lenovo toolbox driving me CRAZY!!

i dont know what triggered it, or how to stop it, but i keep getting an annoying popup on the right corner of my screen saying that lenovo toolbox has scanned my computer and found no problems.

i've tried dismissing it but 5 minutes later its back.

what do i do??? its really really annoying me

 

Dump it. I found the same thing too and removed it. If I ever need the diagnostic features, which I think is the reason to have it, I'll download the DOS version of PC-Doctor and run it from there.

 

but if i do that, wont i have to uninstall the whole thinkvantage suite?

also why has it just started happening?

 

No, you should be able to just get rid of the Thinkvantage Toolbox but not the other utilities. I was never a fan of the current Toolbox so I avoid it altogether on my systems.

 

is it really that useless? i thought some of the features might come in useful

 

Some find it quite useful, I think members such as lineS of flight is an advocate for it. Personally I take care of the system maintenance regularly myself so I don't need an application to remind me to do it, plus it does save a fair bit of resources along the way by not having it on the system.

 

surely there must be a way to disable the notification? i even disabled the automatic scanning....and its still doing it

 

I have a basement full of things I think "might be useful". Most of those things have been there for months, even years, but my packrat-nature thinks that if I ever get rid of one of those things, I'll need it 24 hours later.

That's what the ThinkVantage Toolbox is like --except you'll never need it 24 hours later.

 

ok well i doubt it takes up that much CPU and as this is my secondary laptop i dont even need the HDD space that i'd get if i got rid of it, so if i want to keep it anyway, any information on how to disable the popups would be much appreciated

 

Do you have the most current version. Read about this on the Lenovo forum as well. I have the newest system (T420) and the most current Toolbox and have yet to get that message

 

im using version 4, wouldnt lenovo update tell me if there was a newer version? any idea how i can check?

also i've been using this laptop since the 13th and didnt get it until today

 

Did you change a setting or install new hardware lately? I personally wanted to get all the Lenovo software including ThinkVantage properly installed so I ordered the recovery media from IBM.

 

i installed a new ultranav driver yesterday, but the popups didnt start till today evening. a blue circle with a keyboard icon appears in the system tray for 2 seconds, then i get this popup. its really distracting and annoying

 

Did you try going to the Windows taskbar > arrow > Show hidden icons, and change the behavior for the Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox Updater to "Hide icon and notifications"?

 

ah, i think you may have hit on something here. i didnt realise those popup toasts were affected by the icon and notifications thing.

i just disabled all the lenovo stuff listed there, lets see what happens.


in the mean time, +rep to you for giving the most useful answer so far

 

ok that didnt work, it just popped up again. ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

 

On the Lenovo Toolbox, when I open it, there is a 'Settings' option on the upper left. If you click on that and uncheck "Enabled Scheduled Hardware Check" or change the frequency to a longer time period, does that work?

 

already did that...

 

A couple of options.

1) See if you can find the service that is running and change it to manual or stop it. Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.

2) Go to Start, type in msconfig and press Enter. See if you can find the service or program to uncheck.

3) Download and launch Sysinternals and let it help you [haven't used it myself].
Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

 

already tried msconfig, no luck. looked through the service list but not sure which one it might be. any idea?

 

No. I looked through the list of services running on my X220 and nothing obvious popped up. I have not had the problem with messages that you have had, but I've only had my X220 a week or so.

Maybe you can check Event Viewer (in Administrative Tools) for an event at the time of the message to get a clue.

 

Try here for any update to the toolbox for your system

Lenovo Support - Lenovo Diagnostics Software: New Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox Update

 

thanks, i'll try installing whatever version they have up there in the hope that lenovo update screwed up.

+rep.

 

ok the version on that website is supposedly an older version of the one lenovo update installed (.35 vs .37) so its prompting me to update to the newer version. im not going to do that (yet) in case this 'older' version solves my problem

 

Read this on the ThinkVantage toobox site...........

"Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5 SP1 must be installed for the program to work correctly."

May wish to check to see if you have this as well.. Just a thought

 

how do i check that? also, as per my previous post, i installed the 'older' version that was on that link and it seems to be cured lol...

 

you can check what .NET Framework you have by just going to control panel and looking at the installed programs. It will list all Framework versions that you have installed. If you don't have it you can get it from windows update.

 

If you have Windows 7 then you already have Microsoft .NET Framework 3.51 by default, since the OP is running Windows 7 Pro you don't need to acquire this component.

 

ok it says have .net framework 4, so i assume it meets the requirements

 

There could be the same bug / behavior discussed here a while back (see Comments section). In hort: did you disable the "Lenovo ThinkVantage Toolbox" icon on the taskbar? If so, you have to re-enable it to git rid of that message. Personally, I didn't like this workaround and simply disabled 2 tasks in Task Scheduler - these tasks are PCDoctorBackgroundMonitorTask and SystemToolsDailyTest.

 

Just dump it and move on with your life. That's my opinion anyway.

 

thanks, but i managed to solve the problem without just dumping it.

 

It might help others if you said what that was unless I missed it.

 

you missed it ^^^^^^^

having said that, its weird that the older version solves the problem.

 

Not really an advocate for it. I just find it useful for the limited purposes that I use it for.

Btw, I don't seem to be facing the problems - on both my machines - that OP is referring to. The ThinkVantage notification comes up - once a day - and that's it.

But I do think that the OP's problem is indeed related to the .NET issue, which is probably why installing the older version worked for him.