X230 problems with preloaded stuff, performance, and boot up time

Hello everybody,
I spent days searching the web for answers how to make my new machine work as it should. It might not be a good idea to combine my three problems in one thread but maybe there is a connection between the immense preload of software, the poor boot up time, and the low performance. The boot time with an SSD should be low. Even after optimizing BIOS it was above 60 seconds. Furthermore, the gaming performance in a few years old game was incredibly low - as it should not be when I compare to an older notebook that gained less points in any benchmark.

I am using this computer as a private owner and not in a company. I guess many of the remote services which are installed are useless for me. However, I cannot tell what is what...

Configuration: X230 with i5 3210 /w Intel HD4000 and 180 GB SSD, bluetooth, camera, fingerprint, back lit keyboard, W7 64bit pro, 4GB DDR3 1600, Premium HD Display /w 2x2 antenna

(1)
I cannot figure out which of the preloaded stuff I can uninstall and, more important, which services or startup processes I could kill.
From the software list:
- do I need the virtual camera thing or can I run the camera without?
- is Dolby Advanced Audio v2 useful at all or can I delete it?
- do I need Intel Control Center ?
- Why is Intel WiDi such a big update? (400+ MB)
- what is Lenovo Graphics Software? Should not be Intel in Charge of the graphics? Even after extensive search I did not find out.
- Can I delete lenovo Solution center?
- is it useful to keep Lenovo Power Manager?
- on top, there is the ThinkPad Power Management Driver
- does it make sense to keep Lenovo System Update or Communications Utility

(2)
The performance is really not what it should be. I suspect there are some background processes maybe related to Intel Business remote services or the likes but the service list from system configuration is really very long. I might copy it tomorrow.


(3)
The boot up time for such a machine should be below 40 seconds, should'nt it? I disabled a couple of things in BIOS and tried to boot in "UEFI only" mode but that does not work.
I used the Win 7 event viewer and found out, the boot up time is sometimes 90, sometimes 120 seconds. That is a lot slower than my office machine with a 5400 RPM hard drive...

I noticed the boot up takes 20 seconds longer if I enable the finger print reader as method of authentification instead of password so I switched it off again. I would like to use it, but that is too long.

Here are the start up processes which I could uncheck in ms config;
- Intel Common User Interface
- Intel Common User Interface
- Intel Common User Interface
- Realtek HD Audio Manager
- HD Audio Background Process
- RCIMGDIR
- ThinkPad Power Manager
- PowerReg
( In unchecked Dolby Profile Selector and Intel PIconStartup as well as ThinkVantage Communications Utility already. I also unchecked Intel USB 3.0 Monitor and TpShocks - was that a good idea?)

I would be glad to get advice. This is my first ThinkPad and I am somehow frustrated that it is so difficult (if possible) to get it to perform as other computers would with this hardware.

Edit: expanded system configuration

 

Hi again,

here is another detail I do not understand: Many times I checked the performance displayed in task manager. Something strange is going on: Even when the machine is idle and has no application running, the graphs showed high work load on both cores. Moreover, both cores showed the same load all the time. So I checked the process list. If I add the percentage of CPU work load for all running processes, 5% is the outcome while the performance chart shows 87%! What does this mean?

I wonder if I should send back the machine. If the performance is so poor because of background processes, there should be some way to fix it.

The not to new game I mentioned above is Borderlands. I read it is running quite well on many HD3000 machines so I do not see why it does not even run in 800x600 and no effects with more than 10 frames on this machine.

Did anyone have a similar experience?

 

So what is running those CPU cycles?

 

I do not have a clue. Can there be something like hidden processes which are not shown in task manager?

In the mean time, I tried to find out whether all drivers and utilities were really using current versions. Since the notebook shipped in mid June it should be...

Neither the windows driver update search, windows software updater or lenovo / Intel auto updates found out there is a newer Version for at least 4 drivers including audio and graphics. What are these updating agents for if I have to find out manually?

The update nearly crashed the system. Action Center, Recovery, Aero, Sound Drivers, all Lenovo utilities and tools stopped working. Somehow the list of items to be loaded at startup was not working properly anymore. I set it back to "normal startup" and rebootet several times. Then I had to remove Lenovo Power Management. After that the PC would respond again and use sound and display Aero. At this point I found out there is a newer version of Power Manager which is not shown in the list for X230 but it will show up if one uses the installing function of ThinkVantage Tools. (This was another update that had not been found by Lenovo Software Update.)

Now my boot up time is below 60 seconds and the performance in gaming is as expected. It seems the hidden processes which use the CPU have vanished, too.

Something I did not notice before all these updates: The task manager showed only two performance graphs although it should have shown four!

So in factory state, was maybe one core deactivated or did it not use Hyper Threading. I do not understand what is going on.

The number of warning events during start up has significantly decreased according to Event Viewer.

Can that have to do with Intel WiDi somehow? Lenovo Software Update always suggested to update WiDi. It also told, the PC did not feature any previous version - which was not true. It was in the list of software and it seemed to work. However, in the end I installed that update with its more than 400 MB. After that, Lenovo Software Update recommended to install another update for WiDi. This one was the previous version! So the installation was started by Software Updater but Intel installer aborted when it had scanned the PC because it found out there was a newer version installed, of course. This led to Lenovo Software Updater believing, both versions of WiDi failed to install. ... Anyway, it seems unlikely a display driver could cause the system to only use two cores (whether two real or one real and one virtual).

I am way happier now that it causes less warnings and has more performance but the boot up time is still to poor. I wonder if there are further problems I could not identify, yet.

 

Hm strange. I'd suggest Process Explorer instead of Task Manager (this is what I use), it usually shows most of the stuff running:

Process Explorer

I'd start here and try to find what is taking up so much system resources.

If possible, I would go by the route of reinstalling Windows. For my X200t I install all the drivers of Lenovo website, the only extra thing being THinkpad Power Manager (it shows a much nicer battery bar than classic windows). No Lenovo update or ThinkVantage stuff or any other crap. I never install any drivers offered through Windows Update.

Other than that, what Power Plan are you using (no power plan could make it run that slow, but lets see anyway)? SSD taking >60 seconds to boot implies there is something slowing the computer A LOT. You can use e.g. HWInfo64 (Summary screen) to check how CPU / RAM frequencies just to make sure they are not throttled.

That said Intel i5-3210M is a dual core CPU. Each physical core can be assigned with two virtual cores which speeds up the tasks that can be computed in parallel. Intel calls this technology "hyper-threading" and it exists since the "old" single core Pentium 4.

 

In order to remove the bloatware, I would recommend PC Decrappifier

 

At first I thought you're joking..... but then I noticed, this is how it's called. ಠ_ಠ

 

Most of the Lenovo software actually do comes in handy and give you better customization. They are pretty light so they are actually doing more good than harm unlike other bloatware. I reformat my E520 all the time and now I re install all the Lenovo software as well, because some of them also included the latest driver, which might solve some of the issue you are having. (lagged performance due to using generic driver)

 

With the exception of Norton I don't really consider what Lenovo gives you to be "crapware". I keep Lenovo Solution Center as the warranty guys need the code if things go wrong.

 

unreal25, thanks for the reply. I will try process explorer soon. It will take a long time to find out what all the processes are, I guess. About the cores I maybe did not clearly state what surprised me. I know that an i5 should show 4 nodes in task manager but I did not notice I was lacking two of them in the factory state. How can it be that a ThinkPad in factory condition did only show 2? Did they screw up the whole machine in factory?

Talking about preloaded software I can understand that it slows down the boot simply because there is more to be loaded. What I do not understand is how it can cause so many errors and warnings every boot.

Thank you for your advice ingeniumed. I ran decrapifier and unfortunately it found absolutely nothing to do.

Edit: I forgot to mention which energy profile I used. It was 'maximum performance".

2nd Edit: Maybe it helps if I post the boot event log.

EventData

BootTsVersion 2
BootStartTime 2012-06-27T04:53:01.827600600Z
BootEndTime 2012-06-27T04:55:31.101072000Z
SystemBootInstance 13 --> 51
UserBootInstance 3 --> 41
BootTime 20719 --> 78999
MainPathBootTime 10319 --> 61899
BootKernelInitTime 20 --> 42
BootDriverInitTime 332 --> 593
BootDevicesInitTime 369 --> 389
BootPrefetchInitTime 0
BootPrefetchBytes 0
BootAutoChkTime 0
BootSmssInitTime 4336 --> 5238 | +1 second
BootCriticalServicesInitTime 225 --> 570
BootUserProfileProcessingTime 122 --> 358
BootMachineProfileProcessingTime 0 --> 1
BootExplorerInitTime 3708 --> 53655 | +50 seconds
BootNumStartupApps 19 --> 17
BootPostBootTime 10400 --> 17100 | +7 seconds
BootIsRebootAfterInstall false
BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits 0
BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits (4194304 -->) 0 ?
BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits (43194304 -->) 0 ?
BootIsDegradation false
BootIsStepDegradation false
BootIsGradualDegradation false
BootImprovementDelta 0
BootDegradationDelta 0
BootIsRootCauseIdentified true --> false ?
OSLoaderDuration 680 --> 1015
BootPNPInitStartTimeMS 20 --> 42
BootPNPInitDuration 390 --> 424
OtherKernelInitDuration 225 --> 294
SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS 611 --> 712
SystemPNPInitDuration 312 --> 558
SessionInitStartTimeMS 927 --> 1277
Session0InitDuration 3476 --> 3982
Session1InitDuration 437 --> 556
SessionInitOtherDuration 421 --> 699
WinLogonStartTimeMS 5263 --> 6516
OtherLogonInitActivityDuration 1223 --> 1367
UserLogonWaitDuration 587

You see, that was about 80 seconds. Even with the worst regular HDD Dell sold in January 2010, my office PC using it boots up in around 45 - 50 seconds. I think an Intel 520 SSD should do better.

Edit: I compared put in the number from the fourth boot up --> recent boot up. (boot ups 1-4 had ~ 20-25 seconds whereas the later used 60-140 seconds) Maybe that gives a clue what is going on?

 

The following is an excerpt from Event Viewer:
The speed of processor 1 in group 0 is being limited by system firmware. The processor has been in this reduced performance state for 71 seconds since the last report.
This occurs at least 4 times per boot according to Event Viewer. (Each of the cores 0 to 3 one time) Should I be worried about it?

 

I dug deeper into Event Viewer and discovered, that the first 4 boots of the machine in my possession were considerably faster: 20-22 seconds. The fifth boot was the first to be more than a minute.

Consequently, I wanted to find out what had changed. However, I found no files or folders were changed last between these two boots. (Using search I listed all files and folders on the OS drive by the time stamps of the boots.) I cannot believe no file has changed between the two boots so I assume all files that changed in that period have been changed afterwards again.

Sorting all files and folders by their time stamp of creation did not yield new insights: Between the above mentioned two boots no file was created. I remember the PC was switched off. That probably means the first one of the boots was a restart due to some installation process but this installation affected only the boot after that.

What I installed during this time were mainly windows updates and driver updates but also Cisco anyconnect. (Which I need to connect to my university. However, it never runs for the first boot after installation. I installed and uninstalled several times. The event log does not give any clue what is the reason for it to fail.) Additionally, I installed Sophos Enterprise. I will uninstall that one to find out if it gives the extra minute.

The good news: In principle the machine can be faster. The bad news is: Some of the very basic updates of either windows or Lenovo drivers and utilities makes the boot duration at least triple. During that first period I also installed Firefox and Microsoft Office.

I put in numbers from a fast boot on the first page. Might be helpful?

 

I let the machine determine the Windows Experience Index again and in comparison to factory state it is WAY lower now!

Processor: 7.1 --> 4.9
Memory: 5.9
Graphics: 5.1 --> 4.9
Gaming Graphics: 6.3 --> 6.1
Disk data transfer rate: 7.9

I wonder what happened here. I also wonder how low these numbers must have been when the performance was even lower.

 

make sure you're running the computer with the battery installed. also, if you removed the power manager, it may have also removed the driver and messed up some stuff. run lenovo system update and make sure at least all the drivers and power manager are installed.

by removing power manager it could have messed up the power settings, which is a simple fix.

 

Lenovo Power Manager is there and Lenovo update did not find any updates. However, I found out there are newer versions of the BIOS and AMT. After the BIOS update the Performance was pretty much back to factory performance. Only 'Graphics" was at 5.0 instead of 5.1 but that is not a problem. Those were not the first updates which System Update did not find but I had to find manually.

I could fix the boot time with this in part, too. Besides I had to disable the fingerprint reader because the driver conflicts according to windows performance tools but there is no newer driver.

Now I am back at 22 seconds. (The last 12-18 seconds too much originated from Sophos Enterprise. I knew Sophos would add around 15 seconds but not 60 seconds.)

 

That's precisely the reason I don't use Lenovo software -- it didn't work for me. Their update system was useless; sometimes I had to manually download the drivers and their AccessConnections took WAY longer to connect to WiFi (and was buggy too) than a standard Windows WiFi connection. On top of that, it wasn't working at all with Windows WiFi service enabled. It gives a cool looking map but other than that there just wasn't anything useful that I already didn't have. The battery app is useful vs Windows app because it shows the percentage, allows for setting up custom charging schemes and shows a wear level. I suppose, it also comes with better power plans than Windows.

I also used Sophos at some point few years ago and was disappointed because of how much this software slows down your computer. (I know -- it may be required in some environments.) If you are allowed to change it, I'd suggest rather either Microsoft Security Essentials (free) or NOD32 (often discounted on Newegg).

I am glad it worked out -- it looks like it was something related to the (heavy throttling of the) CPU.