Newbie X40er with yet another "slow performance" q

[raisindot]

Well, after spending around a year with a T40, which I loved but was too large for me to use on the commuter train (and spending lots of time in the T40 forum here), I decided to move to a T.

Got myself a 1.5MHZ 237KJU model at an outstanding price off of Ebay (it was one of those "Grade A" refurbs, they say). Cosmetically, it's perfect, no dead pizels, clean as a whistle, and everything works fine once it gets going.

The only issue is the one I've been seeing around here---it's slowwwwwwwwwwww. I've turned off every component and every tray/software item I don't use (including network cards, modem, wireless, infrared, etc.), turned off every network and web related services, deactivated (I think) the Thinkpad Advantage and Access tray icons so they don't show up on the desktop, stopped every Norton plug I could find. I only use this to write on the train, with a 512mb stickdisk as my portable storage.

Now, to be frank, I did feel it necessary to upgrade to XP Service Pack 2. Maybe it's what's causing the problem. But, in general, it takes from 2-3 minutes to go from startup to "ready to go" stage, even with the CPU speed set up at maximum. And it takes nearly 3 minutes to shut down. Otherwise, it works fine.

One thing I did notice was when I used the "PC Doctor", while it listed the processor as a 1.5MHZ, the processor speed was listed at 598MHZ. Am I missing something here? Is there no relation between processor type and speed ? (Again, this figure came up when running at "maximum performance").

Since I never run one of these R&R things, I'm a little hestitant about doing it (I don't have an ultrabase and use an old USB external CD-RW to load programs), especially now that I've overwritten the original XP with Service Pack 2.

I'm getting around the issue by hibernating, rather than turning it off, so at least I don't to go through that rigomorole every time.

Does anyone have any further suggestions on what I should look at?

Jeff in Boston

[bigtiger]

I have some real time experience. When you disable some services, you want to make sure you know the dependences of them.

I just sold my T41. When I had my T41, it booted up within about 20 seconds. But when I disable all those seemingly bad services, the T41 takes about 3 minutes to boot.

My guess is that XP will expect services. When it cannot find it, it will either wait or take longer time to find out what is going on.

Again, that is my guess. But it is real time experience.

[Gee]

How much RAM do you have in your notebook?

[raisindot]

How much RAM do you have in your notebook?

Sorry--should have said up front--1 gb. 40mb hard disk, Windows XP Prof (upgraded to Service Pack 2).

Jeff

[seneca]

The biggest problem with the X40 is the slow harddrive. It is the most significant factor in your performance problems. Since it is a 1.8" HDD, there aren't any faster models available.

I've had the same frustrations as you when it comes to startup-time, shutdown and responsetime.

The "solution" for me was more memory (I now have 1Gb) and never shutting it off. Instead of hibernating; - which take quite a while due to the 1Gb of ram being written to hd; use the standby mode instead. It uses very little power, perhaps 4-7% over a whole day. Which might be worth it, if you value fast availability.

Then windows doesn't loose any of it's data that it's cached when starting the applications the first time.

That's about the only things you _can_ do. And about your services....I don't know, there is alot of tweakingguides out there that deal with startup-time. Google is your friend

The other option, if you're experienced in Linux, install it.
Linux has a more efficient memory caching and process scheduling than windows, and on the contrary to windows, it gets faster over time - Not slower.

And when I use suspend in Linux, I get the same perks as in windows - Preserving the cached information in ram, aswell as faster overall system performance.

Boot time in Linux is about 30s with about 5 services.

[K0LO]

Jeff:

Here's an alternate suggestion if you want to keep Windows. I'm basing this on my experience with the X41T, not the X40, but they should be similar enough. Same 1.8" HDD.

Do a clean install of Windows XP. Back up all of your data and just start over fresh. The boot time after installing Windows XP SP2 should be around 45 seconds. Then as you tweak things and install programs keep measuring the boot time. If it suddenly increases to 2-3 minutes, then the program that you just installed is the offender.

After loading my machine up with everything, including Symantec antivirus, the boot time increased from 45 seconds for just native Windows XP to 60 seconds with everything.

With 1 GB of RAM, hibernation takes 12 seconds so that's a good way to save startup/shutdown time. And as seneca says, standby takes only about 3 seconds so that's the fastest of all. If you use standby as your shutdown method be sure to set the machine to automatically hibernate when the battery gets low.

[raisindot]

Jeff:

Here's an alternate suggestion if you want to keep Windows. I'm basing this on my experience with the X41T, not the X40, but they should be similar enough. Same 1.8" HDD.

Do a clean install of Windows XP. Back up all of your data and just start over fresh. The boot time after installing Windows XP SP2 should be around 45 seconds. Then as you tweak things and install programs keep measuring the boot time. If it suddenly increases to 2-3 minutes, then the program that you just installed is the offender.

I've been thinking about this but am a little hesitant about the process and what constituted a "fresh install of Windows XP," since I would have to use the "hidden partition" on the Thinkpad to do it. My "optical drive" is an old extneral USB CD-RW drive that works fine for loading programs, although my guess is that it would be quite slow for "saving."

In any case, I assume I would use the Thinkpad R&R program to do the backup. Would that backup my Windows XP Service Pack 2, or only the version of Windows that was loaded on the system? Would it also backup all the other programs (Office, etc.) I have installed on the laptop, or would I have to reinstall them (not a big deal, really).

Approximately how many CD-RWs would I need to back up everything in the service partition?

And once done, how would I go about "reinstalling" Windows and the individual programs? Does the R&R program allow you to "choose" which programs (i.e., Access Connections, Thinkpad Advantage,, etc.) to reinstall one by one or do you have to reinstall them all?

And then would I have to download Service Pack 2 from Microsoft again?

Would another option be to simple "uninstall" programs (like the Remote Wireless Access thing and Norton Antivirus) that I never use, with the idea that if I needed to reinstall them I could somehow do that using the built-in software installer program?


I'm really hesitant about using any other process than the Thinkpad process (i.e., ghosting, etc.) to do this. I know there are a lot of messages about this topic, but can you point to one really, really good one designed for a nervous R&R novice like me? Thanks!

Jeff

[seneca]

Doing a fresh install with only the rescue partition isn't really a "fresh" install, since it contains alot of pre-installed "crap" from ibm (even if it's uninstalled it has still contaminated the registry). If you really want to do a clean install, you need an Windows XP Professional Oem install disk.

IBM however don't supply an "untainted" windows install disc, only recovery discs. The only way you can get a clean install disc, is ironically enough, from filesharingnetworks.

You, however, can only use the Windows XP Professional Oem version since you only have a valid (legal) license for that particular version.

I'm quite confident that it's legal for you to use it, because you have already have paid for a valid license. And then it doesn't matter where you get the install media. Even if it's pirated.

Before you do any reinstall with a clean medium, download and burn to a cd, drivers for your networking, graphics, bluetooth etc...

If you don't know how to download, you need to ask a friend, I'm not going to tell you.

[K0LO]

Jeff:

Seneca is correct; if you just back up your existing system using R&R you won't gain a thing. You'll just wind up (hopefully) right back where you started.

There have been a number of articles posted on this forum on how to do a clean install when you don't have a set of Windows XP disks.

However, if the whole process is intimidating or you just don't want to risk it, then your other suggestion is worth a shot. IBM Access Connections is one of the biggest resource hogs and may be partially responsible for your slow boot times. Uninstall it and just let Windows manage your wireless connections and you should gain some improvement in speed. Norton Antivirus is another. Try uninstalling and if it makes a big difference in speed, look for an alternative antivirus product. I used Grisoft's AVG Free Edition on my Mom's PC and it didn't seem to add much overhead.

While worth trying, don't expect miracles. I'll give you an example. My X41T as received from IBM used to take 5 minutes to start up! After tweaking the hell out of it I got the boot time down to 3 minutes, which I still considered unacceptable.

Only after doing a clean install was I able to achieve boot times below 1 minute. A lot of work but well worth it.

[seneca]

Do note that your recovery partition doesn't disappear just because you reinstall windows, it's hidden and can't be deleted without explicitly doing so.

[raisindot]

Thank you all for your help. Based on reviewing many of the ideas here and searching through the board, I think I have largely fixed the problem.

I utilized the following process to do it.

1. Downloaded the trial version of System Mechanic and put it through its paces. Assuming I believe it, it fixed a lot of registry errors, defragged the disk a lot better than the Windows defrag would have done, and did some kind of optimizing of some sort.
I also turned off every piece of hardware (network card, wireless card, modem, infrared port) I don't normally use.


In reality, this improved performance by a little--perhaps 10%--but not much.

2. Reading the articles about IDE channels, I disabled the "secondary" IDE channel that looks like it wasn't in use. (If I disabled the primary IDE channel would I be disabling the hard disk? Above it in the choice list was one for the Intel IDE controller, so I wasn't sure whether both were needed.) This improved performance by I'd estimate by an additional 20%.

3. Following people's suggestions, I got rid of nearly every built in application--Norton Antivirus, the Thinkpad Wireless Connections, the Presentation Director, the modem driver, the DVD viewer program. I kept Thinkpad Access, the "Hard Disk Shock Protector" and the Thinkpad Productivity Center just for safekeeping for now.

4. I ran System Mechanic again to clean up the mess.

Result: Amazingly faster performance. Where it took nearly three minutes to boot up from power off or from a restart, it now takes around a minute or so--not a speed demon, but acceptable. Powering off now takes around a minute compared to nearly two and a half minutes before.

(Note: all of this is with the processor in "maximum" mode).

So, my X40 may not be the most highly tweaked speed demon ever, but it at least is nearly as fast as the T40 I'm replacing it with.

Thanks for your advice!

Jeff in Boston

[gnarlyc]

"One thing I did notice was when I used the "PC Doctor", while it listed the processor as a 1.5MHZ, the processor speed was listed at 598MHZ."

You might also want to go into the BIOS settings, and change the way the laptop handles the CPU to conserve power. Check under the power settings in the BIOS. I haven't looked at this particular model, but on other models I use the following settings.

AC Power = Maximum Performance
Battery = Automatic

We had this issue with several of our student labs, and this has really sped them up and stopped the complaints of "Why are these brand-new laptops so slow!".

I still don't understand why Lenovo would have the CPU clock down with the AC adapter plugged in...I'm sure there is SOME logical reason, but I haven't seen it yet.

Hope this helps!
Alan

[seneca]

Come on, having the speed dynamic doesn't really affect real-world performance. When the cpu gets utilized, the cpu automatically increases the clock speed. The computer does this continuously, sometimes several times per second.

The main reason for having the clock set on automatic, is HEAT.
When running in 600mhz, the cpu doesn't produce nearly as much heat as it would in maximum speed. Saves power, less heat transfered to your hands(I hate that), longer life-span of the hdd, cpu, mem and less noise (the fan spins slower and less often).

[gnarlyc]

I have to disagree. They have several different settings.

Maximum Performance = Maximum Performance
Battery Optimized = Slows the thing down no matter what
Automatic = Adjusts CPU speed based on utilization

The default on the R51's that we have is 'Battery Optimized'. It DOES NOT adjust based on utilization until you change the setting, and it DOES run slower. I (and several hundred others) have seen it first hand.

I'm all for a cooler laptop and more battery time, but not for watching a 3 second lag in Word when I type!

Alan

[seneca]

Is battery optimized the default setting? WTF?

I have to agree, that was stupid, and there is no reasong why it should be like that.

[gnarlyc]

It is the default on all of the R51s that we have. I don't know about any others, but it is worth taking a few minutes to check out!


Alan