New R61- long startup time, any ideas???

I have a new R61 that I really like with one exception- the painfully slow startup process. I'm running XP Pro and have pretty high-end hardware (2.4GHz T9300, nVIDIA discrete graphics, 2GB RAM, 7200rpm HD).

When I power it on, the initial Windows login screen appears fairly quickly. Then I enter my password (or scan my fingerprint) and the wait begins while it "loads my personal settings". It can take up to two minutes or more to finish that process.

I've tried everything I can think of- disabling unnecessary services, removing most items from startup, all performance-related settings are set for the highest performance.

Is it the ThinkVantage/Lenovo software that's slowing things down so much? I find some of it's features very useful, but nothing I can't live without.

Any ideas or suggestions?

 

Could be the Lenovo tools, though, have you tried defragging it?

 

Go to Start>Run>"MSCONFIG">Startup and take a look at what you have. Start disabling them one by one and see if one is the culprit.

 

I was on the exact same boat as you. I have a T7300 with 140M and 2GB RAM running XP Pro. I did all you thought of doing - services, uninstallation, startup items. I even defragged multiple times in normal and safe mode. No matter what I did, when it was "loading my personal settings" it still took a long time (2min or more as you said).

As for the ThinkVantage Applications, I uninstalled all but Power Manager and Active Protection System (APS) and my system was still slow. I couldn't locate the problem.

Unfortunately, the only solution that I found was to do a clean installation of Windows XP Pro. Ever since then, loading personal settings takes about 3 seconds.

 

try downloading bootvis. its an old program from MS that shows you graphically what is taking so long to start. its actually a very useful tool.

 

bootvis wasn't compatible with my system. bootvis is discontinued anyways; I believe it only works with older systems.

 

i use it at work all the time with XP here at work. our systems are a little bit older though. here is a decent article from techrepublic. (older)

there is a newer version out for vista too.

 

You should really do a clean install of the OS so you can take out all the bloatware

 

I agree with others that clean install is the way to go.

Run this defragger, works super.

http://www.kessels.com/Jkdefrag/

 

I also got my R61 for about 2 weeks now. My experience is not the startup but when running applications with Norton installed (the 90 day trial verison) is so SLOW. So I remove Norton and everything run so fast.

 

Do yourself a favor and don't by IBM laptops. My Lenovo R61 has nothing but useless software by IBM that 'thinks' it is smarter than Microsoft such as their restore and recovery. All those IBM "bells and whistles" do is slow down my PC. Go buy a $400 laptop from someone like Frys and you will get better performance. Have you tried going into SafeMode with your Lenovo R61? Good luck.

 

not quite sure how he came up with these sentences According to what he said, $400 laptop from Frys will get better performance than IBM laptop with 2.4GHz T9300, nVIDIA discrete graphics, 2GB RAM, 7200rpm HD

 

Interesting first post, to register just to say a $400 laptop beats an R61.

 

Do you work in my company's IT department by any chance?

 

That is so true. Norton products are the last of their kind I would recommend to anyone. They must really grease some palms at Lenovo and other OEM's to get a product onto the standard images that so significantly and unnecessarily decreases system performance.