Have an issue with your ThinkPad not waking up from sleep properly, try turning off passwords on all disks in BIOS, including SSDs

Here's a long standing thread on Lenovo's forum, with over 2,200 views and no real solutions:

W520 will not wake from sleep
10-26-201108:31 AM wabisabi2004

I tinkered with this for far longer than I'd care to admit. Thinking it might be the RunCore mSATA 128GB SSD, I went back-and-forth with RunCore support, since buying this drive for tZilla back in October. Had hoped their 5.02 firmware might help. It didn't. But today, I'm now very pleased to report that I have found what works for me. I strongly suspect it'll work for many others, especially if you have an SSD.

Here's the fix:

1. Press the ThinkVantage blue button at the ThinkPad splash screen at power-on
2. Enter the BIOS by pressing F1
3. Go to the Security page
4. Go to the Password option, down arrow to "Power-On Password"
5. Turn off password protection on all Hard Disk drives listed (which includes SSDs)
6. Press F10 to Save and Exit
7. Reboot

Why I have to turn it off for the spinning drives and the SSD, I do not know. But turning off just the password on the SSD alone wasn't enough, it still couldn't wake up right.

So there you have it!

During the long 9 months it took me to solve this nagging problem, here's the "fixes" that failed:

• In Device Mananger, System Devices, ThinkPad PM Device, I updated to version 1.65.5.20, using Lenovo's download here.
• Made sure I had the latest Intel Chipset Support for Windows 7 (32-bit, 64-bit), Vista (32-bit, 64-bit) and XP (32-bit, 64-bit) - ThinkPad Version 9.3.0.1020
• Tried using docking station or just external USB 3.0 dock, seen here:
  https://tinkertry.com/lenovo-usb-3-dock-deep-dive
• Tried RunCore Firmware 5.02, didn't help.

After reading something about disk drive passwords somewhere, it suddenly came to me, that Eureka moment. I suddenly remembered that when I removed the full docking station, to try out the external USB 3.0 dock, I had enabled disk drive passwords. I then also remembered that I had been experimenting with multiple boot options (including Windows 8 tests), I did briefly have had my suspend/resume working. So I then knew, that despite everything I had read in the long thread, my hunch was turning all hard drive passwords would work. And 2 minutes later, it did!

Naturally, I'm trying to work with Lenovo to find a way to turn passwords back on again someday, as it's obviously desirable from a security perspective. But at least I've worked out a way to use the laptop when I'm out and about, without having to shut down entirely between sessions. Finally!