Sluggish T22 issues

[madkat]

Just bought for a very low price (around 40$) a used but in excelent condition T22
originally the owner sold it for "parts", saying that it won't boot, charge, or show any signs of life...
turned out to be a faulty AC adapter...

anyways - its working fine, looks out-of-the box, BUT when trying to watch movies (divx, avi, mpg) it stumbles, skips frames, sound goes ahead etc. in a word... sluggish
tried different codecs, even older ones (2002-2003) and still no luck
it runs XP SP1, and has the following specs:
900Mhz PIII, 256 ram, 32gb HDD, the usual S3 8mb video, DVD/CD-RW

from your experience - installing Win 2000 would help in the current configuration, or adding more RAM is a must?
the processor speed is on maximum in bios, and adaptive/max in NHC ...

thanks

[nikki605]

My T21, which is basically the same as your T22, originally shipped with Win98. When I upgraded to WinXp, I noticed the same sluggish behavior.

After reading many of the helpful posts here, I did 3 upgrades:

1. Maxed out the memory at 512MB (biggest bang for the buck).
2. Upgraded from the small, 4200RPM HDD, to a larger & faster 7200RPM HDD.
3. Replaced the factory 800MHz CPU with a 1GHz CPU (SL53S).

Watching video is still not great, but if I have nothing else running and only the bare essential background tasks loaded, the S3 video chip can handle it.

If you go for the memory upgrade, make sure you get low density RAM sticks. Search the forum for "low density memory" and you will find many essential posts by Ray and other guru's.

[madkat]

Thanks - great but not encouraging...
The T22 has a Win 2000 sticker ... a downgrade i can accept
It is not my main machine (and it wont be, the Frankenpad is brilliant) - just wanted to make it work better with minimum fuss...
upgrading the ram costs as much as i paid for the machine - so... no go
the hard disk - i'll check if its a 4200 or 5400 model

I'll try installing win 2000 and see what happens (not too much hope though)

[RealBlackStuff]

Hope for you! See this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=73673

[madkat]

thanks - i've read that topic.
Just installed last night Win 2000 prof - but only SP1 - its a little bit zippier, but now the codecs i have are too "recent" for the OS
Tonight i'll install SP4, and DirectX 8, uninstall the codecs - and install the CCCP thingie - to see if it works

Anyways, beside this issue it works great, and feels incredibly stuurdy for an almost 10 year old machine, and the beauty of it is that it has all the original parts in it.

I'll keep you posted

[moronoxyd]

Two suggestions:

Use a media player like mplayer (with MPUI GUI) or VLC instead of Windows Media Player.
WMP is a ressource hog.

Try different drivers for the video card.
Replacing the official driver for my T23 with a newer (former ChromeMetal, now 3DP) improved perfomance somewhat.
Since your T22 has a similar video card, you might be able to use the same driver.

[sjthinkpader]

Take a look at the IDE Channel settings whether they are on DMA or PIO.

If you are on Win2K SP4, there is a Cumulative Rollup and Windows Installer that you also want to install. .NET Framework 2.0 will work also. After these, most later ThinkVantage utilities will work.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=76656

[madkat]

managed to install the codecs listed above - the Comunist USSR thingie - CCCP
its working great, no hickups on movies - what i've tested so far

.net framework 2.0 - i wanted to install it for NHC (it requires it) but i'm missing some microsoft installer or something - probably after SP4 will work
anyways for now it it's beginning to workok

thank you all for the support... only a Thinkpad can make you want to keep a machine bought initially for parts (sorry for the sentimentalism)

on the other hand - the state of the machine amazes me - it has the original battery (panasonic from 2001) with only 56 cycles on it, and in green
still it holds charge, inintially Batt Maximiser shows 2h+ lifetime but after 20min. of normal decreasing it drops to 3% and stays there for the next 30-40 minutes
i'll dig around to see what can be done in this matter too

[RealBlackStuff]

but i'm missing some microsoft installer or something

This is what you need to install: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

[madkat]

Thanks RBS
Installed SP4, the thingie from your link, NHC, and now it's working the way it's supposed to
Only issue left is the battery - even after 3-4 full discharge cycles - it lasts randomly between one and a half hours and less than 30 minutes...
still in green though...

[RealBlackStuff]

I'd say get another battery.
Look for a T30 battery, they fit in a T2x (but not the other way around).
They have a slightly higher capacity than the normal T2x battery.