asked why? I was told it's hardware issue because I'm complaining about the power button. They couldn't understand the issue involved the UEFI / BIOS, and 7 of the people I talked with didn't understand what UEFI / BIOS meant. I asked them to fix the firmware and just send me the file so I could flash it, but they insisted that wouldn't work and my notebook had a hardware issue.

    This is a good notebook, except for that extremely annoying issue. Granted it doesn't usually happen at all, but when the computer locks up you can't hard power off, you can only send the machine into sleep by holding the power button. Which as a developer, happens from time to time, and the fact this same bug has existed between lines and generations, just shows their total lack of quality. On a different line they actually build in a reset button to get you out of sleep lock, instead of fixing the firmware.

    • It doesn't happen with my P52 on which I immediately loaded Linux (thus also dodging the bad Thunderbolt-breaking firmware update) but I'm in the market for a second notebook and want to dodge that bullet.

      • I have a Thinkbook 14 G2, so I can vouch it definitely has a sleep issue. I've heard Ideapad and Yoga have the same problem.
        • I've had sleep/resume issues with Thinkpads since my first T43. I don't expect this to ever be resolved. Whatever they are doing wrong is in some combination of firmware code that gets reused over and over, or broken behavior that now defines their golden compatibility or regression tests.
          • IMO it should just involve exposing a power button setting in the BIOS / UEFI that changes how the power button responds when it's held or pressed. I'm glad people other then myself are experiencing this stupidity, because it really drives home the point this is not a one off hardware issue.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Yes I can, but the current firmware still has the bug, they need to release a firmware with the fix.
    • Carbon X1 Gen6 and I can confirm this, it goes to sleep and then the only way to get it back is to hold the power button down long enough to force a power-off. This is a pretty drastic step, it's not just a Windows-wasn't-shut-down-properly event, it goes into the BIOS setup on reboot indicating a pretty dire firmware/hardware-level problem. The problem appeared maybe six months ago after a firmware update. There are several threads on Lenovo forums about this, with as usual for Lenovo no solution offere
      • With mine I don't think holding the button works, I've held it upwards of a minute with no success.

        • How do you get it back? Is it stuck in a catatonic state until the battery is drained?

          Also seems odd that you can't do a forced power-off, that's a hardware feature to deal with otherwise unresponsive devices.

          • I have to remove the bottom cover and disconnect the battery. I asked Lenovo if there was another method to get it unstuck but they said no.
          • Not necessarily pure hardware. There are power manager asics that can be controlled at the firmware level that interpret the power button input and what to do with it. It is possible to write a firmware patch with this kind of system that breaks the longpress power off functionality. Once it's bricked, you may need to get low level access to the programming interface of the device to flash it with non-shit firmware (uart to flash directly, for example)
            • With the newer Lenovos it's not that easy, they're built to be fairly secure against evil maid attacks (good) but that also makes it difficult to undo things. Friend of mine set BIOS passwords for work X1s that hold sensitive data and lost one of the passwords, it's now a brick, even the Russians don't know how to get past the security.
      • Every generation of Thinkpad I've had since the T43 eventually has sleep/resume issues. Whatever they're doing wrong, and not finding in QA, survived a dozen generations of Intel platforms and even the BIOS->UEFI transition. They're never going to get it right.

  • I have a Lenovo yoga tablet.
    Hardware is nice.
    Software they added to stock Android makes the hardware almost unusable

  • Never got around to disabling the lenovo updater bullshit on my latest machine and it ran an update last week and since then mysteriously is always going fan on max while sitting idle on my desk. Even if I put the ting to sleep, I come back and it's hot as fuck and the fan is on. Checked task manager and suservice.exe is using 25% of cpu. Fuck no, uninstall.

  • Lenovo has acknowledged the problem on their forums and is releasing a fix later this week. Funny how that happens less than 24 hours after it hits /.

    https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T... [lenovo.com]

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