T42 SLOW issue

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efan · #1 Post by **efan** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 4:21 pm

Hi,

I am disappointed with this T42 performance. Forget about bench mark scores, this T42 feels a lot slower than my friends $750 Dell.

Things got A LOT worse when running in battery mode. The ghost images were all over the display. It just seems like the cpu is not running at 100%. IBM sent me brand new battery but that didn't work. They then sent a guy to replace the system board and cpu -- didn't work either. The battery maximizer is set to best system performance. Windows XP power management also set to Maximum.

why is my T42 SO SLOW???

any ideas?

thanks

rickslate · #2 Post by **rickslate** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 4:30 pm

Hmmm... I have no idea. It might be helpful to the gurus on this board if you post your specs and maybe the applications that are slowing it down.

dash7540 · #3 Post by **dash7540** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 5:12 pm

"Slow" seems like a very ambiguous term here.

Are you talking about the general responsiveness of Windows XP's interface, for example, or is your internet 'slow', or is it a particular game that has choppy framerates?

You can check to see if the CPU is running at its maximum speed with any number of utilities (MobileMeter, CPU-Z, etc.)

Remember that ANY type of LCD will ghost a little, and depending on the type the ghosting can be hardly noticable or very severe. In the T42's case, people have said that the 15" FlexView tends to ghost a bit more than the 14.1" screens. What kind of screen do have?

Having a brand new battery or a used battery should not directly affect an application's performace - it's just there to provide power for the computer.

Since you have a new battery, system board, and CPU you can probably rule those out as for causing your 'slowness.' Perhaps you should check your hard drive as well it see if that's working correctly.

And of course it will DEFINITELY help if you post your T42's specifications and provide more details.

#4 Post by **daeojkim** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 5:17 pm

The speed of the computer depends a lot on the kind of softwars that runs on the background as well.

If you tell us more specifically what feels slower then we may be able to help you more. Is it application opening? Is it running certain programs?

Also specific model number and specifications will help greatly in explaining it. The performance across different models of T42 vary greatly depending on CPU, GPU, and HD speed, RAM etc.

The chances are, if you bought a T42 that came with only 256MB and running it with factory default softwares, (which are quite alot running on the background), you system will use a lot of virtual memory on your hard drive and it will fee like it is crawling.

efan · #5 Post by **efan** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 10:24 pm

My general specs are:

2379-DXU

PM 1.7
768MB Memory
60GB HDD
32MB Video

When boot up in AC mode, it takes my T42 longer to start applications such as MS word, Matlab than my friend's Dell 700M. There is still slight ghosting issues but I take it that is normal for flexview.

When running on battery, things REALLY slow down. Dragging the task manager on desktop would get a trail of ghost images all over the place. This happens right after booting up and regardless of any heavy duty program running in the background.

So basically with the same process/programs running in the background,
performance is acceptable in AC mode but things start to run in "slow motion" in battery mode.

The IBM onsite tech guy noticed that in AC mode, dragging the task manager around can result in 15%+ CPU usage, but in battery mode, the usage hardly exceeds 5%.

thanks for any and all replies....

baraider · #6 Post by **baraider** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:09 pm

do a virus, spam scan.....dang it

#7 Post by **daeojkim** » Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:19 pm

Your system is basically same configuration as my T42 except for the screen, and the HD which is faster than my 5400 rpm hard drive. That being said, the performance should be very fast. Certainly faster than your friend's 700M.

Are you sure that your video card is only 32MB? That is not the spec for the 2379 DXU. It should be radeon 9600 64MB, which is quite fast. Getting a trail of ghosts all over the place does not seem normal. Ghosting should not be that bad. I am wondering if you have the right drivers installed. Having the wrong video drivers can cause this as well.

Is your computer in stock setting? And also I would do a anti virus and anti spyware scan to make sure that your system has not been taken over. If there is no hardware issue then I am assuming that spyware or virus could be a culprit.

If nothing else works, do a clean istall or do a system restore. If problem still persists, then there must be something wrong with the hardware.

a_d_y_a · #8 Post by **a_d_y_a** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 12:07 am

2379 dxu comes with 64 mb 9600 card
plus it has one slot with 512

u seem to have something else

did u add ram, was it a crappy noname POS?

Kenn · #9 Post by **Kenn** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 1:32 am

The default IBM config is pretty slow out of the box, a fresh XP installation really speeds things up. With clean startup settings and bootvis optimization, my machine is up and running and connected to the wireless 26-28 seconds from boot.

Someone above said it right - slow is a relative term, and unfortunately it's hard for people to tell exactly what you're experiencing. It could be anything, but there was no doubt for me that the out-of-box config from IBM was noticeably slower than a clean XP install...

I've compared it to my friend's 1.6Ghz 700m too, and my t42 eats it for lunch, objectively speaking. So the good news is it's likely to be a software issue rather than somehthing wrong with your machine...

zelchenko · #10 Post by **zelchenko** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:40 am

I have the 2379-DXU, but with the default memory configuration (512MB). I'm very happy with the response so far. I haven't run much in the way of resource intensive applications yet, though. I may want to bump up my memory to 1 or 2 Gig if I start using VMWare again.

P.S. Yes, my DXU has the Radeon 9600 with 64MB video memory

efan · #11 Post by **efan** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 9:59 am

My video is Radeon 9600 64MB and I added 256MB ram.

I have the out of the box config.

I am curious if the culprit is spyware/virus, then the spyware only has effect only when machine is running on battery.... well, seems like there is no way to avoid doing s system restore

and I just want to add that IBM service and support is simply the BEST -- I got the new battery the next morning and the on-site guy should come within 7 days but he also showed up next day too.

dash7540 · #12 Post by **dash7540** » Thu Apr 28, 2005 1:05 pm

Give this a good read:

http://www.tweakguides.com/XPTC.html

It might help your situation if the cause is Windows.

I've compared it to my friend's 1.6Ghz 700m too, and my t42 eats it for lunch

-literally!

T42 SLOW issue

T42 SLOW issue

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