Random Freeze Issue on Lenovo M715q and M720q

Overview#

I experienced random freeze issues on two Lenovo systems: the M715q and the M720q. While both devices showed similar symptoms under Windows, the root cause and final solution turned out to be different.

Lenovo M715q#

On the M715q, I disabled C-States in the BIOS and tested the system using Windows. The system still froze randomly.

However, when I installed and ran Ubuntu Server on the same machine, the freezes completely stopped. Since the issue no longer appeared under Linux, I decided not to investigate this system further.

Lenovo M720q#

On the M720q, I am running Windows and using an external GTX 1050 Ti GPU. Because this machine is used daily, I had to resolve the issue.

I first tried disabling C-States in the BIOS, but the system continued to freeze randomly. I then checked Windows Event Viewer and attempted to fix potential issues one by one, but the problem persisted.

Root Cause Discovery#

Later, my office Lenovo laptop started experiencing frequent BSODs. After troubleshooting, I discovered that the problem was related to the Wi-Fi driver.

This led me to test the same theory on the M720q.

Attempted Fixes#

• Updated the Wi-Fi driver
• Disabled the Wi-Fi device in Device Manager

Unfortunately, neither of these actions resolved the random freezes.

Final Solution#

As a last step, I physically removed the Wi-Fi card from the M720q. After doing this, the system has not experienced a single freeze.

Symptoms During Freeze#

• Mouse and keyboard stop responding
• Occurs randomly without a clear pattern
• Display remains visible (unknown whether video playback continues)
• No response until a hard reset is performed
• No meaningful errors in Event Viewer, except for unexpected power loss