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    No Improvement in Startuo Time from Ram Upgrade

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by huangker, Oct 20, 2007.

  1. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    Hi all,

    I have a R61i 89329TM with the following specs

    T5250(1.5GHz),
    1GB DDR2 667 MHz RAM,
    80GB 7200 RPM Segate HD (upgrade from the original 120GB 5400rpm HD)
    15.4in 1280x800,
    Intel X3100,
    CDRW/DVDRW,
    Intel 802.11abg wireless,
    Modem,
    1Gb Ethernet,
    UltraNav,
    Secure chip,
    6c Li-Ion,
    WinVista Business

    It was slow as a dog (slower than my 1 and half year old budget compaq running windows xp) so I decided to get extra 1 GB of ram. This however has had no effect on the startup time at all. It still takes two minutes for the machine to be fully functional. Is there a reason for this lack of immediate improvement boost? Was the ram upgrade a waste of money?

    Cheers
    Jeremy
     
    huangker, Oct 20, 2007
    #1
  2. adinu

    adinu I pwn teh n00bs.

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    If you have a lot of crap processes at startup, it doesn't matter if you have 20 gigs of memory. What you should do is clean those up and you will then see a difference.
     
    adinu, Oct 21, 2007
    #2
  3. notyou

    notyou Notebook Deity

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    I agree with adinu, clean up your starting processes to see a difference. But if you wanted to see a difference in your boot up time, the best thing to do would be to buy a faster HDD since booting is almost entirely HDD related.
     
    notyou, Oct 21, 2007
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  4. adinu

    adinu I pwn teh n00bs.

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    He already has a 7200rpm hard drive in here, so there is no "faster" option for him short of getting an SSD.
     
    adinu, Oct 21, 2007
    #4
  5. AKAJohnDoe

    AKAJohnDoe Mime with Tourette's

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    Clean up the Task manager entries and the startup entries. Look into CCleaner to assist you perhaps.
     
    AKAJohnDoe, Oct 21, 2007
    #5
  6. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    Thanks for the quick replies.

    Yes I do have a 7200 rpm hd already. I've already looked at the startup entries in msconfig. Most are either lenovo thinkvantage items, intel wireless drivers, nod32 av, and a few other programs which I've installed. In terms of services, I've already disabled a few mentioned in this extreme tech article http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2110598,00.asp

    What could else could I disable?

    Cheers
    Jeremy
     
    huangker, Oct 21, 2007
    #6
  7. Greg

    Greg Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    The levono apps will slow you down, as well as Vista's UAC. Since you have a decent AV solution...ditch UAC and see if that helps. I'd also recommend turning off both SuperFetch and ReadyBoost.
     
    Greg, Oct 21, 2007
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  8. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    Which lenovo apps as the worst offenders? I do use the power manager and access connections so I wont want to stop them from running.

    I'm getting rid of UAC now. Anything else I can do on the software side?
     
    huangker, Oct 21, 2007
    #8
  9. Jalf

    Jalf Comrade Santa

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    Since startup mostly consists of loading data from harddrive into RAM, it doesn't really matter how much RAM you have. It's the harddrive you're mostly waiting for.
     
    Jalf, Oct 21, 2007
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  10. tebore

    tebore Notebook Evangelist

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    There's a really good chance your 120Gig 5400RPM is as fast as your 80Gig 7200.

    When you upgrade a laptop harddrive you have to get the fastest possible. I bet a 160Gig 7200RPM might be able to give you a boost.

    The reason is the density of the platters. Those 120Gig High density 5400RPM are just a little bit slower than a low density >100gig 7200RPM drives.
     
    tebore, Oct 21, 2007
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  11. KnightUnit

    KnightUnit Notebook Evangelist

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    Do you have any articles or benchmarks to back this up, im interested to learn more...
     
    KnightUnit, Oct 21, 2007
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  12. tebore

    tebore Notebook Evangelist

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    Go to www.storagereview.com or silentpcreview.com.

    They ran a comparison between Recent 5400RPM drives to 7200RPM drives. Perpendicular technology is the thing that bridge the gap. Only more recently did perpendicular technology reach 7200RPM drives.
     
    tebore, Oct 21, 2007
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  13. Lite

    Lite Notebook Deity

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    could be some sort of virus hidden in the sytem files...?
     
    Lite, Oct 21, 2007
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  14. tebore

    tebore Notebook Evangelist

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    It's not a Virus. It's just Thinkvantage crapware, Vista that's slowing him down.

    Vista when it gets warmed up is as fast or just a tad faster than XP when you use Readyboost. But it's dog slow at the beginning.

    Access Connections is a hog when you got an Intel Wireless card because not only do you load AC you also load the Intel Wireless Manager which by itself was 150mbs of RAM and Pagefile usage. R&R is another piece of crap the slows the system down, Acronis is so much better.

    My system was dog slow like that once, Then I moved to XP. It wasn't fast enough so I started from scratch again and went one by one on the TV. What you need is TV HDD Active protection, TV AC, and if you want the fingerprint scanner to do something is Client Security. What you have to do first is install R&R 4.1 then install the above, once the above is installed you can remove R&R 4.1. R&R4 installs the DLLs and services those programs rely on and update the hidden partition.
     
    tebore, Oct 21, 2007
    #14
  15. huangker

    huangker Notebook Guru

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    Is it worth purchasing Acronis or Norton given theres already backup software that comes with the system? Also, if my laptop is stolen, am I able to restore from my R&R copy to a non thinkpad computer?

    Well I still like the access connections to configure my wireless network. Ive gotten rid of CSS. What other thinkvantage stuff do I not need?
     
    huangker, Oct 21, 2007
    #15