T60- xp sp3 will freeze when power cord is removed

[bugmn]

Hi, I bought this T60 product code:2008J3G updated to bios 2.27. Everything is up to date thanks to System update but still I have this annoying problem with it. I cannot use it on battery. As soon as I remove the power cable it freezes in a matter of 5-10 seconds. I tried to boot on Battery only and soon after login, it freezes and only a button restart can solve it. It must be some driver it loads or fail to load because on safe mode it starts and loads ok, login is also ok in safe mode on battery or on power cable, power cable can also be removed on safe mode with no freezing. Anyone have an idea what driver can cause this to uninstall it.

Thanks in advance

[TuuS]

It does sound software related if it will work on battery in safemode. I was going to suggest booting from a liveCD to rule out OS issues, but you've already done that.

I'd consider reformatting the drive, or installing an additional windows version in another partition. All my computers have a backup installation of windows, so I can instantly separate hardware/software failure.

If you have room on the drive but only one partition, do a search for "parted magic", it's a free program you boot from liveCD and you can resize your existing partition and make a new one.

Or, if you want to do it the hard way and save your current windows, then uninstall stuff, starting with any power management apps, if necessary strip it down to only default winxp drivers for everything, then install the latest drivers one at a time after you've gotten rid of problematic one.

Good Luck



ps. I'd pay careful attention to anything that is set to change on battery power, perhaps set both ac/battery to the same settings so nothing is changed and disable any power saving options until you get this sorted.

[ajkula66]

Very likely nothing more than a bad battery. I've seen this type of behaviour on several T6x and X6x systems.

Test the machine with a *known good* genuine Lenovo battery and report back.

Good luck.

[TuuS]

Very likely nothing more than a bad battery.

Wouldn't it have the problem in safemode too, if it was the battery?

[ajkula66]

TuuS wrote:

Wouldn't it have the problem in safemode too, if it was the battery?

Not necessarily. Safe mode disables a *lot* of stuff.

I still stand by my initial presumptive diagnosis until testing the unit as I had suggested proves differently...

[hoax32]

It could be a conflict with the intel speed step driver.
This would explain why it works when you start in safe mode - because XP doesnt load the speed stepping drivers.
Try to disable intel speed step in the bios and see if it works.

[ajkula66]

hoax32 wrote:

It could be a conflict with the intel speed step driver.
This would explain why it works when you start in safe mode - because XP doesnt load the speed stepping drivers.
Try to disable intel speed step in the bios and see if it works.

Absolutely, positively NOT.

Period.

[hoax32]

Absolutely, positively NOT.

Period.

This solved a booting issue with windows 2000 on my old T20 a loooooooooong time ago ("Windows 2000 - no service pack" would freeze instantly after booting but it worked fine in safe mode) so I just mentioned it! ;D
Can you explain please why not?

[ajkula66]

hoax32 wrote:

Can you explain please why not?

Honestly, you've done an excellent job of explaining it yourself here:

This solved a booting issue with windows 2000 on my old T20 a loooooooooong time ago ("Windows 2000 - no service pack"

[bugmn]

Hi guys, well unfortunately I did not manage to get a *known good* genuine Lenovo battery to test it with. I'm still looking for the culprit driver which causes the hang-on. I unistalled the power manager, updated the lan intel pro/1000 PL driver, looking for that illusive "Deep Smart Powerdown" in order to disable it. I think this setting it is available only on Win7 driver. The battery seems good as it lasts about 2 hours in safe mode with no hang up. One more thing for my peace of mind, while the cpu'z detect my cpu as "Intel Mobile Core2Duo T7400", the windows task manager shows only one graph instead of 2, and the Lenovo Thinkvantage toolbox detects the CPU as Intel Core2 T7400 and at multicore test says: "enable all cores in bios" ). Also and other software like coretemp, detects only one core, one thread while the processor model is Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 Merom . This really intrigues me, it is a C2D or a Core2 Solo. There are no T7400 Solo just Duo's http://ark.intel.com/products/27256.

Thanks again for your input.

[ajkula66]

T7400 is a Core 2 Duo CPU.

I also get only one graph in Task Manager with T7600...

You can check whether both cores are enabled in BIOS under Configuration>CPU

Good luck.

[bugmn]

Hmmmm, I checked the for the same thing on a HP Desktop machine running XP Sp3 on a C2D E7400, CPU'z showed 2 cores 2 threads and the task manager had 2 graphs, . Can it be an XP issue as I bought the T60 blank with no OS on it, and I made the restore from a T42 Rescue disks set. As the T42 had a Dothan Pentium M processor can it be due to that? By the way both cores are enabled in bios.

[bugmn]

Well after searches I stumbled onto this topic on this forum, with the same problem.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 04&start=0

It seems that only a re-install with an image created for a Multiprocessor HAL will fix this problem.

Or not??

I was happy that I identified the problem so further searches on internet lead me to the solution. Easy as 1, 2, 3.

http://www.pimp-my-rig.com/2008/08/arti ... or-to.html

So now I have 2 cores showing in the cpuz and in task manager.

I will check if this is not solving the power issue also.

Wish you all the best guys

[ajkula66]

Kinda funny...got 2 identical - for the purposes of this topics - T60p units, both with T7600 CPUs.

Unit # 1 is running W7 and showing only one core in task manager.

Unit # 2 is running "developer's preview" aka W8, and is showing both cores in task manager...

[bugmn]

Well, the battery problem is also solved. Battery still showing 3 hrs left . I do not know about the Win7 but you still can check what hal*.dll you have. Normally if it is installed from a retail cd the proper HAL should be detected automatically and installed. If you did it like me and restore it from a previous image it can happen like in my case, as mine was created for an uniprocessor platform.