Problems with my T61p.

So I've had a few problems with my laptop so far. One involves Vista randomly freezing, one involves my laptop not waking up from sleep, and one involves the battery draining very quickly while the laptop sleeps. I have a feeling these problems are interrelated.

The first problem is Vista freezing randomly. I've realized that most of the time Vista freezes, it happens after I move my laptop around. For example, say the laptop is sitting at the desktop and as far as I can tell, the hard drive isn't running (the light for it isn't on). If I pick up my laptop and go to another room, once I settle in a new spot and try opening a program, Vista freezes. How Vista freezes is weird too, I mentioned it in a thread a while ago but I'll reexplain here:

Let's say I have Adobe Acrobat and Firefox open. If Adobe Acrobat stops responding, I can still fully use Firefox. However, if I try opening up the task manager or any other program, or try closing any open program, all of Vista then stops responding. My only solution at this point is to hold down the power button to force the computer to turn off.

Regarding my second problem, the laptop not waking up from sleep, the circumstances are similar. If the laptop is asleep and I move it somewhere, the next time I try to wake it up it won't respond. Sometimes the laptop will wake up halfway. What I mean by that is that when I try to wake the laptop up, the harddrive spins up and the lights on the front flash briefly (I believe its the hard drive light, caps lock light, and num lock light) but then thats it, the screen doesn't turn on and nothing else happens, although I can hear the hard drive running. My only solution at this point is to again hold down the power button to force the computer off.

The third problem is the battery being completely drained while the laptop is sleeping. For example, once I put it to sleep at 100% and when I came back 12 hours later the battery was drained. I think this may be related to my second problem, where the laptop doesn't wake up completely but the hard drive starts running. I suppose the reverse happened and the hard drive continued running during sleep and thats why the battery was drained.

Now these issues don't happen every time I use the laptop, the first problem maybe only once a week, the second once every few days, and the third problem has only happened three times ever. I would say that the first problem is occuring at a less frequent rate than it initially did as well. Also, none of my forced reboots cause Vista to do a disk check before starting, which was happening at first and stopped as the Vista crashes slowed down.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem(s) might be? My drivers are all up to date.

 

By up to date drivers, do you mean Windows Update drivers + Lenovo drivers? Do you have an antivirus, if yes, which one?

 

I'd try a factory restore and remove all the lenovo bloatware if you haven't already. Also your really not supposed to just pickup the notebook without turning the system off/hibernate.

 

Says who? That's what active-protection is for... (when it's spinning) - When it's not spinning it's perfectly acceptable to pick it up and move it.

 

I have both the Windows Update drivers and the Lenovo drivers. My graphics card drivers are newer than what either of those two recommend. I don't have any antivirus software installed. I also already performed a clean install the day I got the laptop, although I have installed several of the Thinkvantage programs.

Also, the times I do move my notebook around I at least make sure it's not actively doing anything when I move it.

 

Don't know if your problems are related to malware, but if you go online with your machine for any reason while using Windows, you're putting your system at risk IMHO, if you're not using an AV. If I were having your issues, fwiw, the first thing I'd do is scan for malware. In any case, I wish you well.

 

Those symptoms of lockups you describe sound a LOT like spyware problems I see in my line of work.

If you don't have a good antivirus and antispyware software then you're crazy.

 

Yes, you should try first to scan with antivirus + antispyware

 

Try turning off APS (the harddisk protection system). There are reported BSOD screens and crashes when having APS turned on and at the same time using Intel Turbo Memory.

EDIT: APS works okay when you have the turbo memory disabled.

 

I agree you always need to do a clean install the bloatware will slow down and cost problems on your machine

 

The biggest issue is my laptop not waking up from sleep about 25% of the time...I've gotten used to it but it is still very annoying. I know for a fact that it isn't caused by malware or viruses (I am scanning right now for that stuff though)...I'll try turning off turbo memory and I'll see what happens.

 

I have this same problem, about 25% of the time my alarm isn't able to wake me up from sleep mode in the morning

 

I got the same "T61 running vista freezes up randomly" problem. It just happened again, after I moved it from 2nd floor to 1st floor. I have been searching for a solution. I think I read sth about installing new storage manager on this forum a while ago, could not find it anymore. Would really like to resolve the issue. Had no problem with T60 & T23 in the past.

 

i still have an occasional (30-40% of the time) non-wake-up from Standby problem, even after the new XP fix for the exact same problem.

makes me mad. i have a thread floating around here about it.

 

Did you get this fixed? There was a Bios update to fix this SPECIFIC PROBLEM where the laptop would freeze and drain battery if moved while sleeping.

 

Hi,

have you found any solution for the mentioned problems? I am experiencing some of the same glitches, especially the half-wakeup where the system comes back from sleep, drive spinning, even the background light for the LCD is on, but the screen remains blank. Hmmm... the Thinkpads I had prior to this one were always running flawless, this is quite annoying.

Switching off either Turbo Memory or APS should not be an option. Probably time to have some chitchat with Lenovo.

Cheers, Blom

 

I've had my T61p for about 4 months now and have been dealing with the same problems since day one. Doing clean installs I have tried Vista Ultimate 64, 32, Business 32, half a dozen different video drivers, all the updates available through lenovo, turned off HD active protection, turbo memory, hybrid hd. I scan daily with AVG, kapersky, spysweeper, adaware, spybot and trend micro anti-spyware (and their online scanner) and find absolutely nothing. It generally happens on battery power, which leads me to believe it is not a spyware. It also seems to happen most when multi-tasking (changing apps regularly) or opening new apps. I love the computer, but this stability (or lackof) is not what I was hoping for.

When it happens, first the comp just slows, but the mouse moves. I just can't click anything. In time everything ghosts or is non-responsive if I try to click it, and I end up just having to power down and then restart. It seems independent of a particular program or memory usage level, though I notice it happening far less while gaming.

I am going to try 'upgrading' to XP and see if I can get it more stable on that OS. I use my comp unplugged a lot, and crashing a few times a day is more than enough to irritate me toward a different brand. I have used ubuntu and didn't have issues, but then again I didn't use it for long.

 

Just wanted to update my recent apparent results at getting rid of this freezing issue-

After trying a number of things, it appears that doing a fresh install of vista 64 and NOT installing the thinkvantage active protection has completely resolved the freezing issue I was seeing. Hybrid HD and turbo memory seem to work just fine, and in the last 10 days or so I haven't had a single freeze (where I used to avg 2-3 a day,generally on battery).

I thought about it a bit and realized that battery power may not have anything to do with the freezing but rather the fact that when on battery the computer was getting moved around some. I tried plugging the computer in and moving it around (from couch to table, to lap, etc... nothing major, not jostling it or anything) and the freeze would still occur. So, I got rid of active protection and haven't had a problem since.

Hope this helps someone else. The HD should be able to withstand plenty of day-to-day movement without active protection. I can't remember if there were different sensitivity settings available in the AP software, but setting to be less sensitive may be an option as well.

-FC

 

Same problems here...
Initially I thought it was the new junk operating system that I bought my t61p with. Then I decided to get serious and installed XP. So much faster,so many problems solved. I couldn't believe that I had to restart my computer more times in two months with the junk system, than 6 years of XP... Anyway, the problem of the screen turning off sometimes after waking up, persisted. I tried to lower the sensitivity of active protection and I haven't seen anything yet...Hopefully solved. For now...

 

I also have the same problems with AP and half waking up.

For me the half waking up problem happens when I disable the setting that puts my machine too sleep when I close the lid. When I put my machine to sleep and then close the lid and try to wake it up the backlight doesn't turn back on. So what I have to do is close the lid again and open it up and then the back light turns on.

 

Putting the AP sensitivity to low, didn't solve it...
I ll try Maxgeeks trik next time, cause I had to hibernate to avoid the restart

 

All my problems have been resolved.

The freezing issue was fixed randomly...I suppose through one of the various updates I did through either Windows Update or System Update.

I also was having an issue with occasional blue screens, especially after a game was running for a few hours. This was caused by faulty RAM, which I have taken care of.

The problems I had waking up from sleep were fixed by updating the Bios, it was an update from like two or three months ago.