Thinkpads Forum

For the longest time, my ThinkPad R40 has been extremely slow. The slow I am describing is not just overall sluggishness caused by viruses/malware etc (which I am pretty sure is not the problem, since I frequently run a vast combination of cleaning programs as well as regularly run and fix and my hijackthis reports, among other measures). The slow is more of a stuttering issue, which occurs only when there is a lot of processing going on. It is not limited to audio only, but also happens when I am transferring files, loading a huge video file into a media player, playing games, etc. It almost seems like I have very very little RAM, but according to the device manager everything is A OK.

I have completely taken apart my ThinkPad before, so I figured something might have come loose. Of course you can't really identify a cause since you don't have the machine in front of you, but I am pretty confident that everything is in nice and firm.

However, what I did notice but unfortunately don't have much knowledge of, is that a LOT of my things (peripherals, drivers, devices) are on one IRQ. I believe it is IRQ 11. When I say a lot I really mean all my things are on IRQ 11 except for BIOS funtions. I've read that this can cause such stuttering problems, but I haven't read anything about IRQ channels for notebook computers so I don't know if this is normal or not.

Lastly, I guess some noteworthies are that it is a ThinkPad R40, running Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2, I update all my drivers and such regularly, I have a broken USB port and CD-RW drive (which are both removed), and I have a USB 4-port hub with all ports taken connected to my remaining USB port.

Usually I would reformat my computer, but it's extremely troublesome to do so because the notebook was given to me for "free" by my university, and to get a reformat, I need to drop off the notebook for an extended period of time which I can't really do nor want right now. Could anyone please suggest anything besides the obvious? Thanks in advance.

How much free space do you have on the hard drive, when did you last empty the recycle bin, have you run the hard drive diagnostics, what do you mean by you have removed a usb port, have you tried disabling everything usb in your device manager, how much RAM is installed, have you tried one dimm at a time, have you run any memory diagnostics, is this an R40 or R40e, what is the type and model number, do you have wireless and if so have you tried disabling it, are you using the AC adapter that came with the machine, does it behave differently on battery, did it ever work right?