X41 Tablet Need Help. Improve Boot Times

[RiverFly]

I have a X41 Tablet with 1.5GB RAM. Boot time takes about 4 minutes. Any suggestions on removing stuff to improve the boot time (Using Lenovo's OEM Load).

[tomh009]

This is Windows XP, right? Pro or Home? Part of a domain or not? How much of the four minutes is getting to the login screen, and how much from the login to having Windows be ready? Is the disk light active throughout the four minutes?

[boon]

the more icons that are in bottom right corner of the screen you have the longer for window to finish booting everything. Try remove any that you don't use, such as windows messenger.

try to defrag your hard drive might help also.

[cheeebs]

4 mins. on X41T with all the load of services and extra tablet services combined with a 4200rpm hdd is not an unusual boot time. part of the solution is to maintain your machine with defrag and disabling unnecessary software and services. if you are a beginner, learn on the net with basic tips and tricks. if you are moderate, try hijackthis which gives you a picture of everything that runs at startup so you can analyze what's necessary. go into your services console in administrative tools and analyze there too. there's also bootvis, which you can still find on the net if you look for it.

still, the changes will not be significant. the best solution for me was to reboot as needed, maybe about every 3-6 days if everything is running smooth, and to use sleep in the meantime, then it's always ready to go, no issues.

[K0LO]

You can achieve boot times of 60 seconds with the X41T if you reinstall Windows.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/foru ... sp?TID=339

[cheeebs]

K0lo,
read your article. i'm intrigued, since of course i experience all of the issues you listed in the X41T faults. here's my question to you, if you have any experience with this:

i'm planning on replacing my X41T with an X60T as soon as multiview display and a faster (1.83+) cpu are available again. there will be a 7200 hdd. will i get significant performance gains by following your reinstall on the new machine? or are these issues specific to the X41? since i want the multiview and am waiting for it, i don't want to go to the big trouble of overhauling my X41 if i'm just going to replace it. i, however, am a performance nut and have appreciated the features of the X41T but have suffered the performance of it.

[K0LO]

cheebs:

Some X60T owners have followed the procedure in my article and are very happy with the results. An X60 Tablet with a 7200 rpm hard disk will perform about twice as fast as the X41T.

Using the IBM factory preload you can expect a boot time of 5 minutes on the X41T and 2.5 minutes on the X60T. I achieved 60 second boot times on the X41T and others have reported 30 second boot times on the X60T with a clean install of Windows, so you will still get a significant performance gain. In creating a preload of the operating system, Lenovo is trying to please everyone by loading it up with every possible feature, but this comes at a price.

If you're a performance nut then I wouldn't wait. You won't regret it.

[cheeebs]

K0lo,
well, as soon as I have time I look forward to taking this challenge. probably not for another month or more. My results will be posted here. Thanks for the info, appreciate the gottabemobile.com article.

[Vasco Almeida]

You can achieve boot times of 60 seconds with the X41T if you reinstall Windows.

http://www.gottabemobile.com/forum/foru ... sp?TID=339

I am very glad to report that, by following K0LO's recipe, I, who know next to nothing about Windows XP as a system, was able to fix the problems in my daughter's X41T. It goes to show once again, if evidence were needed, the priceless value: (i) of people like K0LO, who volunteer the fruits of their hard labour and expertise to the benefit of others; (ii) of tools such as fora, which provide help places that manufacturers' support organizations cannot even hope to match; (iii) of people who maintain these tools, whom manufacturers can ignore only at their and our own expense.

My daughter's X41T, which has only 512MB of memory, now runs like the wind, she's happy to have a "new machine" at the end of two years. Since in the meantime, and in desperation, we had ordered a 1GB memory upgrade, we expect the little bugger to travel like a typhoon!

Now for the implementation issues (I shall now refer to numbered steps in k0lo's tutorial):

A. Part II step 10: 'bbie' proved a pretty useless utility for a non-specialist like me. I had to resort to ISOBuster, also recommended in the tutorial, and it worked fine. Perhaps K0LO would like to update it by referring to the fact that the boot sectors be extracted by ISOBuster as "raw data" (only way I got it to boot from CD).

B. Part III step 17: MS Update keeps proposing to update "IBM - Other hardware - IBM PM Device". Following the advice in this step, I keep unchecking it. What is this?

C. Part III step 18: the Software Installer did not find "Atmel TPM Driver", "Think Vantage Fingerprint Software" and "Microsoft Windows XP update module Q920295". Any of these a must for installation?

D. Part III step 19: the Software Installer did not find "Think Vantage Technology", "IBM ThinkPad Power Manager", "Scroll Lock Indicator Utility", "Think Vantage Access Connections", "Think Vantage Rescue and Recovery", "Track Point Accessibility Features" and "Bluetooth Drivers".

E. Part III step 20: THE BIG GLITCH. Since I did not install RnR (as recommended as step 19), I follow the alternative proposed path, but it looks like the downloaded bit needs to create a bootable CD with help of some tool like Nero, but its documentation does not offer any advice as how to go about it inside Nero (this, no doubt, because the documentation was not written by someone like k0lo!). This means the X41T now has the wrong bootloader installed. WHAT NEXT?

F. Part III step 24: I departed from the original installation and installed AVG instead of Norton. I am told it is "better" (whatever that means), and is certainly faster.

Once again, my unconditional gratitude.

[K0LO]

Vasco:

Thanks; you made my day.

B. IBM PM Device is the IBM power manager. Do not download this from Windows Update; it may be for the wrong model of ThinkPad. Windows Update can't tell the difference. If you want the IBM Power Management Driver, get it from the Lenovo download site so that you're sure it's for the correct ThinkPad.

C. None of these are strictly "required" but I would recommend installing them. If you don't install the Atmel TPM Driver (a driver for the Atmel Trusted Platform Module or hardware security chip) you will get a missing driver icon in the Device Manager. The fingerprint software is needed to enable the fingerprint reader, which is convenient for replacing a power-on password or Windows password with a fingerprint swipe. The Microsoft Q920295 update is highly recommended because it solves an issue with erratic cursor or pen movement when the hard disk is being accessed. If you want to install any of these, go to the Lenovo download page: Here is the link for the US (you may have a different page in Portugal).

D. I hear that the Software Installer is not automatically finding updates like it used to. Lenovo is in the process of making this program obsolete and replacing it with something called "System Update". If you want any of the programs mentioned, go to the Lenovo downloads page and download them manually. Double-click on the downloaded file and it will be extraced to your hard disk. Then run software installer and it should find them and offer to install them.

E. To use Nero to make a bootable CD, start the main program and choose "Burn Image" from the "Recorder" menu. Select the iso image that you downloaded from Lenovo and you're in business.

When you expand the memory from 512 MB to 1 GB you will find that the machine runs even better. Enjoy!

[pianowizard]

RiverFly, have you thought about getting the X41T to hibernate instead of shut down?

[Vasco Almeida]

Following on my successful reinstallation of XP in the X41T, I have come to notice that in every restart/shutdown sequence I get a pop-up window titled "End Program - TabTip.exe". As part of the recommended post-reinstallation chores I installed update Q920295 (even though it said it was for US only), and was kind of hoping the pop-up would disappear, but to no avail.

Anyone can recommend a poison to finish that nuisance for good?

Thank you in advance.

Vasco

[QLi]

k0lo,

Am I correct to assume that this fix should work for the X40 model also? Another thing, what would happen to the factory partition on the HD when I do a fresh XP installation?

Thanks.

[K0LO]

QLi:

Yes, you can do this with an X40, although you don't need to create an install CD for an X40; you can just use a generic Windows XP Pro CD if you have one.

The X41T is a little more complicated in that you have to create your own Windows XP Tablet Edition install CD since they are not provided by Microsoft or the PC OEMs.

When you run the Windows installer you can either choose to keep the factory recovery partition or you can tell Windows to use the whole disk; your choice. If you want to keep the recovery partition intact, just be aware that the Windows installer will nuke the Master Boot record, so you'll lose the ability to boot into the recovery partition with the "Access IBM" button until you restore the IBM master boot record. This can be done either by reinstalling Lenovo Rescue and Recovery, or by downloading a utility from Lenovo that will restore the IBM boot loader.

[QLi]

k0lo,

Thanks again for the detailed explanations. I'll try it (perhaps after I'm done with my taxes) and report back.

[Vasco Almeida]

[quote="k0lo"]You can achieve boot times of 60 seconds with the X41T if you reinstall Windows.

Glad to report again that, thanks to K0LO's advice and help, we were able to clean install an X40 this time, with the same gains in all round performance as experienced earlier with an X41T.

However, there is one major snag: battery performance did not improve at all in the X40, whereas I saw dramatic improvement in the X41T. The SW Installer for the X40 gives only one option for power management: IBM ThinkPad Battery Maximizer and Power Manager Features. This was duly installed, but perhaps there is a better option for the X40. Can anyone shed some light on this ?

Thank you in advance.

Vasco Almeida

[K0LO]

Vasco:

1. Make sure that you have also installed the ACPI power managment driver. Link for the X40.