Thinkpads Forum

Proteus wrote:Well, my system is finally stable now. With 4GB on the T61p, I have no problems playing FSX, Tabula Rasa, and other games.

The key?
1) Turbo memory is utterly broken with the obsolete drivers (v1004) on the Lenovo website. Download the latest drivers from Intel (v1013). These also have the benefit of making a NOTICABLE improvement in response time. Lockups, and bluescreens go away..with one unrelated exception in #3.

2) Obtain, by any means necessary, Vista SP1. Its a release candidate now, but makes a huge difference in stability, and performance.

3) Don't use the middle mouse button to scroll. For some reason, it appears that the trackpoint driver likes to crash when using the middle mouse button to scroll while a web page is rendering. Symptoms are trackpoint stops working, but you can still move the pointer with the trackpad. Unfortunately system starts degrading heavily at that point and eventually crashes.

4) Use the 156.66 nvidia drivers from Windows Update. The old 101.45 drivers from Lenovo are seriously backlevel and will crash with many games. Do NOT use the laptopvideo2go drivers, they are NOT designed for Nvidia mobile processors.

Lenovo MUST provide timely driver updates to prevent this happening in the future.

I am still having 3D problems despite following your key points:

1. I don't have any Intel Turbo Memory installed at all.

2. I am using XP SP2.

3. I have the trackpoint disabled, since it's pretty much useless to me.

4. I am using the latest nVidia video driver 156.80. I have used 156.66, 3D apps and games still crash.

So to sum it all up, your key points does not solve my graphic problem with the T61p.

As someone said earlier, I am also not going to settle for one DIMM slot not working since I paid a lot of money for my T61p.

I spoke to my Lenovo corporate rep. He did some research and said the SERV team knows of these postings, but they have been unable to recreate this issue in-house in the lab. He did not have any details about what steps the lab took, but we both assume they are trying to recreate what people here have posted.

They did say they will continue to research this, they take it very seriously.

jhrain, thank you for your information and help. And I do appreciate that Lenovo is taking the steps to have this resolved. Even though I bought this machine for myself, the company I work for is a big customer of Lenovo, and we regularly purchase thinkpad for crews in the field, reliability is one of the big selling points for lenovo, which used to be IBM. I happened to be the one that decide which invoice gets paid. We haven't encounter problem like this before. As a result, I would like to wait and see what happens next. I will keep this as a personal matter, after all, it's my personal machine that's having problems and I won't let that affect the corporate relationship. But it's certainly a unpleasant experience for anyone or anyone that will be hearing about it.

I think it's pretty easy to recreate the crash/shut down. My machine has 4G RAM and just run any 3D intensive application for a period of time will cause it either crash to desktop or power off. The time it tooks differ from application to application depending on its toll on the system. However, 3DMark06 is the fastest and pretty reliable in reproducing the symptons, I haven't be able to pass the first stage of the test yet.

Again, I think probems do occur from time to time, it's how you handle them that separate good services from the bad ones.

SnakeJW wrote:jhrain, thank you for your information and help. And I do appreciate that Lenovo is taking the steps to have this resolved. Even though I bought this machine for myself, the company I work for is a big customer of Lenovo, and we regularly purchase thinkpad for crews in the field, reliability is one of the big selling points for lenovo, which used to be IBM. I happened to be the one that decide which invoice gets paid. We haven't encounter problem like this before. As a result, I would like to wait and see what happens next. I will keep this as a personal matter, after all, it's my personal machine that's having problems and I won't let that affect the corporate relationship. But it's certainly a unpleasant experience for anyone or anyone that will be hearing about it.

I think it's pretty easy to recreate the crash/shut down. My machine has 4G RAM and just run any 3D intensive application for a period of time will cause it either crash to desktop or power off. The time it tooks differ from application to application depending on its toll on the system. However, 3DMark06 is the fastest and pretty reliable in reproducing the symptons, I haven't be able to pass the first stage of the test yet.

Again, I think probems do occur from time to time, it's how you handle them that separate good services from the bad ones.

It depends, maybe the new T61p motherboards that they have at the labs do not carry the 3D graphics and memory problem

Well, like I said before. I have searched some other forums and it seems to me that a lot of users are having the same problem especially those that play games. So I'm sure by now they have received enough service calls. They can just use one of the returned PCs to recreate the crash again and find out what the real problem is. If it's the batch of motherboards that's having problem, a recall should be made.

What is a definitive way to find out if I have this issue or not? I'm not a hardcore gamer (FlightSimulator is what does it for me) but to give my graphics card a workout I downloaded the demo for Bioshock and ran that, which ran with some glitches (flickering in the game) and the only thing I noticed is that the right side of the keyboard got warm to the touch.

Other than that, I didn't experience a CTD or BSOD or reboot. Does someone have a guide to reproduce the problem? Maybe this would help engineers in Lenovo diagnose the issue because it seems right now there is no guaranteed way to trigger it?

The machine I am testing it on is the T61p (specs in my sig).

generalsu wrote:

SnakeJW wrote:jhrain, thank you for your information and help. And I do appreciate that Lenovo is taking the steps to have this resolved. Even though I bought this machine for myself, the company I work for is a big customer of Lenovo, and we regularly purchase thinkpad for crews in the field, reliability is one of the big selling points for lenovo, which used to be IBM. I happened to be the one that decide which invoice gets paid. We haven't encounter problem like this before. As a result, I would like to wait and see what happens next. I will keep this as a personal matter, after all, it's my personal machine that's having problems and I won't let that affect the corporate relationship. But it's certainly a unpleasant experience for anyone or anyone that will be hearing about it.

I think it's pretty easy to recreate the crash/shut down. My machine has 4G RAM and just run any 3D intensive application for a period of time will cause it either crash to desktop or power off. The time it tooks differ from application to application depending on its toll on the system. However, 3DMark06 is the fastest and pretty reliable in reproducing the symptons, I haven't be able to pass the first stage of the test yet.

Again, I think probems do occur from time to time, it's how you handle them that separate good services from the bad ones.

It depends, maybe the new T61p motherboards that they have at the labs do not carry the 3D graphics and memory problem

The BurnInTest is more effective of a 3D test than 3DMark06.

burhan wrote:What is a definitive way to find out if I have this issue or not? I'm not a hardcore gamer (FlightSimulator is what does it for me) but to give my graphics card a workout I downloaded the demo for Bioshock and ran that, which ran with some glitches (flickering in the game) and the only thing I noticed is that the right side of the keyboard got warm to the touch.

Other than that, I didn't experience a CTD or BSOD or reboot. Does someone have a guide to reproduce the problem? Maybe this would help engineers in Lenovo diagnose the issue because it seems right now there is no guaranteed way to trigger it?

The machine I am testing it on is the T61p (specs in my sig).

Looks like we have the same configuaration except I had the 32-bit vista installed. From my experience, the heavier the toll on the system, the faster it crash. Some of my friends think it's the overheating problem. To test that, I let it sit overnight, turn it on, and go to any 3D programs, such as 3dmark, C&C3, within minutes, it crashes again. So overheating is ruled out. This is somewhat like fixing your car, you have this problem that comes and goes, the shop insists to see what the problem is when it happens.

oh well, I tried to find that burnintest everyone is talking about, but I have to pay before I download it and it costs 35 big bucks, so i gave up.

Anyone has an idea what we should do now? Send our machine in for repairs or just sit and cross the fingers hoping Lenovo will come up with something?

SnakeJW wrote:Some of my friends think it's the overheating problem. To test that, I let it sit overnight, turn it on, and go to any 3D programs, such as 3dmark, C&C3, within minutes, it crashes again. So overheating is ruled out.

I don't see how overheating is ruled out by your test above. Instead it seems to imply that overheating is likely the cause. If you run Notebook Hardware Control you should be able to monitor the temperatures and see if it shuts down on temperaure. I found out my T42 shuts down when the CPU reaches 91 deg. C.

I wouldn't know about XP..its a crappy OS and I haven't run it since WS2003 came out...about 4 years now.

All my troubleshooting was on Vista x64..which now works great. Does the T61p even have a full set of XP drivers? I was under the distinct impression that the system was designed from the ground up for Vista....

eom...

GomJabbar wrote:

SnakeJW wrote:Some of my friends think it's the overheating problem. To test that, I let it sit overnight, turn it on, and go to any 3D programs, such as 3dmark, C&C3, within minutes, it crashes again. So overheating is ruled out.

I don't see how overheating is ruled out by your test above. Instead it seems to imply that overheating is likely the cause. If you run Notebook Hardware Control you should be able to monitor the temperatures and see if it shuts down on temperaure. I found out my T42 shuts down when the CPU reaches 91 deg. C.

My machine never goes beyond 75C and with 2 SO-DIMMs 3D games crashes. For the particular problem we are talking about, overheating is definitely not the issue.

SnakeJW wrote:oh well, I tried to find that burnintest everyone is talking about, but I have to pay before I download it and it costs 35 big bucks, so i gave up.

You don't need to pay to do the 3D test with BurnInTest.

SnakeJW wrote:Anyone has an idea what we should do now? Send our machine in for repairs or just sit and cross the fingers hoping Lenovo will come up with something?

Well what's the points of sending it in when Lenovo doesn't even have a solution to your problem? Unless you prefer waiting a month or two for your machine to be repaired.

Proteus wrote:I wouldn't know about XP..its a crappy OS and I haven't run it since WS2003 came out...about 4 years now.

All my troubleshooting was on Vista x64..which now works great. Does the T61p even have a full set of XP drivers? I was under the distinct impression that the system was designed from the ground up for Vista....

I run Win XP and I have the full set of working drivers from Lenovo. If you want a crappy OS, run any version of Vista.

generalsu wrote:My machine never goes beyond 75C and with 2 SO-DIMMs 3D games crashes. For the particular problem we are talking about, overheating is definitely not the issue.

Ok, I have not been following this thread. I was only responding to that particular comment. If the machine suddenly shutsdown without warning, then it could be a heating issue. A crash could mean freeze or shutdown, depending on how one might interpret that word.

I don't have much to contribute to this thread. I've not had freeze ups and I have probably not run the right software. I have run screen checking software through PCWizard.

On November 10th, 2007 I set up Vista Ultimate x64 on my T61p using a clean install from a brand new 7K200 drive any Vista Anytime Upgrade x64 dvd.

When I got to installing an Intel Turbo Memory driver, at first I chose the one then published on the Intel site. This repeatedly brought me to BSOD on every reboot. Bummer! Then I got to a "last known good installation" install, uninstalled it, and installed 7kin14ww.exe from the Lenovo site and that worked. I'm still using that driver.

Barry

GeneralSu...Since you like obsolete operating systems, I've got a nice T41 to sell you. XP simply cannot take full advantage of the newer Thinkpads. Vista SP1 is far, far better than XP ever was.

Heck, even Windows Server 2003 is significantly better than XP as a desktop OS. But enough holy wars...

The Intel turbomem driver to use is 1013. Intel had 1010, and 1011 on their site for a while, but those had significant problems. Also note that Turbomem itself barely works, unless you run SP1.

So again, the key is:
SP1, Intel Turbomem, latest drivers from Windows update. All above tested with x64.

Note that there *may* be a problem with some planar boards and 4GB memory in the system, I just haven't seen it on mine.

Proteus wrote:
SP1 RC has been flawless.

orly? http://it.slashdot.org/it/07/11/23/1710245.shtml

Proteus wrote:
The problem occured more frequently prior to SP1..and actually occured MORE often on Firefox than in IE. Note that the problem only occurs when scrolling using the trackpoint middle mouse button, not when using the scroll bar. Also, its highly intermittent.

never crashed for me..


Well I very much doubt that this problem is in any way related to the OS or Turbo Memory since I don't even have Turbo Memory in my TP plus I have experienced the same issues on Linux equally as on Windows.


I would agree on seeing Vista as a "solution" (more like a workaround..) to the problem if and only if the T61P was marketed with ONLY Vista but not with XP as preinstalled OS. It is, however, and therefore I expect that it works and I do not accept a different OS as a fix.

Btw, I'm not getting Vista near any of my machines until a stable release of SP 1 is out, that also fixes the issues mentioned in the slashdot link above.

Well, I'm sad to report that I have now seen my first BSOD in many years.

I'm not sure what was the problem -- but the error came from directx.

What triggered it? I don't have a clue -- here is what I was doing:

1. Working online (using some java apps) 3 hours
2. 40 minute flight in FS2004 at max resolution full screen
3. 1 hour of crysis demo (ran out of ammo and got stuck) -- at this point the laptop was very warm on the right hand side.
4. Got absorbed in the Bioshock demo ... was going along smoothly then it just quit with BSOD. Of course by now, the temperature was too hot to touch.

So, am I sending my T61P in? Nope -- as I don't believe this is a hardware issue. I really think this is a driver problem -- somewhere between Vista + nVidia + DirectX; as the system has been used very heavily for the past three days (near constant on state), and during that time I have been doing all sorts of things -- games, development, installation, etc. so if it were a hardware issue, I think it would have cropped up by now -- especially if its the memory controller as many speculate. The controller would have already bonked out (at one point my system was using 98% of memory).

One thing to note -- I was running the 64bit build of crysis -- no issues (except for the heat, but that's expected) -- bioshock is 32 bit only, so that throws another variable into the equation.

I'll give my machine the burn-in test to see if that sheds any clues, although I doubt that it will.

I will run some tests in Linux to rule out the OS, if its a hardware problem it will manifest in Linux; although I can't imagine doing anything graphics intensive in Linux ... any ideas?

when i ordered my t61p i got it with 1 gig of ram. i have windows xp pro on it. i can run all the games i want. like i can run crysis at 1024x768 with medium settings and get hardly anylag. but when i check to see how much ram i'm using it was around 1.3 gig's so i decided to upgrade my ram. i bought a PNY 1 gig chip. thats when all the problems started.

computer freezes up during the intro. i have tried 4 different chips in it and all with the same results. it dose not matter if its the chip that came with the laptop or if its one of the new one's as long as there is only one ram chip in my computer i have no problems. 2 of them and this hole mess..

anyways i hope this helps. and i hope we can figure out a way around this one.

Proteus wrote:GeneralSu...Since you like obsolete operating systems, I've got a nice T41 to sell you. XP simply cannot take full advantage of the newer Thinkpads. Vista SP1 is far, far better than XP ever was.

Heck, even Windows Server 2003 is significantly better than XP as a desktop OS. But enough holy wars...

The Intel turbomem driver to use is 1013. Intel had 1010, and 1011 on their site for a while, but those had significant problems. Also note that Turbomem itself barely works, unless you run SP1.

So again, the key is:
SP1, Intel Turbomem, latest drivers from Windows update. All above tested with x64.

Note that there *may* be a problem with some planar boards and 4GB memory in the system, I just haven't seen it on mine.

So you call XP obsolete? Dude, XP Service Pack 3 is coming out soon. If XP was obsolete, it would not be supported anymore and no more patches and updates will be released for XP. As far as November 2007, I still see updates and patches to XP. If I like obsolete OSes, I'd use Windows 95 or better yet 3.1.

As for Vista, it's a bloated OS, runs slower than XP with annoying security features and what's more? Vista offers nothing new that I use on a daily basis. For your note, I run some of the most cutting edge tehnologies on XP without a problem, so I don't know what you are talking about when you say XP is obsolete. Last but not least, XP is still used by 90% percent of the computer world.

On the other hand, if you prefer a bloated system, with annoying genuine and security checks, broken drivers and incompatibility issues, then continue with your Vista. Also for your note, Vista SP1 is not even out in final release. Keep The T41 for yourself.

@ Proteus and generalsu:

stop your bickering.   this is off-topic of the original discussion.

LOL first.

I think i'm gonna try a recovery first to see if it works.

ya know i do have a T41p
also a R51
and this my new one t61p.

and when i bought it it came with xp pro sp2. so ibm dose still support it. but vista is just a waist of system resources. when i tried vista i did not like it. it was uncomputable with a lot of the soft ware that i still use.

and back to the topic. my friend has an IBM z6om that is having the same problem that mine is having. if one ram chip is in it it works just fine. when you put another in it the computer bogs down and freazes up quite often.
i talked with ibm support last night and they told me the other brands of ram such as Kingston and pny and such are not compatible with these ibm's witch i can not see why.

as far as i can tell its a hardware issue. since my friends z60m with a single core possessor and all that is still doing the same thing that our's is doing.

and what i mean by them freezing up is in game play. and high memory usage programs. mostly in games though.

Nope, reinstall is not helping the problem but a waste of time. And I'm using Lenovo stock RAMS. So even if you use their so-called "compatible" RAM, the problem still persists.

Now my friends are laughing at me, who spent 3200+ USD on a laptop like this. Frustrating.

snake try and take one of your ram chips out. i will bet money on it that everything will work just fine once you do that.

Can one run BurnInTest 3D Test with intel graphics? Even after installing Directx 9.0c I don't see the 3D Test being available.

I am trying to see if the graphics chip makes a difference to the issue everyone is having. I have a T61 with 2 symmetric DDR2 modules. It passed Final Fantasy XI benchmark 3 high resolution without error though.