Power on-Power off issues with X200

Question

I am having power up and power down issues with my Lenovo X200.
Prior to the immediate problem, I would experience occasional unexpected shutdown of the computer (I would hear a relay click when it happened), and on some occasions when I put it into hibernation, then power it back up later it would not resume, instead, it would restart with a new session of Windows.
About a month ago, it shut down while I was using it.  I powered it back on, but it took a long time (nearly a minute) to get the “ThinkPad” initial boot screen, then the screen would be blank for about a minute, then I would get a screen that read, “Intel Management Engine BIOS Extension v 4.0.4.0007” and also “M.E Initializing……”   That screen would show for about a minute, then I got another screen reading “Security chip is generating endorsement key pair.  Please wait.”  That screen would show for about 5 minutes, then it would read, “Generation failed!!!” for about 5 seconds.  After that, it would boot to Windows (I am using Windows 7 Professional).
When I would shut it down, either in hibernate mode or full shutdown, after the hard drive icon stopped flashing (indicating it had shut down), the power icon, battery icon would stay on, and the “sleep” icon would flash.  I would have to hold the power button down to turn those icons off; if I failed to do that the power would stay on until the battery completely drained.
I read something about the “Security chip is generating endorsement key pair” message so I went into BIOS and changed the security chip from “Active” to “Inactive”.  However, when I would start the computer with the chip “inactive”, it would go first to the initial boot screen, then to the “M.E. Initializing” message, then the screen would go blank and remain blank, not ever booting to Windows.  So I went back to BIOS and changed the security chip to “Disabled”.  With it disabled, it will boot up, but still is very slow booting and I still get that “M.E. Intializing” message for about a minute, and also I still have to hold the power button down to power down the computer after I shut it down (or hibernate) with Windows.
The good news is that, after this started happening, I have not encountered an unexpected shutdown nor has it failed to resume the previous windows session if I hibernate it.
Any suggestions?  Thanks in advance for your help.

Answer 1

The difference may be that the G5 iMac bus (where your fire wire plugs into the back) is a powered bus. What this means is the LaCie drive will "sense" the power from the bus and not turn off. The power it gets from the fire wire bus however may (is) not be enough to actually operate it, only leave it on. You still need to the drive into a power outlet.
In the LaCie manual (CD that comes with drive) and the FAQ section of LaCie's web page it states this as well.
What I do is manually turn the drive on when needed (performing back up or for scheduled back up). The LaCie drive should be quiet when not in use as it has no fan.
PS - try SuperDuper for backups, much better (IMHO) than Silverkeeper.