Thinkpads Forum

Alrighty... just as a side note before I begin, I love my T60... easily the best computer I've ever had, and this is counting the XPS M1730 I'm using as a secondary computer. So, onto my problem at hand.

I recently put a new hard drive in and have reloaded XP, although not off the restore discs as I was having problems burning them. I bumped up to SP3 and used System Update to grab all the drivers, programs, and et cetera. The machine works flawlessly, is very quick and has even surprised me at being a decent performer with casual games... actually managed to play CS:Source on this with absolutely no hiccups.

However, I've been getting the problem of the screen always resizing whenever I close the lid. It looks like it goes to something like 800x600 for a few seconds when i first open it, then flashes back to my normal 1600x1200. The major annoyance with this is that anything I have been working on before I closed the lid has been resized and sitting in the top left corner of the screen. Does anyone know what's causing this? Driver issue, perhaps? I didn't do a lot of testing before I went to SP3, but I wonder if this has anything to do with this?

Make sure your BIOS and display driver is up-to-date.

Summary of changes for BIOS update - ThinkPad T60, T60p wrote:Version 79ETC1WW (2.01)
(New) Support for October 2006 models.
(Fix) Some versions of the EMM386 mistakenly write a hard drive's MBR area. It will not boot up after this. (FDISK /MBR may recover it)
(Fix) Icons on the desktop will be rearranged by a LCD cover close/open action.
This problem occurs only on models with a Intel Graphics Media Accelerator. Machine type is 19xx.
Upgrade the display driver to the latest version to fix this problem.

[Note: the above is not the latest version]

Drivers and software - ThinkPad T60, T60p

Yea... unfortunately my BIOS and the video card drivers are up to their latest versions. I'm considering trying the Omega drivers to see if they'll make any sort of difference.

That's funny I thought it was just a one time anomaly but I have the same problem with mine too. Love to see a fix. All my drives are up to date also.

I think this is an issue with the latest version of either the display driver or the Presentation Director.

I recently updated them with System Update, and I've found that the icons that used to sit in the lower left corner of my screen keep getting pushed into the middle after closing and opening the lid. It does it every time now, and it never did it before the update.

I think you are right because I have the exact same problem with the icons getting pushed into the middle too.

Alright... updating this with some observations.

Going to the latest Omega drivers(which are actually older than the newest drivers from Lenovo) did not work. Going back to SP2 from SP3 dn't work, either.

However, I do not have the issue where my icons get pushed around... only the windows. I still need to restart after removing the presentation director, but I will say that this is an annoying problem indeed.

In the device manager, I am finding four listings for monitors... three of them are 'default monitor', one of them is 'plug and play monitor.' I'm wondering if this might be the source of the problem... maybe Windows is having trouble figuring out what hardware is supposed to be used, so it may be trying to switch between them. We'll see.

I've also uninstalled the presentation manager. I should probably restart the machine to see if any of this helps, but I've got some work I'm finishing up on first.

I've been using my T60 fro 3 years and this seems a recurring problem.
It is definitely a driver issue. The (samewhat) disappointing thing is that even the ATI drivers available from Lenovo site are affected.
I'm not sure if ANY of the drivers released by Lenovo have ever been free of this issue, however the latest one (Version 8.533.3.1-081110a-075168C-Lenovo) is surely affected.
If you know of any Lenovo ATI driver that actually works , please let me know it.

One way around this issue, when using windows xp, is the following:
- start control panel- add remove programs and uninstall the "ATI Uninstall" item.
- restart and when windows detects and asks to install video drivers, just allow it to do it and to check online for drivers (I'm not sure if this is actually useful, I think windows will just use the drivers it finds on the hd).
- done. You won't have the Catalyst control panel anymore, but everything should work fine (I've never found the CCC of any use in 3 years).

Whatever is the problem - driver, BIOS, presentation director, or anything - it affects both ATI and Intel GPU models, and to date I have not found a single reliable solution.

I eventually gave up, and stopped looking for a solution. Instead I use Desktop Restore to immediately restore my icon layouts. I would need such a utility anyways, since I frequently connect to different external monitors with different resolution settings, and the only way to avoid the icon mess is to have a utility which memorizes their placements for every different configuration, like the aforementioned one.

Hi! I have a 3 year old T60p that got the same problem after updating a bunch of drivers. Eventually I disabled the "ATI HotKey Poller" service and the problem disappeared.

Clempert wrote:Hi! I have a 3 year old T60p that got the same problem after updating a bunch of drivers. Eventually I disabled the "ATI HotKey Poller" service and the problem disappeared.

Welcome to the forums! I just tried this and it works fabulously... no flickering screen, and my windows and icons stay where they're at for once! Once again, thank you so much!

Weird as I have just tested the latest ATI driver from System Update (v8.533.1-081110a) and it was affected by this issue (icon position not preserved). Then I completely removed the ati control center (which includes the ATI hotkey poller) and it was still moving the icons.
But I'm curious and I'll see if reinstalling and disabling just the hotkey poller, solves for me too.

When I say that icons are moved I mean that if you configure (power manager) you power setting to "do nothing" when you close the lid, then put an icon in the lower right corner, close the lid and reopen it, the icon is moved away.

Mmmh, disabling the ATI hotkey poller solved for me too. I find this very strange because even if I don't install the control center at all (which doesn't install the hotkey poller either), still the issue is present.
So probably the cause of the problem is not really the hotkey poller, but something else in the driver and somehow, installing the cc but disabling the poller solves it.
I'd be happy to get some enlightenment from anyone with more insight to share....

Recently I've succeeded to make it go away by disabling the ATI hotkey poller. But then the Presentation Director scheme switching doesn't work. Go figure.

And of course, it still happens on the T60 with GMA950, where there is and never was an ATI hotkey poller service...

The problem is specifically addressed in the driver version 8.593.100.7-090929a. The description says:

(Fix) Fixed an issue where the desktop icons moved to the top left of the screen when the portable computer was set to 'Do nothing when the lid is closed' in the Power options and the lid of the computer was opened.

Finally.