Thinkpads Forum

Hey there. Firstly, I wanted to say that all of you on this forum have been a very big help, not only in me getting my T60p to this point, but in helping me out with my previous ThinkPads as well. I want to say a huge thank-you.

Unfortunately, I'm having two strange issues with my machine. My operating environment is Vista Ultimate x64 SP1, which for the most part runs very smoothly.

The main issue I'm having is with Power Manager. As of now it's taking forever to load the battery gauge upon booting into windows, and it also seems to periodically select some sort of hidden power scheme that steps the processor up to maximum performance(I have all my schemes set to 'adaptive' to make my machine run cooler). I've heard of issues where Power Manager starts adding literally hundreds of unlisted schemes, but I have no idea where in the registry they might reside. I haven't tried reinstalling Power Manager as of yet, but would this possibly

Another one is that I'm getting random BSODs with absolutely no error code at all. Something to the effect of "Hardware Malfunction. Contact your vendor for support." I'm pretty sure that Windows Media Player is triggering it as each time the BSOD has happened I've been playing music in the background. I'm not getting any errors from normal use, which includes Net surfing, word processing, creating Web pages, and gaming. Any suggestions on what I could do to fix this?

The answer you don't want to hear: dump Vista.
Put XP back on, or install -resp. upgrade from Vista to- Win7.

RealBlackStuff wrote:The answer you don't want to hear: dump Vista.
Put XP back on, or install -resp. upgrade from Vista to- Win7.

Unfortunately, neither is an option. Win7 is too new(I'm of the opinion that there will be issues with any new OS), and I don't have any XP install media. I'm personally of the opinion that my next major OS shift will be a Linux distro, but all of the applications I have to use for school are Microsoft-specific.

Windows 7 is very similar to Vista but snappier than XP. I were to change to 7 if I were you, you wouldn't notice the difference, but if you upgrade from Windows XP there will be a steep learning curve to get used to the new UI.
You could try reinstalling Win Vista (which I also hate) and see what happens with those BSOD's, I could ve a driver issue too.

I don't think you have been given much help here so I will try to give a bit of assistance.

I think your opinion on a new OS was true in the past---but Windows 7 is going to break that mold. Many corporations that traditionally wait until a service pack are already adopting and moving from xp to Windows 7. But I do not believe the OS is really the issue and the issue isn't severe enough to warrant that kind of approach---rip and replace.

For the power meter issue, I would remove the power management driver and the thinkvantage power manager and reboot...then reinstall them and see if your problem goes away. You might be lucky and that will fix the issue. However, you might have a deeper issue given the random bsod...have you run a check on the memory? Also--is your pc slowing down at times and then blue screening? The t60s and 61s have heat issues---fans go out and can cause a random freeze or blue screen. Does the machine feel hot on the bottom left side under the screen?

I hope some of these suggestions help...as i have had the same experience as you on xp, vista and windows 7...i had bad fans a couple of times and bad mother boards a couple of times.

agarza wrote:Windows 7 is very similar to Vista but snappier than XP.

If Vista is slower than XP, which in my experience it has been, how can it be faster than XP, but the same as Vista?

[quote="If Vista is slower than XP, which in my experience it has been, how can it be faster than XP, but the same as Vista?[/quote]

I think he meant windows 7 is similar to VISTA in appearance but it is faster performance wise than XP and a lot faster than VISTA..

Alright... here's what I found out with poking around the system the past few days.

My power plan problems were created by a program I use called Aerofoil, which disables Aero effects when on battery power. Apparently there was an added 'feature' that controls the power plan as well... which was what was screwing with the settings. That problem is now fixed.

I'mnot sure what was causing the random BSODs, but I haven't seen another one come up. This is with me playing WMP for the past 36 hours in a row to make sure it was running stable. It wouldn't make sense that it was related to the Aerofoil issue, but I've seen stranger things happen.