T60 'freeze'

Message

hoya · #31 Post by **hoya** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 5:50 am

the file you want is windowsxp-kb923232-v3-x86-enu.exe which you can download here:
http://hotfix.xable.net/download/index. ... 86-ENU.exe

charles700 · #32 Post by **charles700** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:32 pm

I am also experiencing the "freeze" on a recently acquired T60. The "freeze" is not a hard freeze - it happened consistently when coming out of stand by. The system will go through the user authentication, but then "freezes" in that the desktop background appears w/o icons, the mouse-pointer can be moved around on sctreen, but in that state the system will "freeze".

I do not use a docking station.

Based on suggestion in the thread, and none solving the problem (with the exception of Microsoft hotfix),
the following finally worked:

Before going into standby (either on battery power or AC power):
a) switch the hardware switch for the radio devices to off
(switch on the left below laptop), and
b) unplug the Ethernet connection.
Now the system comes out of the standby mode in a proper manner.

Not too intrusive, but will be nice to eliminate even this song-and-dance.

scotchy · #33 Post by **scotchy** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 1:43 pm

I have applied the hotfix to see if this does the trick. I have a T60P with abgn wireless card. Symptom is similar eject via docking station then put system to sleep. Upon waking (at home) able to log in but then immediately freezes. Mouse doesn't move and no discernable response. Fn+light works

I also have DaemonTools but I find it hard to believe this would cause the problem as it worked fine on my T42.

Dodge DeBoulet · #34 Post by **Dodge DeBoulet** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:04 pm

scotchy wrote:I have applied the hotfix to see if this does the trick. I have a T60P with abgn wireless card. Symptom is similar eject via docking station then put system to sleep. Upon waking (at home) able to log in but then immediately freezes. Mouse doesn't move and no discernable response. Fn+light works I also have DaemonTools but I find it hard to believe this would cause the problem as it worked fine on my T42.

I haven't had a single problem since uninstalling Daemon Tools and renaming sptd.sys to something else (can't uninstall the latter, apparently). The problem is specifically with the sptd.sys driver needed by DT, not Daemon Tools itself. There are reports on the DT forums that the latest sptd.sys solves hibernation issues; perhaps it fixes suspend issues as well.

Steerpike · #35 Post by **Steerpike** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:51 am

hoya wrote:the file you want is windowsxp-kb923232-v3-x86-enu.exe which you can download here:
http://hotfix.xable.net/download/index. ... 86-ENU.exe

Well this is all very interesting and annoying! Based on previous info in this forum, I found this MS kb article:
http://support.microsoft.com/KB/917332

and as a result, downloaded and installed videoprt.sys version 5.1.2600.2911, dated 18-May-2006.

I see that the kb article referenced by Hoya results in a version of videoprt.sys numbered 5.1.2600.2961, dated 26-Jul-2006.

The problem descriptions sound similar, but I'm going to apply the slightly newer version of this patch. Why would these two patches still exist as stand-alone hot-fixes almost a year later ... you'd think they would be incorporated into a standard Windows Update by now! the 'hotfix.xable.net' site seems down at the moment; that's where I got the prevoius version from so I know it used to work. Anyone have any other locations for the fix?

jcf2007 · #36 Post by **jcf2007** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:57 am

Back on 25-Jun-07, I posted that I had just installed the "critical" BIOS update to see if that would affect the problems I have been experiencing (lost cursor, black screen).

The answer is NO: on 26-Jun-07 the T60 did another "black screen" while I was in the Security Manager (Lenovo application).
Then today (28-Jun-07) the cursor disappeared while I was running Internet Explorer to investigate if the KB923232 hotfix might help.

Ironically, the lost cursor answered my question, so I've now installed KB923232 and will report on any effect this has on the problem.

Does anybody know if KB936357 (as mentioned in The Register) might be related to this T60 instability?

hoya · #37 Post by **hoya** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:08 am

steerpike - the problem descriptions look slightly different for those two videoprt issues. the one corresponding to 2911 seems to be only a blank screen which can potentially be 'woken up' with enough coaxing.

the issue i was experiencing described in 923232 is a completely unresponsive system with a black screen. nothing I did would bring my machine back to life when it was in that state. my problem seemed to be going into suspend while on AC power, then attempting to wake out of suspend while on battery power.

this is the frustration of having one company make the OS and another make the hardware & supporting drivers. the Apple approach seems to work much better.

Steerpike · #38 Post by **Steerpike** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:08 am

jcf2007 wrote: ... I've now installed KB923232 and will report on any effect this has on the problem.

Where did you download it from? I just tried the hotfix.xable.net site, but it's not available. I've used the site in the past so know it's valid, but I can't get there now. If you have another location it would be most appreciated! Thanks!

(I see references to hf.xable.net and hotfix.xable.net; neither seems to work at the moment)

Steerpike · #39 Post by **Steerpike** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 12:07 pm

I ran into a variation on the two MS KB article-described problems last night. I believe this is different from the main problem I'm chasing in this thread (system 'freeze' with display visible), which I think could also be related to standy/resume issues, but in a different way.

Last night, I closed the lid on my laptop simply to make it easier to carry and get out of the way. I do this quite a bit - makes it less obtrusive as I move it about the living room. I have set my power settings so that closing the lid 'does nothing' (i.e., does not go to standby). But the display DOES go dark - an automatic feature of the laptop, I believe, unrelated to windows). On raising the lid, the computer was non-responsive, and the screen remained dark. I tried close / open again (as referenced in kb 917332), but it was clear that the computer was locked - caps lock, scrLk, etc keys had no impact on green lamp indicators, etc (but Fn+PgUp still turned on the keyboard light, and Fn+NumLk still worked, as in all my freezes).

So in this case, there was no 'standby' involved, yet I got the same darned freeze. However ... I did remove the power plug, briefly, during the move ... I have chargers by the dining table and by the sofa, so I can power it in both places; I closed the lid at the dining table; removed charger plug; moved laptop; plugged power back in; let sit in this state for an hour during dinner, then opened lid to find non-responsive system.

Event log showed very little to indicate when the freeze may have occured - there was one odd McAffee virus scan entry, suggesting it got re-initialized somewhere during the period of lid-down, but otherwise, nothing.

jcf2007 · #40 Post by **jcf2007** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 11:58 pm

Steerpike asked (regarding the KB923232 hotfix:

Where did you download it from? I just tried the hotfix.xable.net site, but it's not available. I've used the site in the past so know it's valid, but I can't get there now. If you have another location it would be most appreciated! Thanks!

Indeed, the hotfix.xable.net link posted earlier is unresponsive when I try it now. That's where I downloaded the patch from - earlier it was working fine. Hopefully just a service glitch & they will be back online soon ...

jcf2007 · #41 Post by **jcf2007** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:31 am

Well, the "lost cursor" just recurred. This time I noticed a very small black box in the upper-left screen corner - jiggling the mouse seemed to jiggle some pixels inside that box. Clicking to try to "unfreeze" just filled a buffer someplace, resulting in beeps. A second later the system locked completely. Fan seemed to spin up at the same time - maybe indicating a tight CPU loop?

So I've gone ahead and installed KB936357. System still running, so far. Will report on the results in a few days.

caffemusse · #42 Post by **caffemusse** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 5:46 am

I've had the same troubles with resume probs and also some system freezing.
Just calle microsoft and referred to the kb number and they've sent me an email to the dl link for this hotfix, which is aparently pass protected. Geeezzz as if someone would abuse a fix... we all want fixes don't we?
Thrilled to see if this takes care of unstability....

szaffi · #43 Post by **szaffi** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:26 am

Steerpike wrote:I just checked for updates from Lenovo and I got notification about 'ATI Mobility-RADEON/FIREGL (PCI Express-2) Mfr Lenovo ... Version 8.293.1-<long version number>-Lenovo. This version 8.293.1 corresponds to the OLD version I had installed before, so it seems Lenovo are not pushing the latest version yet! Let's see how it goes since I've already updated!

So I've finally got two weeks of work on battery and on power doing standy all the time with no freezes and just 3 reboots over this time.

What I've done so far (despite still working on disabled "Deep Smart Power Down" in Ethernet settings) was a change to "new" ATI V5200 driver downloaded from ATI website. So now I'm on 8.362 version of the driver. This change was applied two weeks ago and in the meantime I've also upgraded to newest BIOS from Lenovo.

Nothing else and no freezes at all! Great!

szaffi · #44 Post by **szaffi** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 7:30 am

wxxiong wrote:I just had a freeze in a training room on battery. This time is not after undocking. I have not dock/undock since last weekened. This time is the first resume since last night and only difference in connection is the DC power that I used to charge the battery and I unplugged this morning before going to training. Not sure whether this is the cause. However, my T60's Ethernet "Deep Smart Power Down" is also enabled. Funny thing is when it is on battery, I could not find any Ethernet driver in device manager. But once in a while when I resume from standby, it activates the Ethernet driver trying to look for connection and then says "Network cable unplugged...". I am wondering this feature may caused my recent freeze.
Now I turned the "Smart Deep Power Down" off and to see if it still happens.

It exactly looks like "Deep Smart Power Down" issue. When enabled the feature completely downs network card if there is no network cable plugged. Then card completely dissapears from Device Manager.

Any success after switching off "Deep Smart Power Down"?

green baron · #45 Post by **green baron** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 8:19 am

I have been having this blank screen problem on and off since I get my T60 4 months ago. It always happen after the system turn off the screen. The system is still running, just that the screen is blank.
I know because I use a 2nd monitor and the external monitor is showing the aplicatiopns and cursor while the T60 screen is blank.
This happend docked, undocked, with and without the 2nd monitor.

To bring back the screen, hit <Fn-F7>, <Enter> and the screen will come back. So far I have not found any fix for this problem.

I am using the ATI mobility Radeon X1300 driver, version 8.293.1.0, dated 9/13/2006. I tried installing the new driver from ATI but the it refuse to install on Thinkpad notebook.

jcf2007 · #46 Post by **jcf2007** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 10:30 am

Back on 1-Jul-07 (one week ago) I installed Microsoft KB936357 hotfix to see the effect on the lost cursors/black screens I was experiencing.

After one week with no occurrences, I've tentatively concluded that KB936357 did the trick. (Earlier I'd also updated to the latest BIOS from Lenovo and hotfix KB923232, but problem recurred.)

In the 21 days prior to KB936357, my T60 averaged one of these incidents every three days. So I'm hopeful that this is the actual solution.

wxxiong · #47 Post by **wxxiong** » Mon Jul 09, 2007 2:14 am

szaffi wrote:
wxxiong wrote:I just had a freeze in a training room on battery. This time is not after undocking. I have not dock/undock since last weekened. This time is the first resume since last night and only difference in connection is the DC power that I used to charge the battery and I unplugged this morning before going to training. Not sure whether this is the cause. However, my T60's Ethernet "Deep Smart Power Down" is also enabled. Funny thing is when it is on battery, I could not find any Ethernet driver in device manager. But once in a while when I resume from standby, it activates the Ethernet driver trying to look for connection and then says "Network cable unplugged...". I am wondering this feature may caused my recent freeze.
Now I turned the "Smart Deep Power Down" off and to see if it still happens.
Thanks for the "Deep Smart Power Down" tip. Unfortunately, it seems not working for me.
It has been a pretty frustrating week for me with my T60. After I turned "Deep Smart Power Down", it still freezed the next day. Then I downloaded and installed the hot fix "KB923232" (Thanks Hoya for the link to the download site, now I seems I can find any hotfix from that site), my T60 still freezes.
Now I kind of know the temper of my T60:
- First, it does not like undocking regardless what I do to it. Seems like as long as it undocks, even it does not freeze at the first resume from standby, it will eventually freeze on the 3rd, 4th or 5th resume from standby. It likes getting a desease from undocking and the only solution of getting rid of it is to reboot the machine. After It power cycled or rebooted, it seems clean and will not freeze as long as it stays with the same WiFi network. This brings to the second symptom.
- Seems like my T60 does not like switching to a different WiFi network. When I put it to standby at work place while on wireless network and went home and resume it to aquire for home wireless network, it frequently freezes.
So far I have not find a good workaround to make it survive the undock.
Next I will try to install the KB936357 to see if it helps a bit.

It exactly looks like "Deep Smart Power Down" issue. When enabled the feature completely downs network card if there is no network cable plugged. Then card completely dissapears from Device Manager.

Any success after switching off "Deep Smart Power Down"?

szaffi · #48 Post by **szaffi** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 4:36 pm

wxxiong wrote: - Seems like my T60 does not like switching to a different WiFi network. When I put it to standby at work place while on wireless network and went home and resume it to aquire for home wireless network, it frequently freezes.

My Atheros WiFi used to give ma some pain

but what I've did long long time ago was disabling of "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in Atheros driver properties (Power Management pane).

It helped me a lot. But I can't use the hardware radio-off button as after turing it on again - my Wifi does not wake up. So I have wifi working all the time and no probs at all.

BTW: my wifi driver version is 7.3.1.42 dated 2007-06-18.

scolestock · #49 Post by **scolestock** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:34 am

Steerpike wrote:Last night, I closed the lid on my laptop simply to make it easier to carry and get out of the way. I do this quite a bit - makes it less obtrusive as I move it about the living room. I have set my power settings so that closing the lid 'does nothing' (i.e., does not go to standby). But the display DOES go dark - an automatic feature of the laptop, I believe, unrelated to windows). On raising the lid, the computer was non-responsive, and the screen remained dark. I tried close / open again (as referenced in kb 917332), but it was clear that the computer was locked - caps lock, scrLk, etc keys had no impact on green lamp indicators, etc (but Fn+PgUp still turned on the keyboard light, and Fn+NumLk still worked, as in all my freezes).

I can totally relate to this set of symptoms. My T60 has been doing this often while at work - no dock station, but I do suspend every day and rarely reboot. When I want to take the machine to a meeting, I unplug network and power and just close the lid (with no close-lid power mgmt settings in place) and start walking. Often, when I get to a meeting room, the machine is locked up as you describe. Based on this thread, I've updated the bios, turned off the "deep sleep" network setting and the ATI Power Play stuff. (Yeah, I know, I should just try one thing at a time, but I'm impatient with this now.)

I used to have "screen blackouts" - where it was clear the machine was still functional, just no screen. I would resolve by starting a remote desktop session and then cancelling it, or putting the machine in standby and coming out. Since that was a hassle, I disabled all power-off screen saver functionality, and it hasn't happened further.

- scott

jcf2007 · #50 Post by **jcf2007** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:22 pm

Last Sunday I reported that KB936357 seemed to cure the problem. Alas, the "lost cursor" finally happened again, on 12-Jul-07, which ended 11 days of trouble-free operation.

That same day, I ran System Update to check for anything new from Lenovo - it did want a new BIOS so I upgraded to version "1.09-1.07" (from "1.08-1.07").

But wait, there's more! Just now I was going to report all that. While checking the dates in an Excel file, the "lost cursor" just happened yet again!

Regardless of all the other wonderful qualities of this T60, if it crashes randomly without any warning, and this can't be resolved, then it is not much good.

Atomic Max · #51 Post by **Atomic Max** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:44 pm

jcf2007 wrote:Last Sunday I reported that KB936357 seemed to cure the problem. Alas, the "lost cursor" finally happened again, on 12-Jul-07, which ended 11 days of trouble-free operation.

jcf2007, do you remember what kind of network connection did you use that time (wired or wireless)?

wxxiong · #52 Post by **wxxiong** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 1:09 pm

scolestock wrote:
Steerpike wrote:Last night, I closed the lid on my laptop simply to make it easier to carry and get out of the way. I do this quite a bit - makes it less obtrusive as I move it about the living room. I have set my power settings so that closing the lid 'does nothing' (i.e., does not go to standby). But the display DOES go dark - an automatic feature of the laptop, I believe, unrelated to windows). On raising the lid, the computer was non-responsive, and the screen remained dark. I tried close / open again (as referenced in kb 917332), but it was clear that the computer was locked - caps lock, scrLk, etc keys had no impact on green lamp indicators, etc (but Fn+PgUp still turned on the keyboard light, and Fn+NumLk still worked, as in all my freezes).
I can totally relate to this set of symptoms. My T60 has been doing this often while at work - no dock station, but I do suspend every day and rarely reboot. When I want to take the machine to a meeting, I unplug network and power and just close the lid (with no close-lid power mgmt settings in place) and start walking. Often, when I get to a meeting room, the machine is locked up as you describe. Based on this thread, I've updated the bios, turned off the "deep sleep" network setting and the ATI Power Play stuff. (Yeah, I know, I should just try one thing at a time, but I'm impatient with this now.)

I used to have "screen blackouts" - where it was clear the machine was still functional, just no screen. I would resolve by starting a remote desktop session and then cancelling it, or putting the machine in standby and coming out. Since that was a hassle, I disabled all power-off screen saver functionality, and it hasn't happened further.

- scott

How do I turn off the ATI Power Play? Do you know what is that "Power Play" used for? - Thanks

#53 Post by **GomJabbar** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:15 pm

wxxiong wrote:How do I turn off the ATI Power Play? Do you know what is that "Power Play" used for?

Right click on an open area of the desktop, choose Properties > Settings > Advanced > POWERPLAY (tm).

Powerplay is used to conserve the battery for longer battery life.

Bagels4All · #54 Post by **Bagels4All** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 6:25 pm

Hi,

I too am having a freeze problem that is more in line with what Steerpike described in the original post than the standby issues described by others. I do not use a docking station, nor do I go into standby or hibernate. My freezes all occur when the laptop is up and running.

This is a T60P, Intel Core 2 T 5500 1.66GHZ, 2GB Ram, Mobility V5250. Bios version is 1.09, Embedded controller 1.07. Display driver is v8.362 (4/5/2007). Windows Vista.

The freezes I get occur when the laptop is being used in some way. I first noticed them while playing a first person shooter, and I thought the game was the cause, but later they began to occur when the game wasn't running. Although when the game is running, it will freeze up pretty reliably within the first few minutes. Curiously, when the freeze happens, alt-enter or alt-tab do not work. If I do control-alt-delete, I can bring up the screen to select task manager, log off, etc. If I select task manager, it does not come up immediately. I see the task manager icon in the taskbar, but not the actual window, which eventually appears if I wait a few minutes.

Once TM comes up, I try to kill every single process, hoping I find the one that is causing the problem. I am unable to kill the game process--it simply will not die, and I have to power down. When the freezes occur outside of the game, I've nuked just about every non-OS process without being able to bring it back from the freeze.

The freezes occur with all of my hardware (USB mouse, iPod) disconnected, and with the Wi-Fi physically switched off. They occur both plugged in and running off of batteries.

My hunch at this point is that this is a heat-related issue, or some kind of hardware failure. (I have put small blocks under the rear of my laptop to give better airflow, but this hasn't had any effect)

Oh yeah, one other odd thing. The Windows Event Log (right click Computer, Manage) is totally unhelpful. There are no Warning/Critical events recorded in the System, Security, or Application logs that appear to correspond with when the freezes occur.

Can anyone suggest a troubleshooting or debugging tool that could help us nail this down? Some program we can run in the background that might catch what is happening?

Atomic Max · #55 Post by **Atomic Max** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 4:11 am

Bagels4All, have you installed Intel Core 2 Duo microcode reliability update KB936357?

Bagels4All · #56 Post by **Bagels4All** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:12 am

No I had not tried that update, but when I downloaded it, the installer said it did not apply to my system.

For what it's worth, my system has appeared to be more stable since I disabled Diskeeper Disk Defragmenter from Startup (MSConfig, startup tab). Too soon to say if this fixes it.

edit: still freezing w/o diskeeper running.

unhooked · #57 Post by **unhooked** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:25 am

Bagels4All wrote:No I had not tried that update, but when I downloaded it, the installer said it did not apply to my system.

I've tried to update my system also but the Updater wasn't able to apply the updates.

seeplus · #58 Post by **seeplus** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:59 pm

I, too have the screen blanking problem. Which I don't mind as much as a more troubling development..

I've read this thread because after the most recent BIOS update my T60p 2623 has started locking up during use.

This lockup is a hard lock, though the fan still changes speeds and powered/battery lights still change, the system never comes back under my control, and a hard reboot is required.

I've not had a single system freeze in my first six months of use. Post 1.08 BIOS update, though, I've lost quite a bit of work (despite frequent saves.) Five lockups yesterday, one so far today. NO other software changes whatsoever.

These lockups have happened powered and on battery, WiFi and ethernet.

No entries in the event viewer.

edit:
I've installed the Intel CPU reliability hotfix and one of the screen blanking _> power settings hotfixes. Resume from cosed lid has been working so far, I'll keep this thread updated.

edit 2.0
lockups still happening; two more today. I'm going to try a clean format and install when I have the time.

Dodge DeBoulet · #59 Post by **Dodge DeBoulet** » Thu Jul 19, 2007 6:14 pm

An interesting, but possibly unrelated anecdote:

I had removed the ThinkPad Bluetooth support (not the basic XP support) early on so that I could sync with my BlackBerry.

Last week, I thought I'd try adding it back in and seeing if it still worked with my BB. It didn't of course, but lots of other stuff started working, like internet connection sharing with my PDA.

Unfortunately, I got my first hard freeze in 6 weeks, then after a reboot, a BSOD. So I uninstalled the BT stuff and I'm back to where I was before . . . things seem reasonably stable.

Of course, YMMV.

jcf2007 · #60 Post by **jcf2007** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:42 am

Atomic Max asked:
jcf2007, do you remember what kind of network connection did you use that time (wired or wireless)?

I use wired Ethernet 100% of the time. The other common factor of every single failure is that I always have RealPlayer audio streaming in the background.

T60 'freeze'

The "freeze"

Follow-up from BIOS update

Re: Follow-up from BIOS update

Now trying KB936357

KB936357 seems to solve the problem

Concur on freeze just by closing lid...

"Lost cursor" still happening

Re: "Lost cursor" still happening

Re: Concur on freeze just by closing lid...

Re: Concur on freeze just by closing lid...

My freezes not related to docking or standby

Re: My freezes not related to docking or standby

Re: "Lost cursor" still happening

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