Small problems with my T400

Hello,
I recently purchased a Lenovo Thinkpad T400 and I am having some problems with the performance of the machine. First off the specs are great. I have 4 GB of Ram, 2.80GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P9600 Processor, 350 GB 7200 RPM HDD, all of the best specs available for it (except a 6 cell battery instead of 9). I am also running Windows Vista Ultimate.

My problems are mostly small things such as the wireless internet. For some reason it cuts off all of the time. Sometimes it turns off on the Fn+F5 menu and I open it up and turn it back on. However sometimes it just says I lose connection and it can’t find any networks and I have to restart. Also sometimes when the internet cuts off and I open up the menu it freezes up.

Another problem I have is that it takes forever to shut down. Restarting my computer is at least a 5 minute process. Sometimes I will tell it to shut down and then I close my computer. Even though it is set to not do anything when I close it, I guess it freezes up and doesn’t shut down because next time I use it, it is out of battery. I also have some problems with the sleep mode. Sometimes I go into sleep mode and the screen goes off but it doesn’t enter sleep mode and pressing the power button doesn’t turn it back on and I have to hard reset.

So do you guys have any insight on to why this stuff happens?

 

I recommend a clean install of Windows. Manufacturers, Lenovo included, are exceedingly adept at taking perfectly good systems and mucking them up with unnecessary problem-prone and performance-reducing high-school quality “software.”

 

For the internet, go into your control panel under system and hardware property, there is a selection for wireless card property. In that select the power output to maximum, roaming aggressiveness to low and windows power save off.

 

The slow startup and shutdown time is due to the win vista, you may have too many processes that need to startup and which will be checked and approved by windows.

To speed up the startup process go into your windows defender under windows process explorer (i will have a closer look at my Vista OS for you when i get to my laptop stash.)

 

Wireless Problems
Do you use Lenovo's Access Connections to manage your wireless connections?

Using Access Connections to manage your wireless connections require that a couple different pieces of software communicate with one another. Sometimes a piece of software has to be upgraded to a newer version to get things working properly. In my case, with my 4year old X40 I could not run the newest and latest version of Access Connections, but I could run a slightly older version.

On Lenovo's support, software download page, each piece of software and drive has a readme.txt file to go with that explains to you what versions you much upgrade other pieces of software to to get things running correctly. Make sure to read this reame.txt file for each piece of software/driver you download and install from Lenovo.

Note:some of the below info may be out of date now as its been a while since I've gone through this stuff.
The pieces of software/drivers that work together with Access Connections are:
1. The wireless card driver, usually intel.
2. Access Connections
3. Hotkey driver. This allows Fn+F5 keys on the keyboard to bringup access connections. (I think)
4. Thinkpad Power Management Driver

A common problem people have when they don't read the readme.txt files is that they download Lenovo software, double click it, and think it has installed. This is not always the case. Sometimes this just uncompresses the software and you have to find the setup.exe file and double click it to actually install the software.

Finally, and this is not well documented by Lenovo, the order in which you uninstall old programs and install the new programs matters when it comes to getting access connections to work.
Here is a good post from the Lenovo support page forums that explains the best order to

Link: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVan...d/46291#U46291

1) Uninstall the Intel Wireless Driver from Control Panel
2) Uninstall Access Connections from Control Panel
3) Restart the system
4) Download and install Hotkey driver
Link to hotkey driver
5) Download and install ThinkPad Power Management driver
Link to ThinkPad Power Management driver
6) Download and install Intel Wireless Driver
Link to Download Intel Wireless driver
Please follow these steps to install the driver
Download and extract the driver
Browse to C:\drivers\WIN\WLANINT2\XP\Apps\x32 and click on iProInst.exe to install the driver
Please note this is a critical step to fix your system
7) Download and install Access Connections

you can either install AC 5.02 or AC 4.52 from the web

Here is a link to AC 5.02 ,will be on the web by mid Sep
AC 5.02 XP

Link will stay active for 2 days

8) restart your system

Following these instructions exactly helped me get Access Connections working properly on my X40. Good luck.

 

Long Shut Down Time
Check Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery settings. Rescue and Recovery can be set to backup your full system periodically, if it is trying to backup and you go to shut down your computer it will have to wait for the R&R process to complete.

Doing a clean install
Many people claim that doing a clean operating system install results in improved performance. I've never done it myself though so I can't speak first hand. Here's a link to a great guide on doing a clean install on a Lenovo.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783

 

Try the clean install that might just work for you.