Lenovo Password Manager problems with Outlook and Word 2010

One of my first hurdles with the Lenovo ThinkPad W510 was the most annoying bug that caused the mouse clicks to stop working within the text area on both Word and Outlook 2010. Let me explain. You are on Outlook, which is using Word as the email editor, and open a new mail message. You start typing your message and after you press the Enter key for the first time the mouse will not allow you to click within the text field any more. This means you cannot select text or even position the cursor in a different position. You also cannot right click. The only solution to this was to close Outlook and start it again, but as soon as you press Enter on any message, you're stuck again.


The same would happen in Word, and if you start a document by adding one line and then press Enter to create a new line/paragraph, the mouse will stop working until you close Word and restart it! This was soooo annoying!!!

I Googled this problem and the only solution I found was... uninstall the Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox Password Manager. Well, I didn't want to uninstall the Password Manager, I just wanted everything to work as it is supposed to.

I then called Lenovo Support and no one had heard about this issue, what I thought was strange, because I found plenty of mentions of the same problem by other Lenovo users on teh web. My first call, though, resulted in nothing. I googled some more and experimented some more, and was about to uninstall the culprit, Password Manager, but that just made me cringe. So, I decided to call Lenovo Support again and try it once more.

First, this support technician was much nicer and more knowledgeable from the beginning, and even though he tried to say they didn't support software issues, when I insisted it was their problem as the software causing the problem was their own he decided to investigate the issue a little more. So I got put on hold while he contacted someone else, probably a level 3 engineer, and got back to me with a proper solution. Apparently, this is a known issue in Lenovo (not with all support personnel it appears) and there is even a patch that solves this bug.

If you are facing the same problem, dear Lenovo fellowusers, I don't want you to go through all the hassle I did, so here's the treat. All y ou need is a patch for Password Manager, and even though the patch is advertised for solving the problem with Office 2007, as the patch is for the Lenovo software, not Office, it works with Office 2010 just as well.

If you want to find the patch yourself, go to the Lenovo website at www.lenovo.com and search for "MIGR-74151", without the quotes. This will return one result, that takes you to http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-74151. There you will find links for the patch both for 32 and 64 bit systems. Just to make it easier for you, here are the direct links:

Instructions: http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/tvtcss83patch_office2007_32.txt or http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/tvtcss83patch_office2007_64.txt
32 bit - http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/tvtcss83patch_office2007_32.exe
64 bit - http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/thinkvantage_en/tvtcss83patch_office2007_64.exe

Hope this helps someone out there!