Thinkpads Forum

I just revieved my new T61p, through my school, today. Every laptop is imaged the same, and it is loaded with software. The problem is it is surprisingly slow for a 2.5ghz cpu with 3gb of ram. Starting the computer can take 40 seconds to get onto the loading screen, and another 40 to get to a fully loaded desktop. This is really my first experience with a lenovo, so what bloatware can I remove through msconfig? Any tips to speed up this machine? I am running a wced E7200 with 2gb, xp pro, as my desktop rig and it feels much faster than this.

I'm assuming you're using Vista on your T61p. This is likely the cause of the apparent sluggishness, especially when booting up. I got rid of access conections, messenger, client securit and a host of other bloatware that I don't use on mine. Also, Norton's new phishing filter seems to slow the computer down.

If you're not using Vista (ie you're using XP), they may have put some oudated/incorrect drivers in the build. Or they may have included SP3 which, apparently, has quite a lot of issues.

I concur; your problem is a virus called "Windows Vista." A lot of computer manufacturers have been caught allowing this on the computer out of the factory; really embarrassing. The only way to rid yourself of this particular virus is to format and install Windows XP (or Linux).

-- Nathan

Much as I continue to have some issues with Vista, I make progress, and I see no sluggishness starting Vista Business 64-bit on my T61p. So the school model may have not been set up well.
... JDH

NathanA wrote:I concur; your problem is a virus called "Windows Vista." A lot of computer manufacturers have been caught allowing this on the computer out of the factory; really embarrassing. The only way to rid yourself of this particular virus is to format and install Windows XP (or Linux).

-- Nathan

I've installed Vista on several desktop rigs, and have experienced no problems or sluggishness with it. I wanted to know if there were any specific programs or services I should look to remove at startup.

Sluginess using Vista is a problem some part of laptop suffer. I also bought a new T61 but with only 1G of RAM. I don't want to upgrade the RAM so I just wiped the drive and installed XP.

Maybe a clean copy of Vista on your machine run well, but for me Vista is just eye candy, nothing really special that would motivate me to switch to this OS.

I couldn't even run Orthos because all the RAM had been depleted and the laptop almost completely froze.

If it's a custom Vista build by your school's IT department, they may be able to advise you on what (if anything) they've already deleted and what can be further deleted. Custom builds sometimes have pretty onerous antiviral, firewall and networking (VPN) installs - my company does this and even with XP, it's painfully slow!

Check it out with them.

I have a Thinkpad T61p as well with the 2.5GHz CPU and Vista. I tried different Antivirus software and some of them increased the boot by as much as 40-50 seconds. I guess this might be because of the prefetch service. Disable the prefetch service might decrease the time it takes to boot even if i don't really recommend to do so.

What kind of antivirus do you use? You could try to disable or uninstall the av software to see if that makes a difference. I don't find Vista to be sluggish at all, but XP probably boot faster.

Also if you have all the Lenovo stuff installed it could be a good idea to uninstall what you don't need/use. Some of the Lenovo software make the computer boot slower.

I have a desktop using Vista as well that boot faster then my Thinkpad, but this is pretty normal if you have a decent desktop computer.

Yeah, its an imaged system from my school. The IT guys suggested that I purchase the vista install disk for 20, and perform a clean install. I use a vpn program to connect to the network, and there are severl licensed programs such as NX 5 and solid works. What is really bugging me is it says 1.23gb of ram is being used just with internet explorer running. I don't know where this is coming from because in task manager I only see about 200mb of ram used...

lilmanmgf wrote:What is really bugging me is it says 1.23gb of ram is being used just with internet explorer running.

Yep, that's Vista for you!...

Okay, okay, I'll try to start being constructive. Have you tried using Sysinternals Process Explorer to see what's going on under the hood? I have found Task Manager to be of limited usefulness after finding this little gem of a tool.

However, in Vista, there is even a nifty little feature (I'll admit) that has been added to the Task Manager that may be of additional use in determining which component is sapping your system resources. I want to say it's under the Performance tab of Task Manager? but I don't have a Vista machine handy to double-check with.

-- Nathan

you might also want to look at blackviper's vista page: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm for info on services that can be set to manual or disabled.

hth.

Before you start ripping apart the school's standard configuration, consider this:

A Vista computer is rarely supposed to be "shut down" in ordinary use.

Especially a laptop. When you do a cold start of any version of WindowsNT, the OS enumerates every last bit of hardware in the system and checks it for presence and operation. That takes time. Then there's all the software loading, that takes more time. And, the system is checking the hard drive (NTFS is a "journaling" file system) to make sure it was closed properly, as well.

So what you are encouraged to do, is use the SLEEP and HIBERNATE modes. You'll find that the computer goes to SLEEP very quickly, and resumes operation equally quickly. It consumes a small amount of power while sleeping, a bit more if you have "wake on LAN" and other functions enabled.

When you want to shut the machine down overnight or for long periods, you use HIBERNATE, which quickly copies an image to the hard drive and then shuts down all power. Waking up from Hibernate teaks 2-3x as long as it does from SLEEP, but it is still faster than a cold boot--because it is just loading an image back into RAM, without doing ay of the system checks.

If you have a stable NT system (and sadly, it is easy to make Vista unstable if you load uncertified software and drivers) you probably have no reason to shut it down and do a cold boot more than once a month, if that often.

Speeding up boot times? Yeah, you can do that. Take your time looking into it, try working "the NT way" with SLEEP and HIBERNATE in the meantime. And in the power settings, locate "hybrid sleep" and disable that option, apparently that new one is problematic.