Windows 7 freezes on Lenovo Y430 ideapad

I installed Windows 7 Professional 64-bit on my Lenovo ideapad Y430 (which came with Vista Home Premium 32-bit). It worked fine for a few hours. However, it now freezes up within 1 minute after I sign on after rebooting. The cursor stops moving, Task Manager won't come up, no disk activity, etc. Booting in Safe Mode works fine, so I'm thinking it's an issue related to a driver or service that doesn't load in Safe Mode. Event Viewer doesn't reveal much of use; only the fact that I needed to power off without shutdown. Vista still runs fine on another partition.

Has anyone seen anything like this, or have any ideas on how I can get Windows 7 running again (e.g., by identifying and removing/updating the offending driver/server, if that's what's causing the problem)? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

jermrev said:

It worked fine for a few hours.

Sounds like you got a driver from Microsoft update that is causing you problems. Try a system restore and then turn off automatic updates so you can then choose which updates to install. Watch out for driver updates and do them one at a time till you find the one messin' you up.

NOTE: Just because it's from Microsoft doesn't mean it's the best choice.

ultraplanet said:

jermrev said:

It worked fine for a few hours.

Sounds like you got a driver from Microsoft update that is causing you problems. Try a system restore and then turn off automatic updates so you can then choose which updates to install. Watch out for driver updates and do them one at a time till you find the one messin' you up.

NOTE: Just because it's from Microsoft doesn't mean it's the best choice.

Thanks - that's the approach I am taking. It's not always clear to me which updates will be containing new drivers, though. If I crank UAC up to the highest level, will it prompt me when Windows tries to install a new driver using Windows Update?

If it is set to automatic it will just install them without a prompt.

I have the same laptop. I was also having the same problem! I uninstalled the audio driver and installed a new one from lenovos website. Works perfectly now.