T61 Freeze

[krame00]

Hello, everyone –

Forgive the newbie post – I have been lurking on this message board since the beginning of January when I purchased my T61 and immediately commenced with having issues.

I purchased the T61 because we have always had Thinkpads at work. They are wonderful machines, but I realize now that there is something to be said for a corporate image.

Here is my problem:

1. My T61 freezes like clockwork every 18-20 hours or so.
2. It does not matter what state the computer is in (in the middle of work or in the middle of the night).
3. It is not related to coming out of sleep mode
4. There is no blue screen of death, it is just frozen and can only be recovered by powering down.
5. It occurs while running on battery, running on AC, or even while running on AC with the battery removed

I have tried the following:

1. Called Lenovo support in Atlanta and refused their advances for me to send the laptop to them
2. Discovered that my problem is not at all uncommon with the new T61s and called Lenovo and told them I wanted my money back. When they refused, I wrote them a nasty letter.
3. Installed every available driver update using the Thinkvantage update utility, up to and including the BIOS update that they released in early April, and the most recent Ultranav and video drivers
4. Installed every Microsoft update recommended on this MB including:
a. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923232
b. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/936357
c. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834631
d. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/896256
5. Changed the settings on both the wireless and Ethernet cards to not allow the cards to be turned off to save power
6. Ran the Microsoft memory diagnostic - all is clear after three passes


So here I sit. I know I have an awesome machine, and that there is probably some simple fix I am missing. But again, while I am technically capable, I am woefully over my head here, and would love it if someone could take a look at what I have done and let me know if I have missed something.

Help me ObiWans, you are my only hope!

[tbThink]

I would download and burn the PC DOS bootable CD diagnostics from Lenovo and run it overnight, several passes perhaps and see what shows up. From what I have read, they will have you do that anyway to confirm service is required.

[hart22]

Not sure if this will help or not, but do you have Diskeeper running, and if so, is it set to Smart Schedule (or otherwise set to perform low-level background defragmenting whenever needed)? My experience is that when a HD defragmenter is set to automatic and there are bad sectors on the disk the machine will be prone to freezing from time to time whenever Diskeeper etc runs and encounters that sector(s).

You can try disabling Diskeeper, or running a full defragment pass and see if that always makes your system freeze, to confirm this. Perhaps your HD is somewhat faulty?

[Harryc]

Any red or yellow flagged item in the system logs? The two most common things I have seen cause freezes like this in the T6X series is wireless and RAM. I think I'd try to disable wireless first (fn-f5) to see if that makes any difference. Then I might pop out one of the 2 memory modules (try both separately) to see if that helps. I'd also boot up a Linux live CD to see if the machine freezes in Linux. If it does, your most definitely looking at a hardware problem. Oh, run PC-Doctor, all tests.

[krame00]

...two most common things I have seen cause freezes like this in the T6X series is wireless... ...I think I'd try to disable wireless first (fn-f5) to see if that makes any difference.

Thanks to all three of you for your suggestions! I am off today with the hope of trying new things!

Harry's comment about wireles is a little worrisome though. I run the machine solely on wireless - I do not use the ethernet card at all. If this is an issue with the wireless, is it a problem with the card that can be fixed, or replaced? Or, does this mean that I need to abandon the idea of using wireless as my primary network connection?

[Harryc]

If it's wireless, it's either a bad adapter or a driver problem. On a new machine if the WiFi adapter is defective it would be covered under warranty, so no worries. It is a CRU (customer replaceable unit), so you don't need to ship your laptop in to get it fixed. They will ship you a new card which you replace and then send back the old one.

[krame00]

Well, I think it is the wireless card...

Thanks again for all of the help.

I turned off the card, and I experienced no freezing for over 48 hours. The only lurking variable that might sway the results is that I also did not use the internet or connect to my home network for those 48 hours, either. The only way to be totally sure that it is the wireless card would be to connect to the web via the ethernet connection and use my computer as I normally would and see if I still have no crashes...

That being said - I am wondering - in my early frenzy to isolate the freezing issues, I DID download the most current driver for my card (Intel Pro wireless 3945 ABG) from Intel, which happens to be newer than the one on the Lenovo Downloads Site. Was that a mistake? Should I try backleveling to the Lenovo driver before I assume it is a hardware issue?

Any other ideas on how I can troubleshoot the wireless card itself?

Thank you very much for sending me in the right direction!

....off to get a looong cat-5 cable!

[krame00]

Hello, again -

I was able to undeniably associate the freezing with the wireless connection - my laptop never freezes when running on ethernet.

I called Atlanta, and after some convincing, they sent me a new wireless card (Intel PRO wireless 3945ABG). Sadly - the laptop still freezes.

When they sent me the card, they told me that if the new card doesn't work, I should re-install windows.

Before I embark on that endeavor - does anyone disagree with that solution? I know that many in this forum do not trust Lenovo support any further than they can be thrown, and would love to hear your thoughts...

Thank you!

[Harryc]

Deinstall the Intel driver and Install the Lenovo Wireless driver as a first pass at the issue, then test. If that doesn't work, personally I'd reinstall windows and 'only' install the Lenovo wireless driver and nothing else. Actually if you use Thinkvantage rescue and recovery it will install the right driver for you. If it doesn't freeze then I'd carefully and methodically install one or two updates at a time logging what was installed. Since it takes so long to freeze this may take awhile, but you will find the cause if it is repeatable, and that is a big IF. In my mind the major suspect would be the non-Lenovo Intel driver.

[hellosailor]

Khana, when you are running any version of NT (NT3.x, NT4.x, Windows2000 aka NT5.0, XP aka NT5.1, Vista aka NT6.0) and someone says "reinstall Windows" that's usually a cop-out, or a tech who has spent too long playing with Win9x.

Usually--not always.

Almost anything CAN be fixed in NT without a reinstallation. The problem is, if you know or suspect the user may have been poking around and making changes, and not keeping a change log, it could take forever to find and fix the problem. For instance, you have a Intel driver when both Intel and Lenovo would tell you that driver is NOT DESIGNED FOR YOUR COMPUTER. Sometimes there honestly are small tweaks that make "generic" drivers (and software) unsuitable for different target systems.

If you have used any software to "improve" your internet connections, that changes MPUs or does other things that are supposed to be innocuous...sometimes they aren't a good idea either.

Can NT always be fixed? Yes, pretty much so. But depending on what you may or may not have gone into, a reinstall may be the only practical way to make sure everything is set properly. I'm usually very reluctant to do that--because it will leave days of upgrades and reinstalls to be done, and then if the hardware is the real problem--you're still screwed.

I'd rather ask Lenovo to take the computer back to camp for a week, burn it in there and see if it works or not. If it works there--with their hard drive--then the hardware is OK, and I'm back to software options.

"Divide and Conquer". Look at ways to separate your software load from the hardware, and examine each separately. That might mean buying a second (small, old, cheap) hard drive to keep a vanilla installation on, to run diagnostics on your own. Or, you might find some kind of CD/DVD-bootable diagnostic to run.

Either way..."Reinstall the system" has been used too often, too callously, by too many cheap techs. Famously by one big vendor in Texas, who's name rhymes with "HELL".

[davidhbrown]

To the original poster...

Just curious... can you still move the cursor when this happens? I've been getting occasional (not clockwork and not using wireless) freezes and the cursor will still move... even changes shape when moving over different applications (e.g., to the spinning circle wait cursor). But nothing responds to clicking; no response to Ctrl-Alt-Del either.

[pswilson]

Hi,

I've had many issues on many laptops...all with the Intel PRO wireless 3945ABG adapter

The worst situation I saw was running Vista on a Toshiba Tecra of my friends. Every 20 mins or so it would completely lock up and you would not be able to do anything at all with any network connections. Rebooting would resolve this, for 20 minutes.

My friend took his laptop back in the end and got a different machine running XP (can't remember if it was the same adapter in it). He has since had no further issues.

If you browse for issues with the Intel PRO wireless 3945ABG adapter you'll find tons of hits.

Cheers,
Paul.

[jimmy274]

The main thing about this [censored] Intel card is that you install the right drivers in the right way! I've had problems with it, but I'm running it for a month now, no problems at all.
First, download the latest Lenovo drivers for your card and then install it with a installer rather than pointing to an .inf file with the device manager. That (and those MS fixes you mentioned) fixed all of my problems!

[krame00]

DavidHBrown: - no, the mouse does not move either...

I reinstalled the driver so that it is the same one as the version on Lenovo's site. I am still having issue with freezing.

My next step will be to use Thinkvantage rescue and recovery to install the wireless piece of XP.

If not that, then I will just have to ship it to Lenovo.

[krame00]

OK - I am getting ready to submit.

I am going to send my laptop to Lenovo for a reimage.

Any pointers on what I should do before I send? Remove hard drive, perhaps? Back up data, most likely?

Anything else?

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful support.

[davidhbrown]

I am going to send my laptop to Lenovo for a reimage.[...] Remove hard drive, perhaps? Back up data, most likely?[...]

I'd make sure the hardware in the machine is exactly what is shipped with. If you remove the hard drive, they're going to have a real challenge re-imaging the system, aren't they? Definitely back up your data.

[krame00]

Reimage w/o hard drive... Yeah that must have sounded stupid... I am not stupid, however - so I will clarify -

Someone earlier suggested having Lenovo first check the hardware on their hard drive to isolate possible hardware issues. That is what I was referring to.