T60 'freeze'

[Bagels4All]

The other common factor of every single failure is that I always have RealPlayer audio streaming in the background.

Yeah, CPU-intensive or multimedia stuff
seems to make it happen.

[green baron]

Back on 1-Jul-07 (one week ago) I installed Microsoft KB936357 hotfix to see the effect on the lost cursors/black screens I was experiencing.

After one week with no occurrences, I've tentatively concluded that KB936357 did the trick....

I installed this patch and also disbale 'turn off monitor' option and I have not have a problem since !

[halladar]

I have been experiencing the random freezing of my T60 regardless of it being docked, having been docked or undocked. I cannot find any pattern or specific event that occurs before it happens. I have tried all the suggestions from these forums and either I already have the updates or they do not apply to my system. I replaced the hard drive, memory and CD drive. I finally sent it in to Lenovo for warranty service after describing that my problem is completely random and is simply a hard lockup with no errors, bluescreens etc. PC Doctor returned no errors along with several other diag apps that we have floating around our IT office. I had a gut feeling that this is either heat, CPU, or planar board related and figured they could diagnose or simply replace those items. I get it back saying they replaced the hard drive. Great, but the hard drive that I was using in the problem T60 is actually in a spare T60 that is not locking up. Upon calling Lenovo to find out what they did and why they explained they were servicing my machine for blue screens. I explained to them that I never once told them nor did I ever have bluescreens but after getting transferred to 4 or 5 people then finally on hold for 20 mins I had more productive things to do.

I guess I am hoping someone will find a solution for those of us that are having this issue or at least point us to a solution if I've missed it somehow.

I guess for now I will get back with Lenovo to try and fight them to at least just try replacing the planar board and CPU to see if the issues go away. I just don't know what else to do other than live with it.

[wxxiong]

My T60 has not freezed either hard or soft for almost 7 days now.
In summary for what I did to my T60 for those impatient:

1. Installed hot fix KB936357 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936357
- this hotfix makes some difference, no hard freeze (nothing-moves type freeze), however, still soft freeze(mouse-still-moves but system busy forever type)

2. Installed hot fix KB896256
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256
- not sure whether this makes any difference

3. Togather with step 2, I also tried the hot fix KB834631
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834631
- I believe THIS IS THE FINAL FIX (explains below)

4. I turned off Ethernet driver "Smart Deep Sleep" mode. (This may not be necessary now, still need to be tried later)

The kB936357 - About 2 weeks ago, I installed the hot fix KB936357. After the install, I did not recall that I saw any more the hard freeze type that I always saw before, I mean the type that suddenly everything freezes on my T60 (mosue not moving) after resume from standby, but still sees the screen.
However, my T60's hard freeze seemed changed to soft freeze, that is, when it resumed from standby, some times the mouse is in hour glass forever indicating something is busy. Some times I could still bring up task manager to see all processes but no one shows busy except idle process. Some time taks manager even can not showed up and everything freezes except I could still move the mouse.

Then after couple days, I installed both KB896256 and applied KB834631. After I tried this, now my T60 doesn't have any freeze for about 7 days now. During these 7 days, I heavily and repeatedly used it docked, undocked, bring it to different WiFi areas, standby/resume many many times. I have not rebooted the machine for 6 days. It is a major breakthrough for me since my T60 previously could not survive this type of usage for more than 2 days.
The reason I believe KB834631 is the final fix is that this hot fix works around a case the ACPI driver may generating a storm of interrupts that makes the laptop hang. That closely matches the symptom of my soft freeze after resume from standby - the system is busy with mouse in hour glass but none of the processes is really busy so that the explanation could be that it is in some kind of interrupt process. The interesting observation I had after I applied the KB834631 is that once in a while, after I resume from standby, I still experiencing mouse in hour glass for long time. However, now the difference is that if I wait patiently for about 10~15 seconds, everything did come back normally. It seems like it now can bail out of the interrupt storm eventually instead of stuck in an infinite loop drawned by the interrupt storm.

One WARNING I should point out is that after I applied the KB834631 and rebooted machine, I tried 3 or 4 times of standby/resume, then my T60 suddenly gives one blue screen with "DRIVER_IRQ_NOT_LESS..." type. Then it reboots itself. Since that reboot from last Tuesday, I did not see that blue screen anymore and no freezes too.

Not yet concluded whether the blue screen is just the driver not intialized properly after the registry change, just want to share the hot fixes with others to see if they can change any other T60's life style.

[brodrigues]

I'm rolling out 12 ThinkPad T60s at my company and every one is soft freezing. After logging in the icons appear, system tray icons begin to load, then everything stops. You can move the cursor to the taskbar but it turns to an hourglass and you can't click anything. I open the task manager and logoff and then a dialog box appears saying explorer.exe is ending. After I click end now I get back to the login screen. I login and everything starts fine. This problem is very random. It happens 2 out of 10 startups.

I have hotfixes KB936357 and KB896256 installed. I emailed Microsoft for the hot fix KB834631 and they said it wasn't available.

This is driving me crazy. All I've been doing is installing Microsoft and IBM updates and simple software that I put on all my ThinkPads, T43 and T42 included. I've never had this problem before.

wxxiong can you provide me with that KB834631 hot fix since I can't get it from Microsoft?

Thanks

[powpow]

The other common factor of every single failure is that I always have RealPlayer audio streaming in the background.

Yeah, CPU-intensive or multimedia stuff
seems to make it happen.

Add me to the list of freezing and BSOD folks.

I've been watching it freeze after I haven't touched it for over 20 minutes while streaming music (Pandora in IE6).
I've got a T60, maybe 4 months old.
Came with 1 GB RAM, added another 1 GB (but I think it did this before).
Another suspect is a Sprint Merlin S620 card. If I bump the card accidentally I'll get a BSOD - although different message. Also, I had a hard time setting it up, and sometimes it goes unrecognized by the system (when it gets re-recognized it crashes). I mention this because the guy above said something about PC cards I believe.
I don't dock/undock. However, I plug in and remove external monitors quite often without shutting down or changing display settings. I also carry the thing around while running and drive around with it on (disabled the APS a while ago but I don't think that helped).

Just adding some data to the mix...

Good luck all.

[wxxiong]

I'm rolling out 12 ThinkPad T60s at my company and every one is soft freezing. After logging in the icons appear, system tray icons begin to load, then everything stops. You can move the cursor to the taskbar but it turns to an hourglass and you can't click anything. I open the task manager and logoff and then a dialog box appears saying explorer.exe is ending. After I click end now I get back to the login screen. I login and everything starts fine. This problem is very random. It happens 2 out of 10 startups.

I have hotfixes KB936357 and KB896256 installed. I emailed Microsoft for the hot fix KB834631 and they said it wasn't available.

This is driving me crazy. All I've been doing is installing Microsoft and IBM updates and simple software that I put on all my ThinkPads, T43 and T42 included. I've never had this problem before.

wxxiong can you provide me with that KB834631 hot fix since I can't get it from Microsoft?

Thanks

KB834631 does not have a download. It is a registry change. You just need to follow the instructions on the web page to change one registry value and reboot your machine.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834631

[Steerpike]

I'm rolling out 12 ThinkPad T60s at my company and every one is soft freezing. After logging in the icons appear, system tray icons begin to load, then everything stops. You can move the cursor to the taskbar but it turns to an hourglass and you can't click anything. I open the task manager and logoff and then a dialog box appears saying explorer.exe is ending. After I click end now I get back to the login screen. I login and everything starts fine. This problem is very random. It happens 2 out of 10 startups.

I have hotfixes KB936357 and KB896256 installed. I emailed Microsoft for the hot fix KB834631 and they said it wasn't available.

This is driving me crazy. All I've been doing is installing Microsoft and IBM updates and simple software that I put on all my ThinkPads, T43 and T42 included. I've never had this problem before.

While I feel your pain, and applying the patches referred to in this thread should not hurt, your problem does seem different. Your mouse continues to move, correct, and does respond to ctrl-alt-del.

KB834631 does not have a download. It is a registry change. You just need to follow the instructions on the web page to change one registry value and reboot your machine.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834631

That is one badly written kb article! the server version does have a patch you can request, and in the xp section, they first say apply latest service pack (obviously for good measure!); they could say, apply the latest service pack then make the registry change found under 'more information' below!

Anyway - I'm going to apply this and see how it goes - I'm STILL having the freeze problem, always undocked, usually many, many hours after undocking while working at home. Usually when not actually using the computer.

[Steerpike]

the file you want is windowsxp-kb923232-v3-x86-enu.exe which you can download here:
http://hotfix.xable.net/download/index. ... 86-ENU.exe

Seems like the 'xable' site has changed to 'thehotfixshare'. Link is now
http://thehotfixshare.net/board/index.p ... oad&id=997

If that fails, go to http://thehotfixshare.net and then search within the site for KB923232-v3-x86-ENU.exe

[zonak]

Hi, I have the same random freeze issue. I just received a notification about a BIOS update. The new version is 1.11. Has anyone yet tried it and does it have an effect on the freeze issue?

[Steerpike]

Having reviewed most of the posts in this thread, here is my summary of hot fixes, for what it's worth (all hot fixes should be available from the new site referred to above) - http://thehotfixshare.net

==============================
The monitor does not turn on when you move the mouse or press any key after you configure the "Power Options" settings on a Windows XP SP2-based portable computer
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/917332

A Windows XP-based computer that is using an Intel dual-core processor may stop responding when you try to resume the computer from standby
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923232

A microcode reliability update is available that improves the reliability of systems that use Intel processors
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936357

An interrupt storm that is generated by the ACPI driver causes a Windows Server 2003-based or a Windows XP-based computer to stop responding
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834631
(Fix is a reg change only on XP)

====================================
I suspect this one is not related to our freeze issue, but maybe worth applying:

Computers that are running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and that are equipped with multiple processors that support processor power management features may experience decreased performance
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256

==============================

There is also talk of the 'deep power save' setting on the ethernet card, but I see several people have made that change with no improvement. I also saw reference to the ATI driver power saving features, but I could not find that setting in my driver.

===============================
I'm going to apply / re-apply all the above and ... once again ... see if it helps! Thanks everyone for the info.

================================
Edit - someone asked for troubleshooting help. Back in January, I wrote a bat file to shutdown just about everything that I deemed not essential. I posted the contents here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=36687 . I'm pretty sure stopping ALL this stuff did not cure the freeze problem - but it did make the laptop more responsive.

[acasto]

This may be bad news since bios and firmware aside, everyone seems to be trying Windows fixes, but I've had it (hard freeze) happen a few times in Linux. It's pretty rare, maybe once every two or three weeks, but it always seems to be when I have music streaming over the internet (through amarok). I've always just assumed it was the normal occasional lockup since I'm running Debian Testing/Unstable, but it sounds pretty similar to what other is describing here. The only other freeze type problems I have found, was a couple time while resuming from suspend, it would just not resume; and a few times while going to suspend, it would just never suspend (little moon keeps blinking). I have two new sticks of ram that should be here tomorrow (gskill cl4 2x 1gb), so I'll see what that does.

Relevant specs are: T60p 2612-CTO, 2GHz Core 2 Duo, 1x 1GB ram, 1x 512MB ram, Intel wireless, advanced docking station.

[Steerpike]

This may be bad news since bios and firmware aside, everyone seems to be trying Windows fixes, but I've had it (hard freeze) happen a few times in Linux.

Interesting. I wonder what exactly the 'microcode reliability update' is. It's applied 'in' windows, but could it be a workaround to a known underlying processor error? Some of the other fixes could also be 'defensive workarounds', rather than fixes, to known hardware errors - maybe. That is, they are not really 'fixes' to a problem found in the code, but rather, a way to try to avoid known underlying issues that can't be fixed in the hardware. Just pure speculation, of course!

... it always seems to be when I have music streaming over the internet

I certainly don't listen to music at all on my laptop, nor have any streaming media of any sort.

Can you elaborate on 'hard freeze'? The freeze that I'm tracking down is the one where the screen remains visible, mouse does not move, and all keyboard lamps remain unresponsive EXCEPT the Fn+PgUP (lamp) and Fn+ScrlLk (NumLock).

[acasto]

I certainly don't listen to music at all on my laptop, nor have any streaming media of any sort.

Someone above mentioned theirs did it while streaming with Realplayer. Perhaps it's just that it is brought out under certain conditions, and since music is quite obvious, it sticks out more in our minds when trying to think of a cause.

Can you elaborate on 'hard freeze'? The freeze that I'm tracking down is the one where the screen remains visible, mouse does not move, and all keyboard lamps remain unresponsive EXCEPT the Fn+PgUP (lamp) and Fn+ScrlLk (NumLock).

Exactly, though I don't know about Numlock, I'll try it next time and see if it works.

[frickea86]

hey guys, new to this forum. I just wanted to give a little insight to what i found with our T60s. We were having freezing once the laptop was undocked from the docking station. Now it wasn't till later we started seeing people having the same freezing problem with no dock. I ended up doing much needed searching that lead me this awesome thread. The Super Power Down option ended up being the culprit in the freezing issue. I was able to get it to freeze every single time i pulled the test t60 off the dock with the power down feature enabled.

Disable the feature and wala, she works great. Now we were also have soft crashes and the above windows hot fixes seem to solve that problem with the ACPI driver and other power management issues.

It seems when the nic card uses that power save feature it acts like the nic card is physically removed and the os freaks out. Hope everyone else gets their problem fixed, i'm just glad we don't have to send back all 180 T60s we bought...lol...again thank you all!!!

[Steerpike]

Well, after applying both the "microcode reliability update", and the "interrupt storm" patch, I was optimistic, and ran for several days without a lock-up. But just this morning, after working un-docked since about 7pm last night, and after the computer sat idle through the night, I picked up the laptop, and hit the 'back' button on a browser session. The browser screen changed, then ... FREEZE !!!!!!

So all my hopes are pinned on the network 'deep power save' setting. So I'll make that change, and see how it goes. Unbelievable!

Edit - "Deep Smart Power Down" is the setting in question; I just set it to 'disabled'. To get there, I went to device manager, then opened up the 'Intel Pro /1000 PL Network Connection; Advanced tab; second setting in the list.

Edit #2 - googling around on this last setting, it seems the setting only applies when running on battery. Can others confirm that this setting makes a difference even when running on AC? I virtually never run on battery at home, and I'd say not one of my many freezes have occurred when running on battery. So if the NIC only goes down when on battery, it would not seem to apply to my situation! Oh well, I've made the change now so let's see what happens. My optimism has dropped a bit, though

[szaffi]

Hi all,

There were two performance fixes made available yesterday by Microsoft. Second one of them looks promising (issues around freezes during video-intensive operations etc.). I'm installing both of them now

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938979

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194

[Steerpike]

So - applied the 'deep smart power down' fix; went to standby at work (docked, ext. monitor, wired LAN); came home, woke from standby undocked, wireless LAN, laptop monitor. Froze about 30 minutes after power up, right in the middle of working. So for me, none of the above are helping! I'm gonna look into my VPN and my video drivers. What a drag!

[Steerpike]

Froze again, right after posting the above message - so things are definitely worse for me!

I've now gone into the video settings and turned off ALL video acceleration. Let's see if that helps.

Darn, this is annoying!

[jcf2007]

It's now been 14 days since my last "disappearing cursor" so I thought I'd report in.

13 days ago I added an Advanced Mini Dock to my setup in order to drive a DVI external monitor. The T60 has stayed docked 100% of the time, so can't comment on the undocking issues reported.

(I do experience the "blinking display" syndrome if the 2nd monitor is enabled but the reported workaround of sleeping/unsleeping the laptop takes care of that.)

The other change I made was to pay closer attention to the mouse. This suggested itself to me since the mouse is always in use when the cursor disappears. My Microsoft USB optical mouse seemed to give a pretty jumpy cursor. I tried out a different mouse for a few days: very smooth motions, no system failures. I've now switched back to the Microsoft but with a very fine-patterned printed paper "mousepad" that yields very smooth cursor motion. As I said, 14 days since the last failure - a record for this T60.

Now before all that, some of the patches seemed to reduce the incidence. My informal theory now is that the faulty mouse created more "windows of opportunity" for the failure. Addressing the mouse problem, together with the patches, may have reduced the failure window to "undetectable" in normal use.

Anyone else, who is experiencing the disappearing cursor lockout, notice abnormal mouse pointer motions in normal use?

[D Thomas]

My T60 is also experiencing almost daily freezes. Core Duo 2.16Ghz, 2GB RAM, ATI Radeon X1400, 100GB HD, XP Pro, OE Symantec products replaced by ZAP, NOD32 & Spy Sweeper.

Unlike other posters I never use suspend or hibernate. The machine is always used in a docking station, most of the time with the lid closed. I use an external monitor, USB keyboard and trackball, all using M$ drivers and an Adaptec SCSI card.

The freezes occur at random, usually with several applications open, while browsing the internet, opening or closing different applications, or shutting down the machine. When the freezes begin, the input devices continue to respond to command and I can move the cursor around the screen, but internet connectivity stops, Task Manager will not run and selecting Restart or Shutdown does nothing.

As the freeze expands the machine stops responding to input device commands and I have to use the power switch to shut it down. The machine starts right back up normally and I run chkdsk /f. No entries in Event Viewer and PC Doctor gives the machine a clean bill of health.

I try to keep as much low memory available by disabling unnecessary services and programs, I don’t believe I’ve inadvertently caused the problem by disabling anything vital. Disk Keeper is run regularly. All M$ critical updates are applied, I installed the BIOS update but haven’t installed the non-critical Lenovo updates as I rarely use the utilities

Can someone please direct me to a list and description of the Lenovo/IBM startup utilities? I’ve left the factory start-up items running and would like to disable or uninstall many of the Lenovo utilities after I learn more about their executables.

I sent the machine in for depot repair 6 months ago, instability problems including BSODs, they replaced a defective memory stick. The machine ran fine for a few months until the regular freezes started.

I’d appreciate any insight you could offer.

[thecount]

Also getting hard freezes in linux. core2duo7200 ati x1400. Never use suspend/hibernate. Happens both in and outside the docking station. At the latest bios level. memtest says the ram is fine. Requires holding power button for 10 seconds to turn off. I cannot correlate the freezes with any specific task, seems completely random. Sometimes happens daily sometimes weekly.

[Atomic Max]

While I was applying MS hotfixes, my T60 C2D T7200 ATI X1400 became more stable. But it still crashes if WiFi connection is enable. Only wired connection saves me from random crashes. Firstly, machine just froze in WiFi mode with a little garbage around mouse cursor or with whole black screen. After several hotfixes from MS, random hangs transformed to BSODs (e. g. "IRQ LESS OR EQUAL..." or "Windows stops to prevent your hardware..."). I thought WiFi card made influence on ATI X1400 videochip, but it was only suspect.
Today after applying KB896256 hotfix I switched to wireless and try to meet a random crash again. After several hours of stable work I decided to change color depth (in "Display properties") from 32bit to 16bit and machine showed BSOD containg following text:
"...The problem seems to be caused by the following file: ati2dvag.
...The device driver got stuck in an infinite loop. This is usually indicates problem with device itself or with the device driver programing the hardware incorrectly..."

[TheTruth]

I was experiencing random lockups and freezes on my T60 (2007-63G) especially during heavy system load (e.g. running Thinkvantage System Update, 3D Gaming). I finally reinstalled Windows XP from scratch. When googling I found this thread and was kind of glad to know, that it seems to be a known problem (Thanks for the moral support everyone!). I tried all of the suggestions in this thread but the problem persisted.

Being desperate I tried several other things and finally removed the extra RAM (original Lenovo!) I bought with the T60: No more lockups!
Some googling gave me a corresponding thread in this forum: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=26326

Summary: When using two RAM sticks of same size, the system will run them in Dual Channel mode. Some combinations of RAM sticks don't seem to run together well. Especially some Micron RAM sticks, which are original Lenovo parts, seems to be known to cause problems. The S/N of these contains "VJ16U" or "JV172".

A post in another forum mentions a recall action for these parts (sorry German only): http://www.thinkpad-forum.de/thread.php?postid=140979

My RAM stick is a VJ16U one. The system passed all diagnostic tests (including Memtest+ etc.), but removing the "defective" RAM stick solved the problem for me.

I'm not sure of only the 2x1GB configuration is problematic, probably other configurations with two modules too. Therefore I'd suggest that you try running on one RAM module only, if you experience lockups.

[smiler]

I have T60 1951-A47 T7200 3GB (1+2GB) mem and have freezes, but only when I go from mains to battery sometimes freezes up exactly when you pull out the power plug, sometimes video corruption, sometimes it reboots itself after a few seconds. It did it this morning, I was even moving the mouse slowly, mouse stops>freeze/hang the instant power cable was removed, then rebooted itself. My T60 has never frozen in normal use.
I did the disable ethernet power off on battery already.
No entry in XP manager event log.
I think it is a thinkvantage power manager issue, I am at the latest level 1.16..or at least reinstall it..

[ShaggyDog]

brodrigues....

I have the same issue as you - did that registry change hotfix work?

[DavidNY]

Both of my T60s freeze (no cursor response, alt-ctrl-del does not work)

Sometimes when rebooting after a freeze, Windows will get to the logo and freeze.

[GomJabbar]

I saw the reference to Real Player above, and I remembered seeing something about this in Microsoft's Knowledgebase.

Performance Is Slow After You Install RealNetworks RealOne Player

[Steve_B]

I recently resolved my problem but it's an inconvenient fix. I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion.

I was not having the random freezes/BSOD problems that some had. My problem was when I undocked, the computer would freeze within a few seconds of coming out of hibernate or resuming from hot undocking. Also, if I tried to boot up outside the docking station, I would have the same problem. So basically, outside the docking station, I was unable to operate at all.

Latest video, BIOS and Intel Pro1000 drivers did nothing for this. When I disable "Deep Smart Power Down" (DSPD) on the PRO1000, that solves the problem and I can now work outside the docking station.

However, with DSPD disabled, when I put the computer back into the docking station (hibernating) the PRO1000 does not find my Ethernet connection. I have to cycle the DSPD from disabled -> enabled to get it to find it again. I then set it back to disabled so that I can use the computer undocked at some point in the future.

This is an inconvenience but not a show-stopper. Does anyone have a way of "waking up" the PRO1000 without having to cycle DSPD?

By the way, there was apparently a problem with power management and the DSPD at some point in the past. Not sure if it's related or not.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-67116

[milstein]

My T60 freezes occasionally in some embarrassing situations too...
I am wondering if it is due to the loose battery