T60 Startup Freeze - Explorer.exe just stops responding

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rubb3rtoe · #31 Post by **rubb3rtoe** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 8:49 am

Another update. I removed the latest TVT power manager application version 1.17 and so far so good, hasnt locked up.

ericvn · #32 Post by **ericvn** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 7:05 pm

I went back to the prior BIOS version and went to the prior Power Manager (1.16) and I still see the hang.

ericvn · #33 Post by **ericvn** » Thu Oct 04, 2007 8:53 pm

Still failing on a ThnkPad restart.

I think I have gone back driver levels on nearly all the recent changes I made. Beside the BIOS and Power Manager changes above, I went back a level or removed the following:

XP Q918837
XP Q923293
XP Q910728
XP Q8889816
UltraNav
Wireless drivers

I am running out of things to try.

rubb3rtoe · #34 Post by **rubb3rtoe** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:01 am

I wonder if you remove Power Manager if it would help. So far after two days of rebooting over and over it hasnt locked up on me after I removed it.

#35 Post by **Harryc** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:57 am

I uninstalled 'system update' and installed 'software installer' a couple of days ago, haven't seen the problem since.

jcmagna · #36 Post by **jcmagna** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 2:57 pm

same issue with a t43 (w4p). My kid was really impressed how, when he came home from college ... we updated his t43 with lenovo and the machine turns into a slug. It got worse as when it started failing after multiple reboots, I think some file got corrupted. Tried to get system restore to work and that crapped out too. The downward spiral occurred at college .. so the machine came back to me ... got another drive with XP... did the 78 critical usoft updates ...ran great. Did the Lenovo updates and the explorer hang reappears at which time the association with Lenovo update was realized.

I sent the instructions for the update removal ... I'll update with results once the are in.

ericvn · #37 Post by **ericvn** » Fri Oct 05, 2007 8:52 pm

I don't necessarily want to point the finger at Access Connections but I did remove it last night and haven't had a failure since. It certainly could be some interaction between the newer drivers.

Eric VN

tockki · #38 Post by **tockki** » Tue Oct 09, 2007 8:59 am

Hello... I have a T60 2.0. I had the same exact problem as the original poster in the every 3~4 boots, the XP would load up and freeze with the "hour glass" showing when put on the task bar. I would then reboot it and it would be fine...

I isolated the problem to be in the power management program.. for some reason the "power manager gauge bar" would not load and stall the booting process. So I disabled "power manager gauge bar in task bar" via the options. Ever since I had never had a stall...

Recently there have been a couple of updates from Lenovo... I don't know what did it but the "gauge bar" does not cause the computer to stall anymore... So if there are still some of you with the problem, try to disable the gauge bar from showing in the task bar & update your system...

MikeManley · #39 Post by **MikeManley** » Wed Oct 10, 2007 2:39 pm

Have you considered upgrading (or have you) upgraded Power Manager?

ericvn · #40 Post by **ericvn** » Thu Oct 11, 2007 9:20 pm

Well, I went just about a week with no hangs at startup. I reinstalled Access Connections and am seeing the hang again in less than a day, so I suspect that Access Connections is partly related to the problem. I have now disabled the Power manager in the taskbar (but still installed) and will see if that helps.

Eric VN

Law · #41 Post by **Law** » Fri Oct 12, 2007 2:14 pm

Well this thread got pretty big. So I have had a few users close the power manager battery gauge and I'm having them let me know if it resolves the issue. Hopefully this is the problem as it is really something we can do without! *crosses fingers*

jcmagna · #42 Post by **jcmagna** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 7:53 am

Update to previous post - removed update connector - no more hangs.

ericvn · #43 Post by **ericvn** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 8:30 am

ericvn wrote:Well, I went just about a week with no hangs at startup. I reinstalled Access Connections and am seeing the hang again in less than a day, so I suspect that Access Connections is partly related to the problem. I have now disabled the Power manager in the taskbar (but still installed) and will see if that helps.

Eric VN

I have now run with the Power Manager still installed, but not in the task bar and have not seen hang. I see there is a newer version of the Power Manager available. I may try that to see if there is a fix, but removing the charging/battery percentage from the task bar seems to have fixed the problem for me. Access Connections is still loaded.

Eric VN

tockki · #44 Post by **tockki** » Wed Oct 17, 2007 12:14 pm

I have two t60 thinkpads... taking the power gauge bar from showing on the task bar does indeed stop the freeze upon boot (even though I didn't erase the power management program)... it seems that the sequence on which updates are booted makes some t60s hang and others don't. I guess that is why one of my t60s hang and the other doesn't. I hoped that the newer version would fix the hang but it hasn't solved the problem for me.

Not havin the gauge bar shown is a bit of a pain but at least the comp doesn't hang anymore.

Zaxx92 · #45 Post by **Zaxx92** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 5:15 pm

I have had a number of T43's here with the same issue running XPSP2. I've thought it to be an issue with something around System Update and / or something System Update has been installing. I'm going to uninstall System Update and give it a try and see how it goes from there.

Thanks,

-Zac

WilsonF wrote:I had the same problem on a t43 running XPSP2 and solved it by uninstalling ThinkVantage System Update, which is the app to which TVTSCHED.EXE belongs. Although I can't be sure, I think that System Update was looking for a network connection before Access Connections authenticated the system to the WiFi network, and System Update wouldn't let anything else have any resources until it was "satisfied."

Thankfully, I haven't had the problem on any of the other TPs. It may be a problem with a recent upgrade to System Update.

I had a very difficult time getting task manager to run during the hang so I could see what was using all the CPU time.

NewOrder1975 · #46 Post by **NewOrder1975** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:45 pm

I work for a large company and we just rolled out several hundred T61 laptops. We are seeing this issue on many laptops, even my own. We removed the following, and the issue seemed to improve, but still persists. Does any one have an update or fix since this forum seems to be abandoned?

IBM Software Removal
Access Help
Help Center
Productivity Center
Ultranav
ThankVantage Access Connections
ThinkVantage Active Protection
ThinkVantage Productivity Center
ThinkVantage System Update

#47 Post by **Johan** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:13 pm

Welcome to the forum - "big user"!

NewOrder1975 wrote:I work for a large company and we just rolled out several hundred T61 laptops. We are seeing this issue on many laptops, even my own.

<snip>

What exactly (of all the above!) do you refer to by "we are seeing this issue"?

This official Lenovo fix/patch might be of your interest: Scheduler patch to fix the tvtsched.exe hold 99% CPU issue.

Best regards,

Johan

NewOrder1975 · #48 Post by **NewOrder1975** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:27 pm

Thanks for the reply. Specifically, the task manager will report that Explorer.exe is not responding after logging into the computer. The first sign that this has occurred is that not all of the tray icons load, and the mouse turns into an arrow/hourglass when hovering over the taskbar. We go into task manager and find Explorer.exe not responding. If we end task and start it again, it works fine. This happens at different points during login, and does not happen all the time. I saw a few posts that looked interesting such as having the power manager on the task bar. I removed system update so I do not think the issue is related to tvtupdate. Maybe EasyEject? Any ideas?

ericvn · #49 Post by **ericvn** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:55 pm

I'd try removing Power Manager (or at least set it to not be in the System tray).

Eric VN

NewOrder1975 · #50 Post by **NewOrder1975** » Mon Feb 25, 2008 9:36 am

Thank you for the suggestion. Thinking back, this issue where the Explorer.exe locks up intermittenly on boot seemed to disappear when I turned off the Battery Gauge in the task bar for the past few months.

I did more research on the suggestion to remove the Power Manager utiliity, but knowing the users at my company, they probably wanted to keep it. I looked on the Lenovo website for updates for Power Manager. I found that 1.22 was the latest, and I was running 1.16. The release notes indicated that in version 1.18, intermmittent system hang during startup was fixed.

I installed version 1.18, and I have not seen the problem for a few days, and in fact, my entire system seems to perform a bit better. I will paste a link to the release notes below, along with a pasted from the site.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62935

Version 1.22
(New) Update predefined power scheme
Add video playback power scheme

Version 1.19
(Fix) Power Manager fails to update when Active Protection System is updated simultaneously by System Update.
(Fix) Lower Display Brightness function does not work.

Version 1.18
(Fix) Intermittent system hang during startup.

Version 1.17
(New) Store battery charge threshold respectively for each batteries.
(New) Add registry option to hide all entry points to Internet.
(Fix) Long installation time when both Power Manager and Access Connections are installed simultaneously

Version 1.16
(New) Added new feature of enabling/disabling "CPU Deeper Sleep."
(Fix) Updated battery error messages.
(Fix) Corrected inaccurate "Effect of settings" graph.
(Fix) Corrected inaccurate LCD refresh rate control feature.
(Fix) Corrected wireless radio setting of Battery Stretch in Windows 2000.

jaydenop · #51 Post by **jaydenop** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 11:49 am

I know this thread is very old but I work for a company where we image and distribute a lot of these same type of machines and they all have this same problem. I have tried many things and nothing seems to work. I have noticed that it only happens to users who are directly connected to the domain. Bios, Driver and Service pack updates have not done the trick.

Please let me know if anyone found a definite solution.

NewOrder1975 · #52 Post by **NewOrder1975** » Tue Jul 21, 2009 7:49 pm

The solution for our organization was to upgrade Power Manager, as there was a known issue in one of the older releases. It seemed to affect T61, T60, and the T40 series.

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