T500 with SSD, slow Windows 7 boot

Hi there

Recently I installed an intel SSD drive in my Lenovo T500. At the same time, I made a complete reinstall of Windows 7.
There is a remarkable difference in performance, compared to my trusty old mechanical disk drive. However, one thing is puzzling me.
When I boot Windows 7 (Ultimate 64-bit), I get the Lenovo boot screen, then a blank screen with a flashing white cursor at the top left corner (for about 10-15 seconds) and then I get the black screen with the Window slogo that says Starting Windows...

I have not seen that blinking cursor on any of my other computers, also running Windows 7. As far as I can see, there are no SSD activity while the cursor flashes. It is not until the Starting Windows screen that the SSD starts "spinning".

I would very much like to get rid of the waiting time for the flashing cursor, but I have no clue where to look.

The computer is a ThinkPad T500 with a 160GB Intel SSD. I have a normal SATA harddisk connected instead of the cd/dvd-drive, but that is a cleanly formatted drive only containing data and no boot information at all.
Any help is very much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

/Simon

 

No one has any clues?
I am quite sure this is not a Windows issue.
It seems "something" is interfering between the BIOS post and Windows getting access to the SSD disk. I have set the BIOS to boot directly from the SSD and not wait for any other drive, but that did not help.

Any help is very much appreciated.

/Simon

 

It's a long shot, but could it be that memory testing is not set to quick mode?

 

Hey, I have been having a similar problem, except I am using a standard HDD.
Basically I blew away the original partition and installed windows 7 on my T400.

I now get the blinking cursor delay just before windows 7 actually starts to boot. I also have a T500 with Vista, and it has a very short delay.

I tried a bunch of things so far, but no avail.

Windows 7 startup repair
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

One thing I am wondering is if the presence of the existing Thinkpad recovery partition is causing problems. Since you moved to an SSD, did you keep your recovery partitions? I still have both of mine, but I don't think they can boot anymore. I'm considering blowing them away to see if it solves the issue.

Thanks!

 

Emobo, thank you for writing. I am glad I am not the only one having this issue.
I installed a retail version of Windows 7 Ultimate Edition on a blank disk. So, I don't have the Lenovo Recovery Partition.
I also tried the bootrec commands, but of course it did not help.

However, one thing that got my attention was when I checked Disk Mangement on Windows 7.
On my system, I have 2 harddisks - the primary one is a 160GB Intel SSD, the other disk is a 500GB SATA drive that sits in a Thinkpad adapter that sits in the normal cd/dvd drive slot.
In Disk Management, it looks like there are 3 disks. (disks, not partitions).
They are organized like this:
Disk 0 - Healthy (Primary Partition) - 1.37GB (100% free)
Disk 1 - 2 partitions: System Reserved (100MB NTFS) and C: (148,95GB NTFS)
Disk 2 - D: (465,76GB NTFS)

Disk 1 is my SSD and the first 100MB partition is the partition that Windows 7 creates so the system is ready for BitLocker. The second partition is my C:-drive with Windows and documents.

Disk 2 is my SATA drive in the Thinkpad adapter and it contains other data files.

Now, what is Disk 0??? According to Disk Management, it is a seperate disk, but I just checked (again) that I have not memory card in the card reader and no other USB devices are present on the system.
Do you also have that mysterious Disk 0 on your system?

What could it be?

/Simon

 

Alright, I found out that my Disk 0 is called IMD-0 in Device Manager. When Googling IMD-0 it tells me that it has to do with the Intel Turbo Memory thingy...
Now, the big question is: Does it actually have anything to do with the blinking cursor during startup? I know nothing about the Turbo Memory functions...

Anyone?

 

Hey sgatke,

I've been tackling this problem for the last few nights, and I've come to some conclusions.

I also have a two drives, one 320GB in the main bay, and on 160GB in the second bay...IN ADDITION to the turbo memory.

Observations:
The blinking cursor delay seems to be longer when the secondary ultrabay drive is connected. This leads me to believe the delay is cause by something affected by having additional storage.

Nothing I can do to the boot sector has helped.
Deleted service paritions, moved main partitions, restored mbr, bcd rebuild. I'm starting to believe it is not a windows issue.

I have a T500 with Vista basic on it as well. It boots fine, stalling about 1 second before the Windows boot logo appears. It has updated drivers, BUT, probably not the latest bios

I'm suspicious it's a BIOS issue. I have the latest T400 bios....I tried restoring the BIOS to factory configuration, then restarted with no secondary drive, and for a moment i think the boot up was fast.
I've found a blog post somewhere that a user with a T400 suggested that removing the CMOS battery after a BIOS flash solved a long bootime cursor stall issue. If you have access to that, perhaps you can give it a shot.

Unfortunately, it seems we're in a small group of users with this problem. Hopefully we can figure it out.

All the best

 

Turbo memory is used predominately in Windows to boost your Readycache and Readyboost features. They benefits of it are controversial, and as a note my T500 did not have this feature.

I guess you can always remove the chip. I have had no problems with it, so I leave it in.

 

My T400 with an SSD for boot and platter in ultrabay boots quick. Take a look at the SSD tweaks here.

I tried a Lenovo Recovery with the disks but it created additional partitions I did not want. I also had no control over how big the OS partition would be. It created a pretty big partition on the SSD for W7. Remembering that it's advised not to use the whole SSD I decided on a clean install. I bought a retail copy of W7 64-bit Professional so I wiped my SSD and started over.

W7 will create a small partition (mine is 100mb) right before the OS so this is normal. I made my partition 40gb. It's small but I'm a minimalist so I only have tiny programs and might install one small game. My installation size remains at 16.1gb. I've noticed that doesn't grow until I install a big program.

My T400 runs so much faster than it did with using the Rescue and Recovery DVD's from Lenovo. I am pleased with it's performance

 

Emobo, my T500 definitely has the IMD-0 (Turbo Memory) device - at least according to Windows Device Manager

Anyway, I think I will try removing the chip this weekend.

Turqoisegirl08, thank you for the link to the SSD tweaks. I am also very pleased with the performance of my T500, especially after I upgraded to an SSD drive.
Hopefully, removing the Turbo Memory chip will result in minimizing the boot delay. I will post back when I have had time to do it.

/Simon

 

I'm guessing if you go into your BIOS, it'll be set to boot from the drive that doesn't have Windows installed first. It'll try and find an operating system (blink the cursor), not find one, then move on to the second drive which is your SSD with Windows on it.

Change your boot order so it tries the hard drive with your operating system first.

 

I have a T400 that has been experiencing the same 10-15 second delay before boot. (It's timing made it incredibly difficult to determine which part of load was lagging.)

Ultimately, a reinstall indicated the Turbo Memory driver is to blame; after installing it using TVSU, the lag would reappear. Uninstalling does not fix it, but a system restore to a point created before does. I think the problem rests in that the Turbo Memory gets called Disk 0, and so the BIOS tries to find a bootloader/OS on it.

It might be possible to use EasyBCD to put the bootloader files onto Disk 0 (Partitioning tools show a 1.37GB that I have successfully partitioned into an actual drive.) so that the BIOS finds something to boot from.

P.S. The 10-15 second delay seems to work out to the BIOS reading the ENTIRE Turbo Memory chip (at a bit more than 100MB/s)... Dunno if this is actually the case.

 

Yesterday I finally had some spare time, so I found the 'Lenovo Hardware Maintenance Guide' for my T500. In this document I read how to remove the Intel Turbo Memory chip. After the chip was removed, the PROBLEM IS SOLVED!

If you know how to use a screwdriver it is not at all difficult to remove the Turbo Memory chip. On my T500 it is located just beneath the area of the keys 9-0-o-p (or very close to that).
1) Remove the screws for the handrest.
2) Remove the single screw securing the keyboard.
3) remove the two screws securing the Intel Turbo Memory chip - and remove the chip

Now, my computer boots without the annoying blinking cursor and the associated waiting time.

Thank you all for your help and input regarding this matter. I hope this post will help others who have the same problem.

Regards
Simon

 

Glad you resolved the problem. That would explain my findings with my other T500 (without Turbomemory). How could such a simple idea go so bad?

I'm not keen on removing it, as I only have a normal disc drive. If I had an SSD, I'd probably throw it, but we'll see. The boot lag is frustrating.

Thanks for following up!

 

I had the same problem and solved it by uninstalling the Intel Matrix Console. The annoying cursor dissapeared and my SSD became much faster, so it apparently "removed" the Turbo memory and the cursor boot problem.

Best regards
Lars B.