T43 Hanging and Stuttering

[tngdiablo]

Sorry for the longish post.

Alright, this has happened before and my solution then was to get the machine reimaged. I have a ThinkPad T43 and a few days ago, a problem that like I said, began to occur again. Randomly, my system decides to slow down to a crawl and my cursor stutters, if music or video is playing, it stutters as well. In the case of iTunes, the music does not stop stuttering until I pause it and play it again. At first, I assumed that this was a case of 100% CPU usage, however, I run F@H 24/7 so that cannot be the case.

I've done just about everything to try and fix this problem without having to get the machine reimaged. I started out with a full virus scan using Symantec Antivirus with the latest definitions and nothing came up. Nothing recent had been quarantined either, so I ruled out the possibility of a virus. I ran Spybot - Search and Destroy with the latest definitions and supposedly got rid of all the problems. However, a "DSO Exploit" still remains. I researched this and it seems to be benign. I proceeded to run the latest AdAware and the only thing it came up with were some Tracking Cookies and a few other minor problems which I quarantined. I ran Disk Cleanup with Windows and that solved nothing either. I also used PCPitstop's virus scan and spyware search, it didn't come up with any anomalies.

I proceeded to go to Lenovo's site and followed some of the instructions which they gave me. Basically, the only thing that applied to me was to run ChkDsk, which I did and it found no problems. I tried updating the drivers using the ThinkVantage Software Updater and it didn't solve anything either. I have refrained from defragmenting the drives as the last time this happened, it solved nothing and it tells me I do not have enough free space to go forth with it.

Anyone who can help me with this problem? Anyone who has experienced the same or similar problem before? I really do not want to hand over my system to get reimaged yet again as its a great pain in the [censored]. Is there anything else that I haven't tried as of yet to remedy the problem? This practically happened overnight as well, I went to sleep with everything functioning, woke up, and BOOM. Any responses are greatly appreciated, thanks guys.

[GomJabbar]

Try running PC-Doctor for Windows to check for problems.

Try running one of the following hard disk diagnostic programs.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test
Fujitsu Drive Fitness Test

[spike095]

hey tngdiablo,

i think your problem is really similar to mine:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19051

i get the same stutters and lockups -- a little tap on the hard drive area seems to bring it back, making me believe it's a problem with the hard drove or the hd controller. but... since all the tests i've run come back spotless, i doubt ibm'll check it out for me.

[tngdiablo]

Try running PC-Doctor for Windows to check for problems.

Try running one of the following hard disk diagnostic programs.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test
Fujitsu Drive Fitness Test

Is there any way to circumvent the necessity to create a boot disk for the fitness tests, seeing as I don't have a floppy on this system?

[jdhurst]

I have two T43's right now (for clients). One is working fine. The other is giving me this problem. I just called IBM, and they say run the Advance Drive Fitness Test. PC Doctor says the Hard Drive fails a test. So I am just creating the diskette now and I shall run the test. We'll see. I'll return the machine if I can't make it work.

The other T43 runs like a champ.
... JD Hurst

Update: Two drive fitness tests assigned by IBM say the drive is fine. One test was 6 loops through the test overnight and still no errors. On the other hand, IBM cannot say what might be causing this. I interchanged the hard drives between two identical laptops, and the issue is with the drive and/or operating system and software. So if not the drive, then it is the software. But I don't know where, and IBM does not know where. The other machine works great as I noted.
... JD Hurst

Update: I called IBM again and said "Now what?". They decided to send me a new drive and set of recovery CD's gratis. I know the laptop is good, and I said to IBM I was not prepared to invest another day in a rebuild knowing that either the original image or the drive was somehow bad. So new stuff is on the way.
... JD Hurst

[tngdiablo]

Bump. I haven't been able to run Memtest86 as someone suggested on another forum. Once again, can I use a CD instead of a floppy for the Fujitsu Diagnostic Test?

[jdhurst]

An update on my two T43 builds:

The first one is long gone to the client and works great.

For the second one, I got a Hitachi Travelstar replacement and recovery CD's from IBM. The original drive was a Toshiba and I returned it. I imaged the drive shortly after I got it, but I never got to finish the machine until yesterday. Finished it, and it works great.

So the stuttering and slowness in the second machine was either OS build or hard drive. Whatever, the machine itself works fine and the replacement drive works fine.
... JD Hurst

[osterber]

Something that worked for me when I had a similar problem... the drive had switched out of UltraDMA mode.

If you go into the hardware device manager, and do properties on the IDE interface, there is a setting that says which mode to use. If there are too many errors on the bus, it will auto-switch to a slower mode.

If you tell it to go to the slow mode, then reboot, then switch it to the fast mode, sometimes that resets it. I've also read that you can remove it from the driver list, and it will re-install itself.

I can't find the link to more details about this... I can't take credit for it at all.

-Rick