Z61M comes to a grinding halt...

[Rivan]

Hey guys,

I have a pretty much new Z61M issued by my office.

It is an increasing problem as the laptop just suddenly slows down and can't run anything. This will happen when I'm multitasking between basic programs like Office, Thunderbird, and MSN. Sometimes the computer will just slow down for 10 minutes at a time, then recover afterwards.

If I want to run a game on it, forget it. The system locks up for 20 - 30 minutes while I try and fumble around on title screens to close the program down. Even the closing down of the program takes about 10 minutes.

Right now I have the computer started up in a selective startup mode with essentially nothing running. This isn't much of a problem for me as I don't really need all the thinkpad software. Can someone please give me a list of the Thinkpad software that I can delete? Selective startup has dramatically improved performance, but it's still not fast enough.

When checking my RAM usage, I'm usually using around 600 megs to 800 megs of RAM on a CLEAN boot from a CLEAN format. The system only has 512 megs of ram. The computer is ALWAYS accessing the hard drive (I can tell by the little yellow led above the power button)

Can anyone give me some tips or ideas?

Thanks,

[jkahng]

Hello Rivan,
First, you should let us know what the specs of your Z61m is.
Also, are you running vista?

The 10 minutes of slow down can be anything; it could be your drive being indexed, background defragmentation, windows updates being downloaded in the background(if you have slow internet, this will also be a factor) ....

As for games, again, we need to know what your gpu is and what type of games you're trying to run...

as a rule of thumb, XP is comfortable with 1gb of ram under normal internet / office applications. and vista needs 2gigs
if you start running photoshop or 3d games, the more memory the better...

My Z61m is no performer but does it's job pretty well. I have not diabled the thinkvantage software and run 2 antivirus programs.


* a tip for finding out which process is accessing the harddrive
task manager > processes tab > "view" menu > select columns > select I/O read, I/O write
you'll see the processes that are accessing the harddrive. ( you'll have to figure out which program is actually responsible for the process though)

[Rivan]

Hi!

The specs on this computer are...
Intel T2300 @ 1.66 GHz. 512 Megs of RAM.

What's extremely bizare though is that my Dell X300 that is 1.2 Gigs and 512 Megs of ram and no real 3d card is a thousand faster at everything.

I enabled the O/I section in the task manager and the processes that are at the top are.... avgcc.exe (my virus protection) csrss.exe, ati2evxx.exe, dlactrlw.exe, lsass.exe

Any ideas?

[jkahng]

1. the thinkvantage software that comes standard with all thinkpads, have it's uses but when put together, it takes alot of resources. you should see what you need and what you don't and uninstall them.
if you don't, the untouched setup will take about 400-500megs of ram and 90 processes

2. install more memory
see my sig for my specs. (not much different from yours besides memory) I have never had any grinding halts. Install another gig of memory and your computing experience will be MUCH better.
to see how much ram you actually need...
- have all the usual programs running
goto taskmanager > performance > allocated memory (maxium)
=> this is how much your system needs. what it doesn't have in physical memory, it's using the harddrive to make up for it (page file)

3. you haven't told me your OS and your video specs

my guess is that your dell doesn't have the thinkvantage "bloatware" and thus has more memory to work with

[Rivan]

Hi guys,

After days of troubleshooting I have finally figured out what the problem was.

This Thinkpad came preloaded with an "active protection" that stops the hard drives from spinning when the laptop is being shaken. I have disabled that software and now everything works like it would on a normal computer.

Interestingly enough, I use this computer as a desktop so it never gets moved around. The desk is extremely solidily built so there is next to no movement of the laptop. The only thing I can think of is the vibration from the fan that was causing the computer to think it was moving.

Thanks for your help,