R51 is slowwwwwwwww

[dwilsonfl]

Okay, my wife's R51 is driving me nuts. Well actually it's an inanimate machine, but you know...

1836BBU, 80 gig Seagate Momentus 5400RPM, 2 GIG 2700 RAM, 1.6 Dothan chip with Artic Silver, defragged (only 18 gig used), no viruses or malware.

But it's slow.

I've run PC Doctor and everything comes up okay.

Video on You Tube stutters, wife's typing gets ahead of the kyb buffer, programs take a while to close sometimes.

I had hoped the Dothan cache might help, but nope.

Any ideas?

Only thing I can think of is that maybe somehow the disk image got twisted when I used Acronis to move over to this disk. After that I got bupkis.

I'm tempted to drop another MB in from a T series and gut and replace it.

Really getting old. Help!

[Marin85]

Get a 7200rpm HD. It does make noticeable difference!

[schen]

David,

A few questions first. Is this the original CPU (I looked up the Type number and it shows the original to be 1.6, but not Dothan or Banias), so I wasn't sure whether you had replaced it with possibly an "a" type CPU. Secondly; how old is the OS load? They tend to get progressively slower and then kind of hit a certain point where it's all down-hill till you do a reload/restore.

So far, nothing else makes sense since all your specs seem fine. I I've had both 7200rpm as well as 5400rpm HDDs and that shouldn't be a huge difference either.

[dwilsonfl]

This was originally a forum project I bought a few months ago. Harry installed the OS on a refurb Seagate 40 gig 4200 and I upgraded using the Acronis to move everything over. Shouldn't have been an issue, but that's the only thing I didn't go from scratch on.

I just swapped the CPU this afternoon from the Banias to the Dothan. Was hoping the cache would help even though it replaced a 1.6.

All she does with it is run Outlook Express, AIM, GTalk, and Firefox with three tabs open. She does her Google Reader, watches You tube videos, plays flash games.

Ought not be a problem for the unit... but it is.

I am not buying another HD for it. I've gone from a 5400 to a 7200 and it wasn't all that for me.

[aaa]

Youtube stuttering sounds like a cpu problem... and that cpu should be fast enough.

So my guess would be some background program is hogging the cpu. Or it may not be operating at full speed for whatever reason (power settings). Bring out the Task Manager, and download CPU-z to check the speed.

[ajkula66]

To me all of that sounds like software-related problem, possibly driver issue.

What I would do is to save the documents, and do a clean re-install from scratch.

If that wouldn't help I'd be looking for different or modded drivers for Radeon 9000...

Not much, but it's the best I have at the moment without seeing the machine.

[sojourner]

I agree with it likely being a software issue BUT, some questions:

1) Did the lappie work well BEFORE the clone?
If yes, I'd suspect a hardware issue. A thorough disk scan, checking for bad clusters would be in line (Hitachi Drive Fitness Tester works well). Essential data might have been cloned to bad cluster(s) on the cloned HDD

If no, it could be software conflict or incorrect configuration, OR hardware problem. PC-DOCTOR will do a number of essential HW checks for you. I just ran virtually a whole suit of tests on a newly purchased TP. PC-Doctor works well.

2) Did the clone work well for a while then things went south?
Again, could be fault of HW or SW but more likely software. If it's a software issue let us know; aaa's suggestion to use Task Manager will help you quickly find any CPU hogs and narrow which package is the culprit slowing things down. Also, are you SURE the CPU is throttling to FULL SPEED on demand? I like NHC's (Notebook Hardware Control) taskbar icon which continually shows CPU speed. Youtube video may need more than 600MHz low speed (although I think my T41 plays most video at 600MHz just fine, but NBC Nightly News video requires FULL SPEED )

Lastly, it's always good to check event logs (even if there isn't an apparent problem). Software acting funny may leave a trail of errors in the log(s).

EDIT: dwilsonfl, have an R51 here, 1.5GHz, 640ram XP Home, 40GB 4200rpm HDD. Checked Youtube playback. Runs fine (smooth audio/video). CPU speed 1.5, up to 45% use. Went to Nightly NBC, 1.5GHz and 93% cpu, video/audio both smooth (just for reference).

Good luck

[dwilsonfl]

I replaced the HD the first week we had it but I don't remember getting the complaints. It's in heavy use now though where it wasn't then. Finally got her weaned off the desktop.

I'll see if I can grab it tomorrow and run some tests.


Thanks guys

[Harryc]

I've owned maybe 10 (or more) of that particular model and it should spank Youtube videos, even with a Banias CPU. I agree with the others who've mentioned software/windows/drivers conflicts. Good luck.

[dwilsonfl]

anything in the Bios settings I should look for that might be a contributor?

[sojourner]

anything in the Bios settings I should look for that might be a contributor?

When it comes to 'issues' like these, BIOS F9 (default settings) is your friend!

[dwilsonfl]

makes sense

[rkawakami]

Specifically, they would be in the Config/Power menu. There's a couple of power/performance settings at the top of the list and some which involve the Intel SpeedStep further down.

[SMA]

An other approach would be to download and run a benchmark program.

[dwilsonfl]

bios is set on full power
PC Doctor ran five loops found nothing
Auslogics has it defragged
Ran CCCleaner today and tossed some 158 megs of junk, pared down the programs that start with the PC - a lot less of the IBM stuff, Quicktime, iTunes helper etc running now at start-up

no improvement

she can still scroll and it sits there then catches up
she can still type and it takes a second or two to catch up

[Harryc]

Try the Omega video drivers.
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati.php

[dwilsonfl]

got them in there, we'll see

[richk]

There was a problem where the Thinkvantage scheduling service hogged most of the CPU. The problem was fixed some time ago, but make sure you hava the latest version.

[dwilsonfl]

I read that yesterday. have to see if that's in the mix today

[sojourner]

All she does with it is run Outlook Express, AIM, GTalk, and Firefox with three tabs open. She does her Google Reader, watches You tube videos, plays flash games.

Ought not be a problem for the unit... but it is.

dwilsonfl, how have you made out with speeding things up? Any progress?

Read the previous posts and saw you did HW checks, and I assume set the BIOS to default. Have you checked to see what speed the OS is running at. If you don't have software for CPU speed readout here's a quick simple check:
right-click on My Computer, properties, what does it say in the last lines bottom right? Should show your 1.6 CPU and what speed it's running at. Is the CPU throttling to full speed? What speed(s) does it display?

If you are getting full CPU speed, if it were me at this point (having a good backup) I'd start with software trials. Reboot, only open Notepad (typing still getting ahead of buffer?), if so then we know where to start; culprit is likely in the startup softwares (likely AIM or Gtalk). If everything ok, open Outlook Express type an email (typing still getting ahead of buffer?). You get the idea. Try FF and Youtube, how's that? I believe a slow systematic approach of starting one software package at a time and doing checks should help narrow things down quickly.

BTW, many of the guys have shared their experience of a certain software stealing LOADS of CPU time. Have you opened task manager and looked to see if there's less than 5% CPU usage (95+% idle)?

Hope you'll keep us updated.

Admin note: Deleted two duplicate posts from a few minutes ago
EDIT: I knew they were sent a number of times because the BBS (or my service provider) was acting funny, thanks for deleting the dups!

[craigmontHunter]

There is a problem with the windows update, where it will use 100% cpu for a long time. I have a desktop that has a P3 550, and 256mb of ram, and can handle Youtube with no problem most of the time, but a couple of days after I upgraded to SP3, it bogged right down, with the same symptoms, typing things and them not appearing on the screen, Youtube and any other video/cpu intensive program was painfully slow. I looked and there was a svchost.exe in task manager that was using 100%. I have had this problem on my t41, and I found a link and a update to windows update that solved the problem. If you find that it is svchost.exe, try a google search for a fairly genaric "svchost.exe 100% cpu", and see where you get, since it is not a thinkpad problem.

[jamiphar]

One thing I'd try is using the diagnostic startup in msconfig, and seeing if that speeds things up. If the problem is gone, then start re-enabling the services and startup programs until you find the one that's causing the problem (you'll have to restart each time). To get to this window, just go start, run, and type "msconfig".

[dwilsonfl]

I've got system idle grabbing 97% of the CPU though only 28K of mem under processes, but the graph on the next tab shows 3%

43 processes with no programs open

CPU Free Benchmark : 598Mhz x86 Family 6 Model 13 Stepping 8 Intel Pentium M 1.6 Ghz
Benchmark 133.72 seconds

went in and turned off some of the ThinkPad and IBM processess and lost the 97% system idle deal

down to 38 processes

[sojourner]

I've got system idle grabbing 97% of the CPU though only 28K of mem under processes, but the graph on the next tab shows 3%

43 processes with no programs open

All that sounds pretty good. I think 43 processes is a little high, although I've actually heard of one person with over 60! My T41 has about 38 in XP, less in W2K. The home office tower using XP Home SP2 has 20! But your system looks OK!

CPU Free Benchmark : 598Mhz x86 Family 6 Model 13 Stepping 8 Intel Pentium M 1.6 Ghz
Benchmark 133.72 seconds

OK, I've been asking if the CPU is throttling properly; 600mHz is short of 1.6GHz so you may want to start a very intensive program (like Spybot) then check with CPU Free Benchmark and see if the CPU throttled to MAX.

went in and turned off some of the ThinkPad and IBM processess and lost the 97% system idle deal

down to 38 processes

38 processes sounds better, but when you say the system idle from 97% was lost, what do you mean? Is system idle now higher (like 98 or 99 or 100%)? Because that would be good!

Lastly, jamiphar's suggestion of using msconfig is an excellent idea.

[Marin85]

The pure number of processes has absolutely no direct impact on system performance. What you might be implying though is cpu usage, memory hogs and boot performance (and battery life), but these are not necessarily affected by some additional process, even taken cumulative.

[fasterbybike]

Check the disk access mode in the device manager. Under IDE/ATAPI controllers, open Primary Channel, then Advanced Settings. If it is not operating in Ultra DMA Mode 5 you will need to reset it. Google "Ultra DMA mode 5 slow" for the registry changes required.

HTH

D