x61s instability

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jgsx · #1 Post by **jgsx** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:41 pm

I used an X40 then an X60s without any problems. I ran Vista on my X60s without any issues.

I recently got an X61s. Firefox would freeze every other day or so. I replaced it with another X61s. Programs freeze on this one also. Nothing ever freezes on my X60s.

Has anyone else had issues with the x61s?

sugo · #2 Post by **sugo** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 9:58 pm

Does your X61s come with onboard (intel flash) Turbo memory? If so have you tried disabling it in BIOS?

Antioch · #3 Post by **Antioch** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 10:47 pm

Intel Turbo memory is unstable? I've never seen any reports of that.

naclx · #4 Post by **naclx** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:01 pm

The early release of Firefox is not completely compatible to vista. Maybe it's not the
Thinkpad's problem.

You can try the Firefox 2.0.0.6

politicorific · #5 Post by **politicorific** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:26 pm

how are you using an early version of firefox, seems like every update that comes around annoys you to death to upgrade.

What sites are you accessing that cause firefox to crash? A lot of embedded files, like relying on quicktime to be your resident codec causes my system problems.

jgsx · #6 Post by **jgsx** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 11:35 pm

I'm using the newest firefox. It happens on normal sites that I always visit. Google, gmail, news sites, etc. It is random. It doesn't freeze on the same site. It has happend three times today. Very annoying.

Yes, I have turbo memory. It was the ONLY reason that I got an x61s since the performance boost over the x60s is not noticeable except for boot time

roblim · #7 Post by **roblim** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 3:36 pm

Using an x61s, clean installed XP Pro SP2, necessary drivers, and the latest firefox. No instability whatsoever. I suspect vista.

What is your boot time with the turbo memory? I am getting 25 seconds from pressing the power button to seeing the desktop in XP Pro. is vista w/ turbo even faster than that? I have a 7200 rpm drive BTW.

#8 Post by **tomh009** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 9:26 pm

jgsx wrote:I'm using the newest firefox. It happens on normal sites that I always visit. Google, gmail, news sites, etc. It is random. It doesn't freeze on the same site. It has happend three times today. Very annoying.

Yes, I have turbo memory. It was the ONLY reason that I got an x61s since the performance boost over the x60s is not noticeable except for boot time

Is it just Firefox that's freezing when this happens? Or the entire system?

I would also suggest trying to turn off the turbo memory (to eliminate that as a potential cause), and changing your SATA drive in the BIOS to compatibility mode (as some have reported issues with the Intel matrix driver). Need to narrow down the possible causes in order to solve the problem.

Eric Giles · #9 Post by **Eric Giles** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 10:02 pm

There are some pretty long threads on this issue on a couple of other forums. It occurred on my X61t but only while it was running off the battery. The mouse would still move, but the system would become totally unresponsive. Only thing you could do was hold down the power and force it to turn off.

I disabled the Readydrive and Readyboost features and the problem stopped. Seems to be a Vista bug that is causing this.

Antioch · #10 Post by **Antioch** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 11:40 pm

That sounds like a different problem than the OP is having. His whole machine isn't freezing, just firefox.

Eric Giles · #11 Post by **Eric Giles** » Thu Aug 09, 2007 11:46 pm

Antioch wrote:That sounds like a different problem than the OP is having. His whole machine isn't freezing, just firefox.

He does mention Firefox, but then says:

Programs freeze on this one also. Nothing ever freezes on my X60s.

So I took it that by 'programs' he was having other issues besides just Firefox. The turbo memory has shown to be causing many people problems-not only with the X61's, but T61's too. Trying to disable it is still an easy way to check for a solution.

stylinexpat · #12 Post by **stylinexpat** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 1:03 pm

roblim wrote:Using an x61s, clean installed XP Pro SP2, necessary drivers, and the latest firefox. No instability whatsoever. I suspect vista.

What is your boot time with the turbo memory? I am getting 25 seconds from pressing the power button to seeing the desktop in XP Pro. is vista w/ turbo even faster than that? I have a 7200 rpm drive BTW.

25 seconds is very nice and very fast

How much RAM do you have?

roblim · #13 Post by **roblim** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 9:12 pm

stylinexpat wrote:
roblim wrote:Using an x61s, clean installed XP Pro SP2, necessary drivers, and the latest firefox. No instability whatsoever. I suspect vista.

What is your boot time with the turbo memory? I am getting 25 seconds from pressing the power button to seeing the desktop in XP Pro. is vista w/ turbo even faster than that? I have a 7200 rpm drive BTW.
25 seconds is very nice and very fast How much RAM do you have?

1 GB (2 x 512). The whole turbo memory thing seems very fishy. Ars technica did a review and saw no real world benefit. Worse yet I think it may be causing slow downs & unexplained crashes.

Antioch · #14 Post by **Antioch** » Fri Aug 10, 2007 10:51 pm

They also did a follow up article after Intel explained things to them, and I believe that article showed that Intel found the proper hooks in Vista to truly enable Turbo Memory and showed some rather impressive benchmarks.

I dont have the link offhand, but I got it from somewhere on this forum, heh.

#15 Post by **gator** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:15 am

Did you upgrade the RAM yourself? Your issues are very typical of bad memory.

roblim · #16 Post by **roblim** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:18 pm

Antioch wrote:They also did a follow up article after Intel explained things to them, and I believe that article showed that Intel found the proper hooks in Vista to truly enable Turbo Memory and showed some rather impressive benchmarks.

I dont have the link offhand, but I got it from somewhere on this forum, heh.

My bad it was an anandtech article:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/in ... spx?i=3009

And their conclusion is pretty much the same as the original article.
Getting back to OP's problem, it could be a bad driver as well. I once had system crashes on an x32 because of a video driver. And it always happened when scrolling a document in Microsoft Word.

Antioch · #17 Post by **Antioch** » Sat Aug 11, 2007 12:24 pm

There ya go. There was another article somewhere that said Intel was demoing a model with beta code that found the proper hooks in Vista to increase TurboMemory performance, and the article guessed that it was a likely candidate to be included in SP1.

Anyways, as the article says, it's a new product, give it some time to mature - just like Vista needs time to get smoothed out.

jgsx · #18 Post by **jgsx** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:32 pm

No I did not upgrade or open the system. It shipped like this. This is two x61s systems in a row that have the identical crashing problem.

#19 Post by **tomh009** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 5:00 am

Have you tried updating your Vista drivers to the latest ones on the web site? I recall at least the earlier version of the Intel matrix (storage) driver had problems. And my X61 with Vista is rock-solid, including Firefox (and the X61s shouldn't be much different).

jgsx · #20 Post by **jgsx** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 8:09 am

I've done update through Windows Update and Thinkvantage System update. Are there any others?

#21 Post by **tomh009** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 9:06 am

That should do it, really. To eliminate the Intel matrix driver from the equation, you could switch to SATA compatibility mode in the BIOS (no performance impact, really) and see whether that makes a difference.

x61s instability

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