Thinkpads Forum

Just a follow-up to Kaz and to state my overall opinion...

I understand things such as "T60 is a business computer, no need to play on it etc.". In my case, my T60p is the only computer I have and that's a must for me because I'm traveling quite a lot. That together with quite a wide range of my interests (software development, science experiments and articles, recording and mastering music, sometimes a little bit of gaming,...) poses high requirements on "universality" of my laptop. I've had T20 and T30 before. I don't claim there were no problems, but I've never had problems with BSODs or freezes and I could accomplish every task. I bought my T60p one year ago, about one year after its initial release and when T61/p had already been released because I hoped that most serious driver issues of T60/p would be solved by then. So it's now one year later and it doesn't look like that. The video driver problems have not been solved (latest version 8.533 completely unusable for me, last but one freezing...). It's true that two of my colleagues warned me about ATI graphic card drivers but I'm now for one week running the latest version of generic ATI drivers for FireGL (using the modding tool mentioned in this forum) and so far I'm trouble-free, so it's the matter that older driver has been used for latest official Lenovo release. So the only requirement on Lenovo seems to be "take latest ATI drivers, do your stuff on it and release it" but being a software developer too, I understand that it's never that easy.

Altogether, at this moment I'm problem-free (although it would be neat to be able to use Presentation Director ). So if it's like that one year from now, I believe, I will be completely happy with my purchase of T60p. It's a perfect piece of hardware and it's impossible to release completely bug-free software, so anyway, thanks for that. Although there are problems, I still think my next laptop will be Lenovo Thinkpad (if it features a trackpoint, that's obligatory ). Howgh!

I agree the generic drivers are the best - except when you want to use docking with external monitor. Then you won't get the nice behaviour (auto-changing resolutions and switching primary display to the external) Lenovo drivers do.

I was originally happy about the new drivers Lenovo released, and still am sticking with them, because I dock/undock many times a day, but even though the resolution change on lid close isn't a problem by itself, it takes _so long_, that when I need to close/open the lid many times in a row (e.g. when I'm in train and need to use the lid as "desk" for papers I'm writing on), it's really annoying.

Too bad. Except for that all bugs have been polished out over the time.

I have IBM T60 , x1300 video and problem still there with old 82931 driver and last one... display still flickers and notebook freeze after acces video mpg files or internet movies , strange thing only few files types . games works perfect whatever.
You think is that the case of hardware video card problem? I see some problems on forums with video card and need reball

Crossing,
that's strange. Have you checked the driver version in Device Manager so that you're 100% sure that the correct version is in use? As far as I know there hasn't been a single report on "video startup freeze" with 8.293.1 and I would not assume hardware problem since games are ok...

Yes , first time I uninstal ati from add/remove programs then uninstall from device manager- restart laptop - results bad resolution missing driver- install new driver .
very strange keep annoying me with freezing laptop after a few blinkings when acces that video files (mpg movies) and some internet live streaming . I notice that only some files get me this freezing problems. Its not software releated because first time i got this issue i format it hdd and for first check i was happy because no freeze but as i keep installing various aplications,antivirus etc problem get back to me..
Maybe all this is because when i buy it second hand i open it and clean mcu fan ,maybe i misdoing something in video card area....I will reopen it and check again ,i remeber one screw didnt screw to the end and i let it that way,maybe video card its not enough cooled altho i have temperature monitorise and all ok.

Crossing,
again, if games are running OK (I mean 3D intensive games) then I would not expect overheating issues. In this case, if you say that after clean install everything was ok then it's maybe related to some video codec/filter that you install and that is used with the specific video files. You can try some tool (maybe GraphEdit by Microsoft - free, but not so easy to download as Microsoft does not offer it anymore) to check which codecs/filters are used for the troublesome videos and by comparison with working videos or by trial-error you can eliminate these.

Search for gspot and use that instead of graphedit. This will show you the various graphs that can be made for your video, i.e. a video can be decoded using different codecs. So gsphot has ability to show the various ways that it can be done, and in some cases why it can't be done. But for those that it can be done, you also have an option to run the graph, i.e. play the video to see if that particular combination of codecs are causing the problem.

I download it gspot ,installed ,run it -open it file with it ,push ''render'' button and imediatly display starts flickers and stop after rendering.
On video codec info all fields are ''n.a.'' ,file ''mpeg''

betwin ,I use windows media player to play that .mpg movies ,while playing and display flicker movie play sacadate with 1 second pauses .

with graphedit , i open video file with it and only exactly when i select file display flicker fast few times -then file can be played with grahedit and works perfect withaut flicker. but still strange that display flicker when i select that file...
on main graphedit window shows something like that:


22434344.mpg----------mpeg-2 stream AC3 /mpeg-2 demultiplexer --------------xFormIn - PIXELA AC-3 decoder -xFormOut-------direct sound device

-Video in - PIXELA MPEG2 Video Decoder for IMx - VideoOut -------VMR Input/video rendering



All I know is that PIXELA is the ginwine software that come on the Cd with my camera CANON FS100 witch i recorded video files with (records on SD card) ,

I can attach here or someplace one movie to check it,each have abaut 60mb.

Noticed a new ATI Mobility driver is available here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62841

Video driver (ATI Mobility RADEON / FIREGL PCI Express-2) for Windows XP - ThinkPad R60, T60, T60p (20xx, 26xx, 87xx), Z61m, Z61p

Has anyone installed it and demonstrating good performance, especially with old issue in this thread (laptop freeze after video playback - after laptop comes out of standby or hibernate)? Feedback welcome.

I am still on the older 8.293.1.0, 9/13/2006, driver.

Thanks,
Kaz

I can confirm the freezing is not there and the resolution does not change to 1024x768 on lid close, as it did with 8.533. This is almost unbelievable

Zender, thanks, as I pick myself up from the floor from shock of your good results! I believe I will wait for a few more inputs and then go for it. Appreciate the prompt reply.

Zender, thanks for feedback again. Installed the latest driver per my previous posting this afternoon, ran thought my previous battery of tests with video playback before and after standby/hibernate modes in both AC and Battery and could not make my T60 freeze. Like you, I am indeed surprised, but upset that it has taken sooooo long for some focused efforts, especially since Mark from Lenovo communicated to me that they duplicated my crash testing internally. And, I was impressed that this driver was Dell-like, that is, I downloaded the .exe file, ran it, and at the end it initiated the installation automatically. Previously, after running the executable, it would only unpack the files. I would then have to go to the unpack directory and run the setup exe. I chose the Express installation, rebooted when prompted, and everything went very well. I installed this new version on top of my old one.

Hope to hear positive feedback from others as well.

Kaz

It's good to hear that Lenovo actually released a working driver, even after all this time, but I've already moved on to Vista, and unfortunately, Vista driver has the same problems the previous XP versions exhibited. So Leonvo, let's take a look at the Vista driver, shall we?

Anybody else getting the memory parity error while playing Mono with PowerPlay set to maximum battery life? It takes less than 10 minutes to crash even with the latest (modded) drivers on Win7 x64 but Vista 32-bit hasn't crashed yet. X1400.

(Background high, other settings maxed)

There is still a problem with the latest driver/software. When the laptop is docked/undocked, the resolution of the display changes to 800 x 600 and then changes to the external display/laptop display's resolution. The problem with this is that you will end up with all the application windows resized to 800 x 600 in the upper left-hand corner of the screen. Oh well...