Strange Icons - Lenovo T510

[corkyg]

Can anyone ID the two big icons (B&W, lower right) -

They do not say anything with right or left click or hover. They penetrate every screen. Need a way to get rid of them.

 

[CurseTheSky]

That looks like some kind of on screen display for caps lock and num lock. I'd look into uninstalling and reinstalling Lenovo software related to on screen displays.

 

[gorobei]

damn, curse beat me to it.

maybe look in bios too.

 

[Brainonska511]

Looks like Caps Lock and Num Lock icons. And they are both off.

I'd say look through the programs running in the taskbar to see if they are related to that. Or are they a Windows 7 gadget? The last option would probably be to look through the process list.

On my Asus laptop, there is a program called HControl.exe which controls the on-screen icons like that (so you see the little icon pop up when you switch to battery or lower/raise volume, etc....). Sometimes, it would get stuck and leave the opaque icon sitting on the screen and they only way to fix it would be to restart the HControl.exe process.

 

[mrblotto]

Try killing the TPONSCR.exe and/or TPOSDSVC.exe process and see if they disappear. At least you'll know what you're dealing with then. Hopefully then you can reconfigure or otherwise futz with it. Good luck!

 

[corkyg]

So far, only one clue. The T510 has a numeric keypad that can be activated by pressing Fn+NmLck (ScrLck). That removed the slash from the top icon with "1." And, then a section of the keyboard becomes a numeric keypad. Now I need to find the way to disable it completely - I'm not a numbers person. I suspect that the other is a similar conversion combo, but I haven't found it yet.

 

[corkyg]

Problem solved! I reinstalled. They're gone!

 

[Brainonska511]

Problem solved! I reinstalled. They're gone!

At a curiosity, what did you reinstall?

 

[corkyg]

I reinstalled the entire system using the Lenovo Recovery partition. I then found out what caused the problem. The T510 CapsLock function has an obscure set of check boxes. The two choices are,l display the warning icon for a few seconds, or permanently. Then as the CapsLock key is toggle, the slash turns on and off. The other was for the built in Numeric keypad turned on and off by a Fn+NumLock/ScrLock F key.

Another hidden checkbox turned off the optical drive when not in use. It took a lot of exploring to find these gizmos. They are layered way down in Lenovo Tools relating to power management.

The Caps Lock feature is stupid because that key on the T510 has a bright green LED that turns on when it is activated. The on-screen display makes no sense at all.

Other than that, I find the T510 really nice. Especially the LED screen -{NOT GLOSSY!) at 190p0x800 (letterbox) res. Brightness is always keyboard adjustable. The discreet NVIDIA graphics are also nice.

 

[bhoover1]

OK first off screw anandtech for having me jump through four hundred hoops just to post a reply in a forum that i will likely never use again. Kind of kills the helpful spirit, know what I mean?

Anyways, you do not have to reinstall the Lenovo tools to accomplish this. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to find the settings to change them. To do it though (in windows xp, at least, not sure about vista & 7 although it's probably in a similar location) right-click the desktop & select properties to go to Display Properties. Click on the settings tab, select the advanced button, and there will be a tab called "On Screen Display" where you can change the colors and indicator settings for NumLock and CapsLock.

Hope it helps.

 

[corkyg]

That does not do it in Win 7 with the NVidia display on the T510. The displays are uniquely Lenovo and are easily fixed as I discussed above.

 

[KiwiK]

What kind of fud is this? Just go to the panel to adjust resolution, click advanced settings, then you have the onscreen display options that both show your capslock and numlock options.

Coming from a T410 on Win7.

 

[corkyg]

The problem was totally resolved last August. Why perpetuate the BS?

 

[Beer4Me]

You can also try updating the Lenovo hotkey software/system driver here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-74261

Got a lot of experience with Lenovo's since that is all I've had to deal with since I came on board at this company. I'm more of a Dell guy myself.