Thinkpads Forum

I’ve had my t60 now for about a month and I’m finally getting around to trying to optimize performance. Originally I thought that the abysmal startup performance I was getting was due to the crud that the laptop comes preloaded with, but since I started systematic testing yesterday, I’m no longer sure as to the cause. I would appreciate any ideas from the forum members before I make the support call.

Here’s what I’m experiencing.

Elapsed Time / Action

0 secs - Power on
26 secs – Login screen appears
30 secs – Login
1 min 30 secs – Windows Loading Sound effect
2 min 30 secs – Main Windows screen appears
4 mins – Hour glass stops spinning and the machine is fully usable

What I’ve done/tried so far:

Loaded the latest Bios (now 1.09)
Updated the system software
Removed or Disabled from startup all pre-installed software
Disabled in hardware control panel the wireless network card, LAN, DVD/CD ROM/Bluetooth/Infared, fingerprint reader.
Physically removed the DVD/CD ROM in the ultrabay
Switched AHCI Mode
Searched the forums for performance /startup related issues

I have also changed the memory to 2, 1 gig sticks (and ran Memory tests).
I have been testing with the power plugged in, and the power manager settings all set to Max.

Observations

Whatever software I remove or hardware device I disable, the system seems to go in to a wait state for about 30 / 40 secs, where there is no disk light activity or visually apparent activity at different stages of the windows load cycle. It seems like it might be waiting for a hardware device to respond, but I’ve pretty much function tested everything (or disabled it) and all seems to be ok. Whatever I do, the startup time doesn’t change by more than a second or so.

Any ideas?

Thanks, Chris.

T60 2623D7U - Core Duo T2500 2 GHz - RAM 2 GB - HD 100
GB, X1400 14.1" TFT 1400 x 1050

Some random ideas:

Use RightMark Clock to verify that the processor will ramp to 2GHz under load

Use TP Fan Control and verify that you have no outrageously high temps that might cause the machine to run in "limp home mode"

Go into BIOS, select default settings, save and exit. In IBM-speak this called initializing the BIOS. Then go back in and disable (or hide) devices you will not be using (like modem, IR, BT, etc.). Save and reboot. Maybe Windows will re-sort memory mappings, IRQs, etc

Try booting in safe mode, once without networking, once with networking. Look for significant differences in boot speeds that may give you a clue of some sort

Go into device manager and verify that the Computer is ACPI Multiprocessor PC. Under Processors verify two instances of T2500 @ 2.00GHz. Show hidden devices and check for (!) yellow warning indicators

Close lid and lightly touch it. Let the machine know that you love it. Reveal ball peen hammer, let it know that you believe in tough love. Set the ground rules - its important that it understands your expectations

The hard drive for that machine is a 5400-rpm drive which is slow (too slow for me, in any event). Have you check the device manager to make sure no devices have yellow question marks (not installed properly)? Have you checked the drive controller to make sure it did not slip into PIO mode?

If you have disabled all the start up items, then it seems like it might be hardware related as bare windows is not slow to start.

I load everything under the sun (VPN, AntiVirus, Firewall, Cache Manager, Memory manager, traffic manager, PDA sync, etc, etc) and the machine is ready to roll after about 3 and half minutes. 4 Minutes bare bones is a bit long.
... JD Hurst

a bit off topic, but the latest seagate momentus 5400.3 drives with 5400rpm and perpendicular recording are the fastest drives with that spindle speed I have ever encountered. the higher data densitiy with this new recording mechanism really seems to help the drive.

I`ve used a 7k100 (hitachi 7200rpm) in another thinkpad before and the seagate I use now does not feel slower at all. loading speeds of windows and applications seem equally quick. the only think I noticed was that the seagate is considerably more silent, in my case (and in my x31) it`s completely dead silent as far as I can tell.

I can only recommend the seagate 5400.3 series over any 7200rpm drive.

7200rpm drives with perpendicular recording would be the optimum ofcourse but for now the 5400 ones easily rival the "normal" 7200 rpm drives

rvacha wrote:Some random ideas:

Go into BIOS, select default settings, save and exit. In IBM-speak this called initializing the BIOS. Then go back in and disable (or hide) devices you will not be using (like modem, IR, BT, etc.). Save and reboot. Maybe Windows will re-sort memory mappings, IRQs, etc

Close lid and lightly touch it. Let the machine know that you love it. Reveal ball peen hammer, let it know that you believe in tough love. Set the ground rules - its important that it understands your expectations

Thanks for the advice. I disabled the Wireless Network device in the BIOS - which lead me directly to the problem. Once I disabled the device, the machine booted up in less than a minute (fully!). The actual culprit was a driver conflict with a PCMCIA Wireless Network device I had installed some time ago. Even though the device wasn't plugged in, it was causing the delay. Removing the driver resolved the problem. No conflict (yellow ! mark) showed up in the hardware settings though..At some point, I'll see if they have an updated driver, but for now, I'm just happy to have a machine that is booting up quickly!

Chris.

You could also try the BootVis utility. You can use it so you can see which drivers loads etc. etc.

I don't know of you can still download it from the microsoft site. It is a fairly old tool (2002 or something) but it gives an excellent insight in which driver is loading at what moment.

You can download it here.

Give it a try, maybe it helps? I use it often when I don't know what my normal desktop computer is doing during startup.


Maybe you also could do a defrag of you harddrive?

nice to see you got it working well. if this happens to me ill keep in mind driver confilcts.

Thanks for the advice. I disabled the Wireless Network device in the BIOS - which lead me directly to the problem. Once I disabled the device, the machine booted up in less than a minute (fully!). The actual culprit was a driver conflict with a PCMCIA Wireless Network device I had installed some time ago. Even though the device wasn't plugged in, it was causing the delay. Removing the driver resolved the problem. No conflict (yellow ! mark) showed up in the hardware settings though..

I suspect that had you plugged in the wireless device you probably would have seen the (!) indication

rvacha wrote:

I suspect that had you plugged in the wireless device you probably would have seen the (!) indication

I wish That would have made it too easy! Thanks, Chris.