T61p Hesitation

I just received my T61p yesterday and its beautiful compared to my last laptop (acer 5670), but have a few questions/problems. Starting it up and shutting it down takes an incredible amount of time (5mins or so for start up and even more for shutting down)...is there anything that i can do to limit this time? this also leads to my other question. Once the computer is finally done loading when starting it up, it doesnt stop "thinking." I could just let it sit for an hour and it would still be "thinking" and processing. are there programs running in the background that i dont know of? thanks

 

Check the Sticky in this forum esp. the LINKS/GUIDES section.

 

Do a clean install

 

ah geez, i know what you guys are talking about now. its mainly the thinkvantage software that was preinstalled on the laptop. is there anyway of uninstalling it without me having to do a clean install? if i do a clean install, all of my files will be deleted?

edit - i dont want to have to install it again since i dont have the vista cd

 

Well...the best way to remove the Thinkvantage software is to do a clean install. The Windows Vista Upgrade CD isn't too expensive. I would just purchase a copy and do a clean install. You will really enjoy the performance boost. And yes if you do a clean install all of your files will be deleted. If you don't want to do a clean install you can manually remove the Thinkvantage software in add/remove programs. After you do that I would recommend that you download CCleaner and run it to remove any left over registry entries.
Tim

 

Windows Vista Clean Install: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=144783

Windows XP Clean Install: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=188992

 

any drawbacks with just using add/remove? the problem is that ive downloaded everything on my computer already and dont want to have to do it all over again. any problems with simply using add/remove?

 

Add/Remove will usually still leave registry entries. CCleaner will help with some of that. Uninstalling/Installing will also cause defragmentation, so make sure you defragment your HDD.

This will help a lot also: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

 

I have all the ThinkVantage software installed except R&R.... It doesn't seem to have a material impact on my performance. If you're having 5 minute boots, it's probably some of the other out of the box bloatware (Diskeeper, etc).

 

*cough*Norton*cough*

 

if only i knew what you were trying to imply:confused2:

 

He probably means that Norton sucks.

 

Yes, use Avast! or AVG for free. Much better.

 

Do a clean install or limit the number of startup software using msconfig. You could always backup your files so it should not be an issue for a clean install.

 

I have about 70 processes with alot of the thinkpad software still running and I did not do a clean install. Look at what you can disable and whatnot and go from there, but if you have 5 minute boot times I can sense your frustration lol.

 

If you decide to forego doing a clean install, you can try a Custom Reinstall from the R&R hidden partition. Someone (edit: found out the original poster is Unhooked that I had copied and save, another member Archangle did the same too apparently whom I'm going to quote from) posted about this awhile back but I can't remember who but it basically uses R&R's selective installation:

It's highly recommended to do a custom reinstall.
Don't even bother booting it up as configured from the factory, especially if you have less than 1 Gig of memory.
All you had to do is hit that blue "Thinkvantage" button while booting.
That would bring up the "Rescue and Recovery" utility.

Then --> Restore your system --> Restore my hard drive to the original factory state --> I don't want to save any files --> Custom factory recovery.
You'll get to the screen where you can choose what bloatware to keep (if any) during the reinstall process.

Upon completion of the reinstall (a couple of hours) your system would be mostly bloatware free.

TO REPEAT..
Just use the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery software and do a customized install from the partition. It's not really a full "clean" install, but you'll lose most of bloatware included in the factory install.