Why is my T42 so slow?

[awolfe63]

I have a new 2373-3VU - Stock other than adding 1GB of PC2700 SDRAM for 1.5GB.

I have installed Acrobat and Office - nothing else.

It seems really slow.

For example: Sandra File system benchmark shows 15307 kB/s - other people are getting over 20000.

Boot up seems to take 2-3 minutes.

Program launch is very slow.

Any ideas? Should I do a clean XP install?

[dd]

Hi

That doesnt sound right at all !

My 2 day old T41p takes 61 seconds to boot (This includes me typing in my password).

Others members here, have found a clean install to help things ........

Make sure you have all the correct backup files etc 1st !

[ian]

I found getting rid of Norton was far and away the most significant timesaver in terms of startup - I use AVG (which is free - check it out) and my system (with all sorts of gunk I've loaded) takes around a minute from off to useable - a little longer for the wireless (which is normal when I've several profiles)

Note: Norton Corporate is said to be significantly faster than NAV standard

[sktn77a]

Well, bootup involves parity checking all that memory so its going to take longer. Acrobat Reader (is this what you're using?) 6.x is PAINFULLY slow to load compared to previous versions and MS Office from 2000 on is also not known for it's speed.

Then again, you may have an O/S or hardware problem.

[awolfe63]

Thanks - but I think I tried all of those things.

I have already removed Norton and I am only running simple things like IE and WMP. I do have wireless enabled and working - could that be it?

I still can't explain the difference is Disk speed....

[sugo]

I suggest swapping the hard drive to see if it gets any better.

2-3 minutes does not sound right. The 900MHz panasonic with a 4200rpm drive here boots in 28 seconds.

[stgreek]

I've got a T40 with 1gig and the 60/7200 HDD and I can certainly say there is something wrong with Windows... On a CLEAN install, win2k takes well over a minute to boot and is very sluggish. I dual-boot with Gentoo Linux, and gentoo is lightning fast compared to windows - less than 30 sec to load and very responsive...Any ideas? My hardware is perfectly fine...

[XCoalMiner]

Well, bootup involves parity checking all that memory so its going to take longer. ...

I may be mistaken, but I believe the T4x series memory is all non-parity.

[T23_Owner]

My T42p 755 with 1gb ram starts up in 25 seconds to log in prompt. 40 seconds to ready to use if I type my password fast. My secret was to kill norton, and kill all services I don't need. Also killing all stuff in startup folder and registry that is not needed.

A good tool to use is startup inspector for windows. It lets you take out stuff from the resistry. Great piece of software.

PS: I never reformatted my HD. Its all stock from IBM. Reformatting is a wast of time. You can achieve the same results from just killing off stuff you don't need.

[ll357355]

Check for spyware or adware with spybot =)

[sktn77a]

XCoalMiner: Yes, you are correct - most of the computers today use non-ECC memory. But most of them still do a memory check at bootup. This can be disabled in some BIOSs but I don't know if this is an option in the thinkpad.

[Nabeel]

Get Diskeeper (www.diskeeper.com) and run a boottime defrag and a defrag in safe mode, that helps with my machine.