Thinkvantage Toolbox, PC Doctor, and Solution Center on T61

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acz
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Thinkvantage Toolbox, PC Doctor, and Solution Center on T61

#1 Post by acz » Thu Jan 15, 2015 12:04 am

My T61 is getting old but seems to work reliably, running Win 7 64-bit.
I believe that the Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox ("powered by PC-Doctor") software came with the machine originally (it is currently at version 6.0.5849).
It autoruns quarterly to scan the hardware and tell me about system status, such as last backup, amount of disk space available, battery, and updates, and can run diagnostics on the whole system or an individual device if something seems to misbehave. It can also create bootable diagnostic media. Lately it just reminds me to do a backup, and that my C drive is around 80% full.
Actually, this unit has worked pretty well for years, and I don't recall particularly making any important use of LTT.

Today I noticed that I have about 9,000 files called Snapshot_YYYMMDDTime-nnn.xml
located in subdirectories of C:\ProgramData\PCDr\5849
The PCDr directory occupies about half a gigabye of disk space
and there is also a PC-Doctor directory dated 4 years ago.

I just read that there is a similar package or utility called Lenovo Solution Center, which apparently dates from summer 2014 and seems to have the same functions as LTT.

Should I uninstall the old LTT and PC-Doctor programs, and clean up that space?

Is it important and/or useful to use the newer Lenovo Solution Center?

I still have the program called System Update (ver 5.06.007) and it is still offering the occasional update.

Any recommendations will be appreciated.
Thank you.

rkawakami
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Re: Thinkvantage Toolbox, PC Doctor, and Solution Center on

#2 Post by rkawakami » Thu Jan 15, 2015 5:08 am

I can't answer all your questions but I would say that you probably should not remove the LTT / PC Doctor programs as they do a better job (IMHO) at testing the system hardware than LSC. This is especially true if you still have access to the PC Doctor for DOS package as that test suite is not easily available any more (see my .sig).

The few times I ran LSC I was not convinced that it was better at checking all of the subsystems like PC Doctor did. Granted, this was early on when LSC was just released after the contract with PC Doctor was terminated. Things may have changed since then so I would carefully compare what each diagnostc suite is checking before choosing one over the other.

As far as the 500MB of data, I don't know. It could be similar to system checkpoints and that you could safely delete the oldest ones. On the other hand, 500MB will fit on a single CD so you could back them up and delete the lot.
Ray Kawakami
X22 X24 X31 X41 X41T X60 X60s X61 X61s X200 X200s X300 X301 Z60m Z61t Z61p 560 560Z 600 600E 600X T21 T22 T23 T41 T60p T410 T420 T520 W500 W520 R50 A21p A22p A31 A31p
NOTE: All links to PC-Doctor software hosted by me are dead. Files removed 8/28/12 by manufacturer's demand.

acz
Freshman Member
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Sep 06, 2004 7:05 pm
Location: Sacramento, CA

Re: Thinkvantage Toolbox, PC Doctor, and Solution Center on

#3 Post by acz » Wed Feb 04, 2015 12:04 am

Thank you Ray for another thoughtful reply. I will follow your suggestions.
600e (needs a replacement HD)
T20 (2647-44U, needs a win98 install disk to rebuild vmm32.vxd)
T23 (2647-HNU, pulsing fan, won't boot)
T41p (2373-GEU, works perfectly)
T61 (7658-CTO, works perfectly)

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