Completely new R400 but start up extremely slow

Hi there, got my R400 yesterday and immediately I noticed that the start up was slow as I went to set it up. Since then I've turned it off and on a few times (including downloading and installing 24 windows updates) thinking that it was just being slow because it hadn't been used but it hasn't improved. The machine seems perfectly fine once everything is loaded but that's the problem...on a new machine I do not expect to be waiting like 10 minutes for it to all load up! (3-4 minutes to get to sign-in screen then 5 or 6 for everything to load).

I have only installed an anti-virus and windows live messenger so it's not what i've done. There's 50 GB of bloatware from lenovo there, so I guess it could be that but even still it should still be a lot faster than this. I was thinking maybe one of the ram sticks is ed or the processor but i'm not getting any bluescreens and after start up it's fine...well maybe a little less responsive than expected but passable.

I'm at a loss here TBH. I can't wipe the HDD and just reinstall Vista since they don't give you the disc. If I do a recovery back up and reinstall what's the point since it's going to be exactly the same as I have now lol.

Any suggestions?

 

How much ram do you have and what OS are you running?

 

4 GB RAM and Vista. I know it only uses 3 but it should still flying through at this stage.

Just turned it on again, it went a bit quicker to the sign-in page (before it spent awhile on the blank screen between loading page with microsoft copyright thingy and the sign-in). It spent longer than 2 year old pc on the welcome page after I signed in and then after that it goes to a blank screen (aka all black) with just a cursor on. This is pissing me off because as far as I am concerned I expect a brand new laptop to boot up in 1 minute, 2 maximium. It has hardly anything on it and yet is easily out performed by my old pc that has less ram and a LOT LOT more stuff on it.

Edit: Everything loaded and it took just under 8 minutes....

 

Ok, so memory is not the issue. I have been using Vista and it has been ok, but it isn't what I would call snappy. You just bought the machine, so did you get the option to upgrade to Windows 7 for free? If you did, I would wait till Win 7 is released and a little mature and move to that. Everything I have heard about it is that it is snappy. Another thing is that Vista has a feature called Superfetch which caches all your commonly used apps etc to disc so that it is faster to access in subsequent times. After using the machine for a while, it should get faster. Personally I don't think it works too great since my harddrive is still being hammered even after using my machine for a month. Other things you can do are a clean install and also checking what processes are getting started up and shutdown unneeded ones. Also you can follow one of the Vista tweaking guides on this site and they help a bit.

Check out this guide:
Guide

 

Hey, thanks for the reply. Yeah I have the option to upgrade to Windows 7 for free but it's only an upgrade disc not a full one so I'm still going to have the tons of bloatware unfortunately . A clean install is impossible as I don't have a disc to install from...I'll check out that guide you linked and see if it helps though!

 

try uninstalling the bloatware. Plus Vista itself is a huge problem. When I used Vista on my T61p, it ground this machine to a halt, sometimes for 10 minutes or longer. On a supposedly new high end machine, that is unacceptable. I'd recommend getting Windows 7 if you can, and doing a clean install. Maybe you could try downloading the RC from a torrent. Too bad it's too late for you to get the official download, but I assume it's still active on torrents. You'll have to look up the instructions for installing an operating system, and you should probably try it with a second partition (Vista has a built in partition manager that you can use to make the second partition. I use a second partition because it's easier to maintain a Vista install as a backup, but I've been using nothing but Windows 7 for several months now. Vista is just too damn slow for me, and 7 works perfectly.)

EDIT: I mean getting Windows 7 when you can buy it in October and doing a clean install then, I would not clean install the RC and have only one operating system that will shut down in August of next year.

 

By bloatware you mean ThinkAdvantage stuff, right? What stuff can I uninstall safely? From some stuff I read these s could be the main reasons it is so slow to boot up. I'll def. be using my free upgrade when I can for Windows 7 though.

 

Use MSCONFIG to turn off any unwanted startup programs, which would include any ThinkVantage Tools you're not using.

 

Aight, I'll get on it now and see if there's any difference .

 

Do you need Access Connections? I found it only useful for a specific type of 802.1x encryption used by my school (and Vista doesn't support it, I think it was Cisco Peap-GTC. Now they use a different form of Peap that Windows 7 supports natively). You might want the Powermanager, that's about the only thing I need. Well, that and the hotkey utility. Just take a look. If you don't use it, you can uninstall it safely.

 

Well it depends. Some people use some of the Thinkvantage apps, some hate them and think they are bloatware(i.e. they feel Windows has a lot of the functions built in now, where it once didn't and you had to install 3rd party apps to perform the functions) and I am sure that there are those that love all of them. I am personally using Power Manager, Active Protection and Easy Eject and not using any of the others. I was trying to get Access Connection working but had a lot of problems with it such as bugs in the app itself, it would automatically connect to my Wifi when I didn't want it to and I couldn't change a lot of the settings since it would freeze up. I gave up on it. Power Manager is pretty nice(though it has bugs too). It allows me to get a lot of battery life. Easy Eject is nice when removing the laptop from the Ultrabase and Active protection is nice since it protects the harddrive in the event of a fall. So it is up to you which ones you want to keep. I would try them out for a few days and then uninstall the ones you don't want. As I said a lot of the functions of the Thinkvantage apps are obsolete since Windows now comes but with a lot of the features. Windows 7 is even more so. Check out this article about Win 7 and the Thinkvantage apps.

As far as other things to uninstall. You can get rid of all the trial software like Office 2007 for 90 days, Mcafee/Norton trial, etc. What I like to do is keep this software for a while incase I really do want to buy the full versions of the software and want to play with the trial.

You can also do a clean install of Vista, which will help a lot. It is some work, but a lot of people like to do it. I did it for my T61p and it helped and I had complete control over my system and disk partitions(which I needed since I was dual booting Vista and Linux). Check out Stallen's guide. It was written for the T61x series of machines, but you can use the logic as it is the same.

 

Power Manager, Active Protection, System Update, and Fingerprint Reader (if you have it) should be kept. Everything else is kind of redundant in Windows.

 

"4 GB RAM and Vista. I know it only uses 3 but it should still flying through at this stage"

No, it'll use all 4 gb but it will be user + exec memory.

Renee

 

Down to 2 and a half minutes boot up. I think that's passable for now once Windows 7 comes out then hopefully it'll go down a lil bit more!

 

Yes, Windows 7 is snappy. It's a shame all the Vista problems it causes even on new machines.
The only thinkvantage tools I use:
- Active Protection System (don't disable, the HDD might get damaged if you drop the machine or move it suddenly from one place to another)
- Power Manager
- Hotkey driver

I use other tools such as TP Config, to reconfigure the default action of the Thinkvantage button, cool he.
TPFancontrol to control the fan

 

When I get my Windows 7 upgrade CD will it allow me to do a clean install or just a current upgrade? It'd be really nice just to start fresh properly lol.

 

Ughh getting pretty pissed off now. It's gone back to being slow (I re-enabled a process which I think I needed to but I don't it's down to just that). It hangs at a black screen between the loading bar and sign-in screen for ages and then after I sign-in it's on a black screen for ages. This is really annoying me now. How a brand new laptop with 4 GB ram and a dual core processor can perform this badly with nothing on it is beyond me.

7-8 min bootup you are having a ing joke.

Edit: I'm confused now...booted up again took 2 mins...how can randomly range from 2 to 8 mins to boot up :S

 

Most likely there will be no clean install with any discs Lenovo sends you. Relax, it's just a notebook.

 

Yeah just relax when I have spent £800 on a brand new notebook that is about as fast as my 6 year old Dell that has 256 ram and a rubbish processor...

 

I thought it's slower

Well, maybe something is screwed up about the factory image. That sort of thing happens occasionally. My Thinkpad had a bad image when I first got it, so I had to reimage it.

 

It is slower to boot at times...probably attributed to some software issue or vista. It isn't slower when you're actually using it.

 

LDM91,
Did you install all updates from Microsoft especially SP1 for Vista? SP1 for Vista is a big one. It fixed a lot of stuff.

 

Yeah it was all fully downloaded (I did about 24 then another 20 or so). Was on phone a lot of the day to Lenovo, HDD is fine then they told me to restore laptop to factory settings. There is surprisingly an improvement, I'm hitting under 2 minutes boot up time quite a bit now. There are 90 processes at start up though o_o! Going to phone Lenovo on Monday again and see what I can do about those (my 2 year old vista computer still easily beats it with half the RAM ).

I think it's also useful to note that when I open things they don't open straight away like you think they would on a machine with 4 GB RAM. They also commonly go to "Not responding" for a while. Might just end up sending it in for them to look at since I have a feeling as soon as I load programs again it'll slow right down.

My main question really as well is will the Windows 7 Upgrade CD offer the option to clean install? If it does I think it'll solve all my worries .

Edit: just thought Lenovo still put their rubbish on those discs don't they? Why can't they just send completely clean discs out .

 

Most OEMs do not...

If you have 90 processes that is probably why. Go kill processes starting and stop unnecessary services or at least delay them.

 

I did that before, only a few though. I don't really want to mess around and stop processes that I'm not supposed to xD. I think someone posted a program that helps you do it before, maybe I'll go see if I can find that.

 

Well it just takes googling and testing too. I boot with like 50 processes on Vista or 7 usually and that isn't even that lean.

 

I guess so. I'll tweak about with it over the weekend and see how I get on.