T400 Performance Issues

I recently purchased a T400 and I'm very disappointed in the performance. My 4 year old XP laptop smokes my T400! For example, my T400 takes 6 minutes (yes, 6 minutes) to reboot and about 3 minutes to resume from hibernation.

I have an internal Intel Turbo Boast card which I thought was supposed to speed things up......or, regardless, my 2.5 GHz process, 4 gigs of ram and 7200 RPM hard drive should take care of business a little quicker than this...

I'm wondering what I should do about this.

My current idea is to reformat my laptop and install a clean version of Vista. Every new computer I've had increased in performance once I reformatted the 'out-of-box' laptop.

However, I didn't get a stand-alone version of Vista! When I tried to reformat and reinstall, I ended up at the same place I started: the super slow out-of-box T400. Is there a way to install just Vista? Will this help?

Thanks!

 

many reboots will help.
also check what services you have running

my t400 running vista is also slow on hibernate, and I hate it, too
but other than that, it's a **** good machine, sez ai

 

Dump the ThinkVantage tools you don't use. Go through the list of startup items in MSCONFIG and turn of the ones you don't use. There's a few threads in the software forum on speeding things up in Vista, which is generally a pig, that may help.

 

Why not just use shut down?

 

I had very similar frustrations when I bought a new ThinkPad R61 14.1" back in April. I configured it with 2.5GHz T9300, nVIDIA Quadro graphics, 7200rpm HD and I was very disappointed with its out-of-the-box performance. Unlike you, I was running XP Pro, NOT Vista. While it's easy to blame Vista, I don't think it's your primary issue.

I considered a clean install" of XP, but quickly learned that the Recovery Partition restores the factory image, NOT just the operating system! Ordering a disc from Lenovo would only do the same thing.

Then I started disabling unnecessary startup items and the boot/wake/shut-down times improved dramatically. The ThinkVantage utilities were a large part of the problem! Although some of them are very useful for certain users, the performance boost outweighed their benefits!

After disabling startup items, reboot and take a look at the Processes/Services running. A very helpful utility to help with this is Uniblue's Process QuickLink. It's FREE and it opens Task Manager with an icon next to each running Process. Clicking the icon by any entry will open your internet browser and provide you with a detailed description of what it is, what program it belongs to, etc. Here's a link- http://www.processlibrary.com/quicklink/

 

Something’s quite wrong with your T400. When I’m on AC power, restoring from hibernation is a little over 15 seconds.

 

Replace Vista with XP. I had the same problem with the laptop in my sig. I will be replacing Vista with XP on the T400 being delivered to me this week as well.

 

Stop with the Vista hate, this issue is not a Vista issue. I’ve run Vista, Windows 2008 and OpenBSD and they’re all lightening fast on this box. If you want to run a seven year old OS, that’s your choice. I imagine Windows 3.1 will be a lot faster than Windows XP too.

 

I personally find XP to a be a bit faster than Vista, but Vistas not bad either. I don't see it offering me anything that XP does not. SP1 helps a lot.

 

Thanks everyone!

I'll concede that Vista is 'better' than XP - however, my problem seems isolated to Vista. I installed XP on my system to see if I could resolve my problems and this was the ticket. My laptop was flying! However, I had to reinstall Vista because you can't switch graphic cards in XP (and what is the point of having two graphic cards when you can't switch between them?).

Therefore, I think the problem must be with my particular combination of Vista and Thinkpad software.

I've disabled everything I can in MSCONFIG and while my boot times has decreased, it still takes 4 minutes which seems preposterous.

 

Then you might want to try a clean install. You will however need to acquire(buy or borrow) a Vista disc and follow Stallen's Guide. It was written for the T61 machines, but the concepts should be quite similar to your machine.

BTW- What version of Vista do you have?

 

Actually, I usually use Gentoo Linux. The few times that I do use Windows, I don't want it to take 5 minutes to boot. I'm just saying what my personal experience was: my computer came with Vista, it took a long time to boot. I replaced it with XP, and it worked fine. And XP isn't 7 years old. It has regular updates, including a service pack just released this April.

And look at this:

I guess I was right after all.

 

check your bios setting if you set the memory test to the extended diagnostic memory test.

 

Can you elaborate? What do you mean about the extended diag. mem. test?


To the OP., I too had a sloooooow T400. Yesterday the machine all of a sudden went to 10.5 minutes boot ups. I reinstallted VB64 today (factory install) and now everything seems ok. I am back down to a very acceptable 1:45 boot up. See my post from today.

We'll see if things stay this way for me. I am trying to get my hands on a Vista 64 disk so that I can do a clean install.

I fail to understand why my system is better now with the reinstallation of the factory software....why didnt it work this way from the factory??? I dont quite understand....but if it works, I am happy.

I am determined to stick with vista. There are too many people on this board that are happy with vista for me to believe it is as bad as some ppl will have you believe.

 

Well, well. According to Superduty, the problem is not actually with Windows Vista, but, rather, something else that was installed after the fact. Even then though, something else is running that is causing Vista to give an abysmal near two minute boot time.

 

I am quite happy with Vista myself. I installed it on my 3 year old Dell Inspiron 6000 with 2GB of RAM and an overclocked Pentium M single core processor and it runs just as fast if not faster than XP. Also, the GPU (even though it isn't Aero capable) gets better performance in Vista.

-J.B.

 

I seriously doubt that superduty and the OP both had the exact same program causing the problem. In that case, this problem would be seen on a lot more computers, including those running XP.

 

BinkNR, what do you think an acceptable VB64 boot time should be? I guess another question, when is the computer considered "booted up" for purposes of timing. I timed from turning computer ON until the little timer (circle looking thing) next to the pointer completely dissapeared. Basically about the same time, the 5300 had a lock on my wireless network.

 

Did the OP, by any chance do an update via Lenovo update? After I did that my 10.5 minute boot time started? I wish I would have noted the 4 updates it installed. I know for sure it updated the BIOS to 1.18, it updated the wifi, and 2 other things, that I have no clue. Since I have reinstalled the OEM software on the computer, the only download I have left from yesterday's Lenovo update is the BIOS FW....so I have to assume that the BIOS FW was not the problem....

 

I actually think this is likely the case considering both have the same hardware and, likely, Lenovo software. There is probably a compatibility issue with some Lenovo something and Vista.

 

You can’t really count Vista boot time from the time you immediately turn on the computer, because the hardware is being initialized and the BIOS is loading, but I’d say boot time shouldn’t be much more than one minute and that’s to the point where you can start using the computer. My machine takes a little over a minute, and a good portion of this time is directly related to the fact I use full volume encryption on my hard drive, and this slows this process down. Then again, I rarely need to reboot (I mainly sleep and do some hibernating) so I kind of consider this a non-issue though.

 

So it essentially is Vista's fault, then. When something doesn't work in Linux, people don't blame the OEM; they blame the OS, Linux. Similarly, I think that Vista should be regarded as the problem in this situation (unless it happens on XP as well, which is entirely possible if it's only a few Lenovo users that have this problem).

 

If you can’t reproduce the issue with a clean install of Vista, meaning no third-party/OEM software, it is not a Vista issue. It is that simple until one can prove that the third-party/OEM software is written correctly and a bug lies in Vista—and I’d feel the same way if we were talking about XP, Linux or any other OS.

When you buy a new engine and it works perfectly in your car, and then you take it to a mechanic to replace a part on this engine which turns out to causes problems, do you blame the engine or the mechanic/replaced part?

 

But the issue is still a Vista issue if it's a problem you encounter in Vista, even if it isn't there by default. It's still a reason not to use Vista.

Noooo, not a car analogy

 

I'm running Vista on a cheapo laptop with an original Core Duo processor running at only 1.73ghz and 2gb of RAM. This machine reboots and comes out of hibernation far faster than the OP machine. The problem is not Vista.

Would you also blame Vista if someone started up 200 processes and then complained that their computer was slow? Should Vista have automatically fixed that too?

 

Srunni have you used vlite and nlite? After clean installs of both, my Vista runs slightly faster than my XP and gives me less crashes/problems.

 

I'm not going back to xp for a few reasons:

1) its getting phased out, not gonna be supported in a year (or less?).
2) i have ZERO performance issues with my computer after a clean install. The only things i installed were the drivers; no thinkvantage stuff whatsoever (save for the power manager).
3) When you have enough ram and the proper resources, vista isn't that much of a hog (well it is, but you dont notice it since you have space to multitask).

I think people encounter most of their problems in vista because of either not freeing up their resources or because they just don't have enough.

 

Or because something has been poorly written and/or not well tested with Vista.

 

By the way, do you guys think that a T400 laptop with 2GB RAM can be enough for running Vista and some apps like VS studio, MATLAB and AutoCAD... (all of them are in their latest versions)?

 

I would get as much memory as you can afford now and eventually max out the ram when it gets cheap. Vista needs 2GB alone to run smoothly and apps like VS take a lot more on top of that.

 

Get rid of Norton Antivirus if you are using it. Also make sure you are running your hard drive on "AHCI" and not "Compatibility" in the BIOS. It takes my T61 and T400 about 1 minute to boot up.

 

I totally agree with this. I have had horrible luck with Norton. Try one of the free antivirus programs like Avria.

 

That's not luck, that's norton! I worked at a tech desk at a university library and we routinely advised people to uninstall norton and install something else. It was actually on the tech desk wiki to advise people to uninstall it, even though the school gave out copies of norton to incoming students. brutal software.

 

I found that my new t400 (with discrete graphics) was far slower in windows then my girlfriend's new t400 (integrated graphics, but otherwise the same). I discovered that:

1) The power options can slow things down significantly, so I tweaked those.
2) The lenovo Access Connections (nice on XP, kinda redundant for vista) and the Power Manager seemed to slow things down a lot, so I uninstalled those.
3) I needed to reinstall the ATI drivers and remove the catalyst control panel. I'm not sure the ATI drivers and integrated drivers were getting along very well (I also see two displays in the device manager, and I'm not sure if that's normal).

Now vista is pretty snappy (at least, compared to the performance I was seeing before these tweaks).

Andrew

 

@andrew78: I wonder whether you only experienced the slow down performance at windows start up time or all the time you used your computer?

 

Need some opinions, please. I am hearing tons of Lenovo service horror stories and a few product quality issues. But, the Lenovo T400 Thinkpad (with coupons) is now about a $300 difference in price from Dell's similarly configured Latitude E6400. Is this a no-brainer (much lower T400 price vs. Dell), or is the Lenovo service and quality issues not worth the savings. I am ready to buy either one immediately. I truly appreciate your opinions and feedback. Many thanks for the help -- Bob

 

I did see a slow down during start up and shutdown, but it was most noticeable (and most annoying) when I would open up any explorer window. The border of the window would render, lag, fill in the "tasks" part, lag, then finally fill in the content. I'd also notice lag on application startup, even to the point where a web browser (either ie or firefox) would be rendered, but typing in an address would be laggy.

Here's the complete (ish) list of software I removed:

help center
client security password manager
sqlserver
thinkpad productivity center
verizon something
message center
lenovo welcome
business contact manager
ms office
presentation director
mobile broadband
thinkpad full screen magnifier
roxio
digital line detect
access connections
power manager
ati catalyst control center

I also set the hard disk protection to low sensitivity, it seemed extremely paranoid at all other settings.

For reg767: I briefly had a dell latitude (not sure of the model) running vista for work and it was awful. The T61p I had for work (after that) out performed it in all ways (though I didn't do any gaming). It's frustrating that the t400 takes so much tweaking, but for me it's already better than the dell.

Andrew