T61 - Windows 10, Intel Turbo Memory Controller, UltraNav

[T61NewComer]

Hello,

I recently acquired a Lenovo T61 ThinkPad (T9300, 8GB RAM, 15.4") for a friend for Christmas (a student with no access to a PC at home). I've installed Windows 10 on it (Fall Update). I'm having two problems.

The first is with the Intel Turbo Memory Controller (the machine has a 512MB card fitted). Previously I installed the Windows 10 Creator Update, and then the Intel driver version 1.10.1.1002 (8/21/2009). That worked fine, other than the fact that Windows constantly complained that the "drive" was full.

However, after installing the Fall Update, and then the same Intel driver, the machine refuses to shut down or restart. The driver *appears* to have installed correctly, but once it's been added, Windows becomes unresponsive. I've re-installed it (Windows) 5 times so far (trying different things). But that's becoming very tedious. I'm puzzled as to why the driver worked with the earlier version of Windows 10, but not the most recent iteration. And also whether there is a more suitable driver available?

The second problem concerns the touchpad. When Windows 10 downloads the most recent driver, it starts to behave a little oddly when more than one window is open. Sometimes when I begin to move the cursor across the screen, Windows seems to think that I want to see the "Task Selection" screen. I can't identify what's causing this. It doesn't happen with the driver Windows chooses when first installed. I'd really like to be able to disable that particular "gesture".

Thank you in advance.

[dr_st]

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Regarding the Turbo Memory stuff - the recent Windows 10 Fall Update (RS3) added additional restrictions on drivers, and it may be that the old one is no longer compatible. You cannot expect there to be better drivers for technology that's 10 years old and was EOLd a long time before Win10 was conceived. The solution: disable it; it's useless anyways.

Regarding the touchpad - you can look at the mouse settings (that's where the touchpad extra tabs are usually installed) to see if you can identify the gesture responsible. Or just roll back to the older driver and don't let Win10 install the new one.

[T61NewComer]

Hey dr_st, thanks for the welcome - and the advice!

I suspected as much as regards the Intel drivers (that it was unlikely anything more recent is/would become available). But I hadn't heard about the new restrictions with the Fall Update, so that's very instructive. I'll stop poking that feature and live without it. It was just driving me crazy to see the little question mark in Device Manager.

Thanks for the touchpad suggestion too. I've had a look around at the settings in UltraNav and wasn't able to narrow it down based on the options available (similarly with the genetic Mouse settings, though I can't say I've delved exhaustively). But I did notice on the most recent Windows install attempt that Windows Update reported a message along the lines of "We see you already have a driver that might be more up-to-date than the one we're trying to install" (for the touchpad). So that's good. Less good that it assured me Windows would keep trying to install the "older" one anyway! But I'll see what I can make of the rollback feature, something I've never grappled with before.

[RealBlackStuff]

In every T6x that I ever had (and there were dozens, if not hundreds), any Turbo Memory was removed due to malfunctioning sooner rather than later.
I have never noticed any difference with or without that POS.
Remove palmrest and keyboard, it's the small card under the far left KB-corner.

[T61NewComer]

Thank you RealBlackStuff, this is my first ThinkPad - let alone from this range - so I'm completely green. It's good to hear advice from vets

[T61NewComer]

This really ought to be a separate thread, but I don't want to go filling the forum with a clutch of posts during my first few visits.

Having read some of the messages here, I've become aware of the nVidia 140m issue - this machine has that graphics processor, so that's quite dispiriting to learn. But given that it's survived this long, might it be a safe bet to assume that it's immune to the problem? I'm aware that I could open up the chassis and seek out the chip date, but I'd prefer to avoid doing that. If I was planning to use the machine myself it's something I might investigate.

Obviously it's impossible to give a conclusive answer, but is there any sort of rule-of-thumb about this when it comes to longevity?

Before I found out about this, I actually bought something called a "cooling pad", which is USB-driven and includes 3 fans. This sits under the machine and provides constant heat dissipation. I'm quite hoping that might further mitigate the issue.

[dr_st]

Having read some of the messages here, I've become aware of the nVidia 140m issue - this machine has that graphics processor, so that's quite dispiriting to learn. But given that it's survived this long, might it be a safe bet to assume that it's immune to the problem?

No hardware is immune to failure, but after it survived this long, it's time to stop caring. It can just die for whatever reason any time, or can live for 10 more years.

[T61NewComer]

Point taken I shall hope for the best.

I'm used to living with very modest hardware (my main desktop is an early Core 2 Duo) so I'm still impressed by the specifications of the T61 even though it is getting long-in-the-tooth.

[NonesensE]

I'd recommend to use an undervolting BIOS to prolong the life of your nVidia graphics as much as possible.

[RealBlackStuff]

And definitely open it up to remove the old thermal paste between CPU/GPU and fan, clean it up properly and apply fresh thermal paste.
Plenty of how-to's on this forum.

[dr_st]

And definitely open it up to remove the old thermal paste between CPU/GPU and fan, clean it up properly and apply fresh thermal paste.

I wouldn't do as long as the temperatures now are reasonable.

[T61NewComer]

Thanks everyone: it seems to be behaving reasonably well at the moment, I'm seeing CPU core temperatures of about 40-45 degrees and GPU temperatures of about 60-65 (and around 30 degrees for the hard disk) under moderate conditions (when doing things like installing software, but not running anything very intensive).

[Cigarguy]

Temps while idle or modest use is OK but won't tell you much. Those temps are a bit high for my liking. Having said that I'm always one to reapply thermal paste after 4-5 years. It's not that difficult to do and you'll learn a whole lot too. And I like having a clean machine with new thermal paste.

As for the turbo memory, I tried it but found it did nothing for me except consume resources. Turbo memory was a transition step between HDD and SSD. AFAIK, turbo memory will help a HDD based system a bit but does nothing for a SSD based system.

[thinkpadcollection]

60C is kinda toasty. I would prefer to swap original fan for T500 fan which is direct drop in if your is 15.4" LCD, do not buy from chinese replacements they are same as t61's, T500 fan has more blades than T61''s.
Take the pad off the GPU's spot heatsink and shim with copper just right thickness usually 0.50mm thickness is just right buttered both sides with thin kryonaut compound. The turbo cache were a feature in vista only. Anything else of windows versions does not support turbo cache besides intel was too small for intel turbo memory cache size of 1GB, 2GB and 4GB, really needs to be 64GB minimum which does not exist in this form, just either fast spinner or SSD will do the trick nicely. Old story repeated again with optane 32GB again. Windows 7 and later are larger than 30GB installed and updated for regular notebook/desktop running 64bit OS. Low resource still bit bloated even on 32bit with 2GB main memory. And beginning with 7 and later are smart enough to know if spinner or ssd if trying to use SD as memory cache, is disabled if SSD or large HD in use.

I have known that 7200rpm drives with 4 heads of capacity of 500GB, 640GB, 750GB and 1TB drives all 7200rpm are pretty good with T60, T61 and T500 providing the OS in mind is windows 7 and 10, linux. I don't consider XP secure since updates for vulnerabilities have not been created since 2014 except for good low resource malware scanner, I like clamwin for that and nice thing about it is is still updated and low resource, open source, also I like malwarebytes as well for occasional scanning. And any 1TB with 4 heads, HGST 1.5TB with 6 heads, 5400rpm or 1 platter 1TB with 2 heads 5400rpm by hgst Z5K1 with 128MB buffer using PMR and samsung 2TB M9T (contains 6 heads) type will do. Not Seagate's 7mm 2TB with 4 heads and destructive re-writes every several tracks using SMR technology.

I have 3 HGST 1TB 7200rpm in use with 7 and 10 pretty good on 8GB and 16GB computers.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

[T61NewComer]

Hey again - appreciate the replies.

I got a bit spooked by the talk of high temperatures. I'd planned to ship the laptop to my friend (overseas) last Wednesday, but decided instead to try cleaning the fan/re-applying thermal paste. I've just completed that operation, which took a good 6 hours because I've never attempted anything like this before, and I was petrified of breaking something. I used Arctic Silver 5 with their Arcticlean product.

And currently the temperatures are identical - if anything they're nudging a little higher than before. So I don't know whether I botched the operation. I followed the Arctic Silver instructions as closely as I could interpret them:

http://www.arcticsilver.com/PDF/appinst ... iclean.pdf
http://www.arcticsilver.com/pdf/appmeth ... d_v1.1.pdf

And I'm still seeing 45-55 Celsius for the CPU and... currently 66 for the GPU. So this is a bit disturbing and disappointing. I did manage to grab the GPU details, but I'm not sure how to make sense of them:

51N3ST 0751A2
A TAIWAN
NF5565 00W
G86-740-A2

Where would that put me in the production range? Thanks in advance.

[MikalE]

As a postscript to your interest in the Turbo Memory Card, I recently installed this card into a T520 using Windows 10 Pro with no ill effects. Frankly, I don't think it helps any especially with an SSD and 16 GB of RAM, but it was a slot to fill that wasn't being used.

The driver was downloaded immediately after starting the Lenovo Updater and I haven't had any crashes or blue/black death screen since.

[Dekks]

In every T6x that I ever had (and there were dozens, if not hundreds), any Turbo Memory was removed due to malfunctioning sooner rather than later.
I have never noticed any difference with or without that POS.
Remove palmrest and keyboard, it's the small card under the far left KB-corner.

It's worth it in low memory HDD systems in that it speeds up booting and gives some boost to loading programs. But given that most systems from then are run with memory max'd out that negates any benefit the Robson unit might have. I still have a 1GB card running under Win7 on a X200 with 2GB ram and while its non problematical every test & analysis i've done via Admin centre monitoring the cache performance have never shown it's worth it. Hence why most OEM's never used them despite Intel's best full court press.

[T61NewComer]

Thanks again. MikalE - that's interesting, I didn't think to install the Lenovo Updater. Well, more than that, I wasn't aware that such a thing might be available in Windows 10 compatible format. The machine is half-way across Europe by courier at the time of writing, so I'll just have to cross my fingers and hope it holds out for a while.