Latency/freezing on IBM Thinkpad T43

[paul_1011]

I might also give them a call, if enough people ring with the same problem they might do some serious investigation as to the cause of the problem. They might even come up with a solution right away.

Only had my T43 a couple of months and been very happy with it apart from this problem, would be nice to get it fixed completely, but it is far far better now anyway.

[bing]

I think I found a solution to this problem for my computer now atleast. In my t43 I have the intel pro 2915abg card and I thought that the hardware interrupt problems that I was having might be related to the wireless card. It turns out that they released an update for the card, bringing it to version 9.0.2.31 just 2 days ago. I installed the update and for the most part, things seem to run a lot better now. Where windows normally took 3 min. to boot, it now takes about 30 sec.. Also, my music in iTunes seems to run a lot smoother. I hope this is the answer to the problem but if not, it seems to be a good temporary fix. Goodluck to others, I know how much of a pain this can be..........

Thanks. Just installed this now and giving it a runthrough.

Never mind. It's still there.

I find it ridiculous that this problem hasn't been documented by IBM yet, as common as it sounds.

[paul_1011]

Did anyone manage to find a resolution to this problem?

I still have it and its now becoming really annoying.

I have tried to abstain from moaning too much about my T43, but I have to say I think my old T23 is better. A smoother machine with less problems than this one.

[Roy_W]

I have recently finished a clean XP Pro installation. No sign of lagging or slowdown.

I installed many of the IBM utilitys, OnScreen Display, Battery Manager, Power Manager, Key Configurator etc..... I started to suffer some serious lag especially when opening the File Explorer, sometimes I would wait 20 seconds before any drives/files were displayed.

OK, 2 + 2 = One of the IBM Utilitys program/drivess must be stuffed.
Unfortunately I did not record the names of all of the utilitys that I installed
Although I do know that I removed at least the following

• * The Synaptic Touchpad drivers

• * The "Battery Log" Blog utility

• * The Power Manager

Here is an extract of my current registry ( Substitute 'path_to' for your own version)
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

• 1 :TPHotKey REG_SZ 'path_to'\TPHMGR.exe

• 2 :TPKBLED REG_SZ 'path_to'\TpScrLK.exe

• 3 :TPKMAPHelper REG_SZ 'path_to'\TPHMGR.exe

Initially I had at least 10 entrys which I have subsequently reduced to 3, even with this relatively abridged set of utilitys everything is running fine.

I do run AV software ( Sophos ) which proves to be no problem at all.

The hardware drivers for the Bios, Ethernet, Wireless, Bluetooth are the latest IBM downloadable versions.

Hope this helps a little.

[paul_1011]

OK,

In an effort to pin it down I removed every single startup item which consisted mostly of IBM utilites and tools.

I still had a bit of lag during startup but it seems better. I will add one application back everyday to see if I can pin the problem down that way. I dont have time to go through each.

But to me it seems the lag is caused by hard disk activiity, some kind of hardware interrupt problem.

[Roy_W]

Paul_1011

One or Two questions..

1: Are you using the "IBM Park the Disk Heads before the machine hits the floor Software". ie "IBM Active Protection System"

2: Is "Windows System Restore" software turned on or off.

3: Are you using any kind of backup software is Acronis, V2I etc ......

Roy

[Roy_W]

Paul

If you want to understand more about who or what is accessing the Hard Disk
you may want to try FileMon, here is the address

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Filemon.html



Roy

[paul_1011]

Roy,

First of all, disabling all startup items has not made a difference, so I dont think the problem is down to IBM software loaded on startup.

1) Yes, but I have just disabled it to see if it makes any difference.
2) Is turned off and has been almost since I started using the machine.
3) No backup software, manually back up "my documents" once a week on to a pen drive.

[Roy_W]

Paul,


Refering back to the Hardware Interrupt possibility I noticed in my Bios Setup that all of the PCI Devices were allocated IRQ 11 which seems just a little strange. I have subsequently changed them to Automatic.

There is also an option for Stopping:Starting DMA Disk Access.
It might be worth trying.

[paul_1011]

Roy,

My IRQ settings were the same as yours. I have now set them all to automatic also and it seems to have made a big difference.

Im not going to starting couting my chickens yet but it looks like promising start. Will be using the laptop all day so I will report back later.

Paul