My T61 came today - and it blows

Got my T61 today from compusmart.ca

1Gb RAM
T7300 2GHz
1Gb turbo memory
120gb hard drive

The first thing I hate about it is that it takes 7 minutes to boot. SEVEN ****!NG MINUTES!!!

The second thing I hate about it is that, while running system update and flashing BIOS, I got the blue screen of death. It took no fewer than 3 seven minute cold boots to get explorer.exe to load properly.

The third thing I hate about it is (there would have only been 2 things, except....) while writing this thread I got another blue screen of death! Pathetic.

 

It sounds like you're one of a few...I'm sorry.

Honestly, contact Levono and ship it back. 7 minute boots and too many BSODs to count is a major sign that it lacks quality.

 

pretty crappy and it appears to be a trend. the moment i start getting that crap, itll be going back to lenovo or ebay

 

This is terrible to hear. I hope compusmart.ca has a good return policy that is hassle free.
Was the item in a sealed box when you received it?

 

Yeah it was sealed. I think I've got 30 days to return it.

 

Might want to get on the phone tomorrow :T

Seriously, I have a hard time believe that with so many posts about this, Levono didn't notice there was something seriously wrong when they did QA on this series before release. Is their quality going down the drain???

 

will a blue screen from the first week of owning it give u enough power to return it w/o being slapped a 15% re stocking fee??

 

I just got off the phone with the tech. Get this:

"Lenovo has no record of any known issues with T61s involving a memory dump." That's verbatim.

I told him that Lenovo must be lying to itself because based on a multitude of forum posts, the T61 is sucking wind when it comes to BSODs.

Anyways, they're Purolator'ing a repair box out to me - I'd rather do a repair than an exchange because odds are I'll get another notebook abortion if I just exchange it.

 

man this is gay then... If i get a blue screen i am going to stick to my old 1998 desktop with 256mb of ram lol.. it never gets a blue screen

 

Chances are that you'll never get a BSOD.

 

Tell me about...as I've posted before, I haven't seen a BSOD since well before I switched over to XP back in 2001.

 

That's true. But let's be fare here.
There is a bunch of new technologies being introduced here.
Starting with the infamous Turbo Memory, new chipset and ending with the various, still unpolished Vista drivers.
The longer you wait, the better a chance of getting a BSOD-free machine.
I feel for those who've already purchased and having problems.
Sony and HP even went as far as totally rejecting Turbo Memory, for now.
There was a reason for that.

 

sounds like Turbo Memory crapped out

 

in my opinion i don't think they shoudl release thing slike this if they will cause problems, do should do enough test and w/e they need to do so customers won't encounter these problems..

 

You might try doing a clean install of XP and see if that helps you. Or a clean install of Vista and not install the Turbo Memory driver.

 

If you click on Start, then in the search field type 'eventvwr' (w/out quotes) and launch event Viewer.
Expand on Windows Logs and then click on System. In thos elog entries, find the ones that correspond to your blue screen and post the text of the errors here and we can try to work out what the problem is.

 

Try to do the recovery reinstallation of all the software on your system (hit the thinkpad button just after you start booting up and use their recovery partition to do it). Then run diagnostics on your hardware to see if something is bad. This is in the recovery area too. pcdoc. My bios failed, it's being repaired.

XP, no turbo memory.

 

Its threads like this that make me glad that I ordered the IBM designed T60p instead of waiting for the Lenovo designed T61p. I couldn’t tolerate one BSOD, that would make me paranoid of losing my work from then on out. Sorry bro, not to my surprise, it seems that some of the 1st generation T61s have some kinks that need to be resolved.

 

Try the latest BIOS update from Lenovo -- maybe it would help.

 

Just do a clean install...honestly, everything just seems that the preload lenovo is doing has a few driver issues.

First thing I did was do a clean install on my T61. It is quicker, exactly how I want it, and I have not had one BSOD. Do not expect to get fast boot times with a preload, they never have the BEST load times. Clean install is the way to go IMO.

 

Yeah, you guys are absolutely correct about clean installing it when you get it out of the box. It's like when you buy vegetables from the grocery store, you've gotta wash them before eating them....or something like that; I'm not always good with analogies.

Anyways, that's what I did and I documented it here for anyone else who's interested: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=132673

 

That's a good analogy. Now imagine that it's standard procedure for all of the people who harvest that fruit to take a piss on it before it gets shipped out. That's why you want to do a clean install.

 

7 minutes...that's WITH the factory preload? Or did you wipe it....

Just hit F11 at the BIOS splash screen, and do a factory recovery. It will take TIME, maybe and hour, with a lot of reboots. Let it. Don't interrupt it. Be on AC power.

Then start from fresh.

 

That's with the factory preload. It's now been completely wiped. I've reinstalled my own copy of vista and the absolute base drivers.

 

What can you do if you don't have a vista disk? Can you do a fresh install with what Lenovo sends you?

 

Not sure. Lenovo sent me a Vista upgrade disk; I don't know if you can reformat off of one of those or not. Anyone else know?

 

Remember the first few boots will take a long time since there is a lot of stuff going on. Setting your user account(s) up, setting up windows activation for your machine, running OOBE apps, and just a lot in general.

It may take a few good boots to see your actual boot time instead of the preinstall actually being customized to your notebook which makes the boots take a long time.

and yes you can reformat off of the Vista Anytime Upgrade disk, but you have to follow the guide for how to get it activated since the key on the bottom of your laptop will not activate windows without a phone call to MS.

This is the guide to follow:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=119587

 

The follow up with installing the correct drivers in the correct order.

Here is the guide to follow:
http://jstigall.googlepages.com/t61clean.html