Thinkpads Forum

I have an x61, 2gb ram, 2ghz cpu, 80gb HD, vista business

I have read a similar post and reinstalled the turbo memory software.
The computer runs fine when on AC power. The computer did not freeze on battery power when new. This is a problem that developed about 3 months ago.

When the computer freezes, i notice the HD never comes on. mouse works, pages scroll, but nothing refreshes, or if you try to open a new window it will never open. The only way out is to press the power button for 10 seconds.

I noticed under pc doctor, the HD test, SMART short self test completes when on AC power, on battery power it is cancelled by device.

If anyone has any ideas, i would be most grateful as the machine is useless on battery power.

tried a clean installation of vista business. Still freezes while on battery power.

i suppose the nest step is an xp downgrade

kotaro77 wrote:tried a clean installation of vista business. Still freezes while on battery power.

i suppose the nest step is an xp downgrade

I've had the same problem. Only freezes on battery. Have Vista Ultimate 32 (see specs in sig). Found another post that indicated an issue with the installed Intel Turbo Memory, which is a cache used by Windows Vista Ready Drive to speed up performance. This other post indicated that the freezing behaviour goes away when you disable "Hybrid Hard Drive Disk Power Saving Mode" in the advanced power options of the power plan settings. The post recommended disabling that hard drive mode for every profile that has it enabled while on battery keeps it from freezing. I just did that today but haven't tested running it on battery yet. I'll let you know. Let me know if you have trouble finding the advanced power settings (you specifically want to look in the "hard disk" power settings).

Ok. Update from earlier post. Since turning off the hybrid disk power saving modes in my power options control panel my system no longer freezes while running but I have new symptoms. The new symptoms involve the sleep mode. Now when I put the machine to sleep (aka standby) while on battery sometimes it doesn't come back out of standby. Connecting AC doesn't help. Nor does pushing the power button for any length of time. All I can do is remove the battery, put it back in, and start up. This causes the now familiar "unexpected shutdown detected" startup sequence. Yet another post on this excellent forum indicated that I should disable the ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive features of my Intel Turbo Memory. What is less clear in the post is whether I should do that by disabling the Intel Flash Cache Drive entirely (using device manager) or just by using the Intel Turbo Memory Console program that came with the Lenovo. I've opted to use the latter. I tried first just turning off ReadyBoost but still had the no-wake sleep problem. Now I've disabled both and will see if sleep works as directed. If so, I may try turning ReadyBoost back on to see if it is isolated to ReadyDrive and how Vista uses that cache.