T60 Startup Freeze - Explorer.exe just stops responding

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Law · #1 Post by **Law** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 12:42 pm

Hi, First time poster here. Our company bought 12 T60 2623-D3U laptops and they all have a few intermittent problems. The first is when logging in, explorer will just freeze. No crash, or message. I get an hour glass if I move the mouse over the task bar. The only thing that can be done is press Ctrl+Alt+Del. If I end explorer.exe and then manually start it again, the machine will be back to normal.

The second thing is much more rare. The machine will just completely ignore any shutdown command. It just stares back at me like nothing happened. The only solution to this is to shut it off via holding down the power button.

I have updated many of the drivers but I am trying to narrow down the problem.

Has anyone else seen any of these issues?

Law · #2 Post by **Law** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:03 am

No one has a clue?

#3 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:09 am

Look in Event Viewer for clues. Check the times that you had the crashes. Start > Control Panel > Administative Tools > Event Viewer.

It wouldn't hurt to check your hard disk for errors and bad sectors. Open My Computer, right-click on the drive, choose Properties > Tools > Error-checking > Check Now.

Law · #4 Post by **Law** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 11:30 am

GomJabbar wrote:Look in Event Viewer for clues. Check the times that you had the crashes. Start > Control Panel > Administative Tools > Event Viewer.

It wouldn't hurt to check your hard disk for errors and bad sectors. Open My Computer, right-click on the drive, choose Properties > Tools > Error-checking > Check Now.

Nothing out of the ordinary in the log viewer. The reason I don't think it's the HDD is that there are 12 machines that have this issue.

DAH · #5 Post by **DAH** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:01 pm

You might try the steps I posted here in post 6 I believe, reinstalling the BIOS That may help. Does it occur right after booting, and sometimes it works fine and other times it doesn't? Or does it happen after you've loaded a few programs?

Law · #6 Post by **Law** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:35 pm

DAH wrote:You might try the steps I posted here in post 6 I believe, reinstalling the BIOS That may help. Does it occur right after booting, and sometimes it works fine and other times it doesn't? Or does it happen after you've loaded a few programs?

I happens just as the task bar appears, icons start appearing next to the clock and it just suddenly stops.

The problem is that it only happens once in a while so it's very hard to troubleshoot.

#7 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 1:58 pm

I am seeing the exact problem you describe on an R52. I haven't been able to isolate it yet either because it happens maybe once every 3 to 4 start-ups. It might be meaningful for us both to post a list of running processes at the time and compare. I'll capture that next time.

#8 Post by **GomJabbar** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:40 pm

The problem may be your system's attempt to make a network connection. The computer can basically freeze for some minutes. See following link.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/832161/en-us

Otherwise, maybe the following will help.
Understanding and Troubleshooting Unrecoverable Errors (Faults) in Internet Explorer

tdphatak · #9 Post by **tdphatak** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 2:17 pm

Hello. I have been having the same problem with XP on a T61. Once every 3-4 boots, the explorer bar freezes with only a few icons loaded in the system tray. I can ctra-alt-del and shutdown or restart but the start menu is inaccessible. I initially had Vista and the Vista bar used to freeze up but not on a boot - just sometime randomly while using the laptop. I don't have THAT problem on XP, just the occasional bootup freezes. I'm also having that random flashing screen/refresh problem.

#10 Post by **Harryc** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:08 pm

We seem to be having a rash of these explorer bar freezes. Hopefully we'll figure it out soon. It's on (3) different models of Thinkpad so far. My money is on a utility that we're all running....Access connections maybe? Is everyone running that?

Law · #11 Post by **Law** » Thu Sep 20, 2007 3:59 pm

Harryc wrote:We seem to be having a rash of these explorer bar freezes. Hopefully we'll figure it out soon. It's on (3) different models of Thinkpad so far. My money is on a utility that we're all running....Access connections maybe? Is everyone running that?

For some reason I have a feeling it's one of IBMs utilities but I long ago removed access connections because it [censored] me off..

Law · #12 Post by **Law** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 10:59 am

Ok so here is the list of processes that are running at the time of the problem. Sorry for my crude paint image but it was all I could think of to capture the list. Is there an easier way to grab a text list of them through the command line?

http://www.pbase.com/broe/image/85959390.jpg

DAH · #13 Post by **DAH** » Fri Sep 21, 2007 1:41 pm

Law wrote:
DAH wrote:

It's still way to early to tell, but the BIOS reinstall seems to have help my system, I've now been power up for 42:33 with no lockups, I tried rebooting my system a number of times before seeing how long my system will run before it crashes. Before reprogramming Embedded Controller I was lucky to get my system working for 6 hours. It's now been 42 plus hours. The only change was a fresh install of the Embedded Controller. Note that simply reinstalling the BIOS did not help, it was reprogramming the Embedded Controller that has made a world of difference.

jianbob · #14 Post by **jianbob** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:20 am

I have the same problem. The explorer bar freezes when log in. I have to reboot or log out to recover.
It seems this is caused by some ThinkVantage programs from my experience. I've never encountered this problem untill I installed System Update 3 and updated many programs including BIOS update .Then I uninstalled System Update 3 but the problem remained. Maybe it is caused by the BIOS update but I haven't test yet.

Mick · #15 Post by **Mick** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:26 pm

Law wrote:snipped

Law,

I had the same issues with Vista. I solved these problems by uninstalling Rescue & Recovery and CSS but first of all disabling Windows first login window (no user account password or fingerprints request).
No more freeze after startup and no more logmon.exe and explorer.exe crashes on my T60.
I hope it's useful.

Mick

#16 Post by **gator** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:06 pm

Of late, I have been having this exact issue on mt T60 as well. It used to be fine beofre .... Explorer.exe simply hangs and a restart usually gets this working. I thought it was an XP issue, but now that I know so many people are having this issue, I am going to go and dig.

I have a strong feeling it is due to access connections, I have tweaked and pruned all my other startup processes and I cannot think of anything other process that can cause this ... I will post back after some testing over the weekend.

#17 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:22 pm

It's Explorer.exe that hangs on my R50 as well Gator. If I try to shut down the machine after it hangs, I get a message "Explorer.exe is not responding". Can one of the mods please make Lenovo aware of this situation?

Anthony S · #18 Post by **Anthony S** » Sun Sep 23, 2007 5:12 am

I've also been having this problem under XP for a long time - explorer.exe hangs on restart, so task bar inactive. Another restart usually solves it.

I earlier investigated at length, but eventually gave up. It usually occurs after installing programs or a system update, but I couldn't find a clear correlation. None of the suggestions in this thread seem to be relevant. Fortunately, the problem is not common.

Law · #19 Post by **Law** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:45 am

Now one of our users seems to have it every time she starts up her machine. I hope our other T60s don't follow suit.

Anyone have any luck figuring out whats going on? I am thinking of uninstalling all of the Thinkvantage software and see if that has an effect.

#20 Post by **Harryc** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:59 am

Sorry Law, haven't had time to mess around with it yet. It's on the list though

.

Thinkboy · #21 Post by **Thinkboy** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 10:56 am

I have exactly the same problem of freezing. I have installed the latest BIOS version.
I would like to try to reprogram the embedded controller, as proposed by DAH in its post.

However, I cannot downgrade from the BIOS version 79uj24us to 79uj11us, as I receive an error message "Bios image file does not match this system".

Does anyone know a way to reprogram the embedded controller?

Thanks.

#22 Post by **gator** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 11:49 am

It is not Access connections that is causing this problem. I checked that out a couple of days back ... it is a windows issue afterall I guess.

Altadena_Mark · #23 Post by **Altadena_Mark** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 2:09 pm

I too am having this with my X61s recently. In other posts, I've come across a note to change the startup of TVTscheduler from automatic to manual and so far this has helped my system.

#24 Post by **Harryc** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 3:17 pm

Altadena_Mark wrote:I too am having this with my X61s recently. In other posts, I've come across a note to change the startup of TVTscheduler from automatic to manual and so far this has helped my system.

Good one:). I'll try it thanks.

#25 Post by **gator** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 4:12 pm

I dont have TVT_scheduler running in startup and I still have this issue

Altadena_Mark · #26 Post by **Altadena_Mark** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 6:54 pm

I didn't change the TVTShed.exe in startup. I ran SERVICES.MSC and changed the setting from automatic to manual. This seems to help. See how it's configured in SERVICES.MSC .

rubb3rtoe · #27 Post by **rubb3rtoe** » Tue Oct 02, 2007 10:12 am

We use T60's here and haven't had this issue until we start using the T61's. My problem is similar. Intermittently, the task bar will start to load the system tray icons and then the computer keyboard will not respond properly. I can do a ctrl+alt+del and the Task Manager will appear, but other keys like the Windows key wont work. Have to shutdown and restart then it works until it happens again. As a side note, we dont load RnR, CSS or Access Connections so those should be unrelated.

Thanks for the tip on TVTScheduler, I just removed it and will test.

rubb3rtoe · #28 Post by **rubb3rtoe** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 9:09 am

Just an update on TVTScheduler. I removed it yesterday by taking "scheduler_proxy.exe" it out of the Registry and setting it to manual startup in Services. Still locks up when attempting to load the desktop and crashes on explorer.exe when I shutdown via task manager.

WilsonF · #29 Post by **WilsonF** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 12:45 pm

I had the same problem on a t43 running XPSP2 and solved it by uninstalling ThinkVantage System Update, which is the app to which TVTSCHED.EXE belongs. Although I can't be sure, I think that System Update was looking for a network connection before Access Connections authenticated the system to the WiFi network, and System Update wouldn't let anything else have any resources until it was "satisfied."

Thankfully, I haven't had the problem on any of the other TPs. It may be a problem with a recent upgrade to System Update.

I had a very difficult time getting task manager to run during the hang so I could see what was using all the CPU time.

#30 Post by **Johan** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 2:22 pm

As noted in this thread, also T4x/p's are troubled by the "tvtsched.exe", causing slow boot and 100% CPU load (see the new thread in the T4x forum: Slow boot problem and solution). The problem has been reported to Lenovo.

For those wanting to see the various process-dependencies and child processes (which is quite difficult using Windows' own built-in Task Manager), a highly recommended, free alternative is the Sysinternals/Microsoft Process Explorer. Use AutoRuns for Windows to alter auto-started files.

T60 Startup Freeze - Explorer.exe just stops responding

T60 Startup Freeze - Explorer.exe just stops responding

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