Thinkpad R61i slow startup, standby freezeout, etc.

[jfalcone]

Hello Thinkpad gurus:

I am a novice compared to most of the entries I have read so bear with me. History: ThinkpadR61i purchased in May '08 with souped up RAM, etc. Started with Vista, crashed all the time, went back to XP Pro.

--ISSUE 1: Slow start up
Takes 5-6 minutes, quick to login screen, then crawls along with a brief black screen thrown in. Sometimes never comes out of black screen, have to reboot. When this happens, I get the following "not responding" issues:
-LPManagerWindow
-AcWLIconWnd
-SSMMgr

--ISSUE 2: Does not come out of Standby reliably
Get the dreaded black screen as mentioned above, can sometimes come back several minutes later and it has solved its own problems, but more often it is frozen, have to reboot.

--ISSUE 3: Knocked off wireless, ThinkVantage window will not open
Sometimes upon startup the wireless connection does not kick in but I go to the ThinkVantage window and can get on. Other times the ThinkVantage window will not open but just flashes an outline of itself and disappears, so I cannot get online and have to reboot, cycling back to the first issue!

From what I read from in other posts, the LPManagerWindow is a snafu with the ThinkVantage Connections bloatware, but I have not seen the other two files/exe/whatever-they-ares mentioned in tandem. Instead of trying to remove this stuff (as suggested), I have tried updating for missing drivers (also as suggested), but I apparently am not missing anything. All three of these are probably related, and probably an issue with ThinkVantage, but without updates I am at a standstill.

Didn't expect all these issue with a new computer, and have been a very frustrated grad student for several months. Wishing I had my old crummy Dell, but the husband made it his Linux baby.

Thanks so much!

Josephine
Western North Carolina

[agarza]

As a hobby I'm a knoledgeable tech guy who repairs laptops and PC's. I would recommend you do the following:

- Download PC Doctor and run all diagnosis
- Wipe again the disk, download Hitachi Drive Fitness Tool (in case your HDD is a Hitachi), or use the original utility of your HDD manufacturer to write zeros to the drive. This ensures the drive is error free
- Have you used the XP disk you used on your R61i in other machines so that you know the disc install Windows correctly, maybe some files are corrupt?
- Install the least minimum of Lenovo utilities.
In my case I reinstalled my T61 going from Vista Home Premium to XP Pro (Spanish language), and only installed Power Manager, Power Management Driver, Hotkey. I left all the other utilities without being installed. Of couse all the audio, video, chipset drivers were installed. Make sure first driver you install is the chipset one, right after you've booted to XP desktop.

The process of installing XP is pretty straight forward and the problems you're referring to may be related to some software issue.
Follow the Clean Install Guide on NBR Forums:
Official Lenovo Thinkpad Clean Install Guide

Doesn't hurt to the install again everything. I'm sure following the guide would yield positive results.

Good luck

[jfalcone]

Received -- thanks so much and I will post results of suggestions!
Best,
Josephine