Crashing :(

My Thinkpad keeps on hanging when I put it to sleep. I close the lid and put it in my bag, and while most of the time it goes into sleep without a problem, lately it's been hanging, and just now the computer crashed completely. I had to restart the computer, and scarily, the desktop was all screwed up. I restart again and all seemed fine.

I would say this seems like a Windows 7 problem, but I've used Windows 7 beta (64 bit) with few Thinkpad drivers, and NEVER had this problem then (it went to sleep really quickly). Now I have Windows 7 RTM 32 bit with full Thinkpad software, and it's slower to go into sleep. Think I should switch to 64 bit? 32 bit seems to work fine right now, and I have no need for 64 bit (don't even have 4 GB of RAM). I'll probably switch to 64 bit just for bragging rights, it doesn't cost me anything to image my computer at my campus computing center.

I think maybe it's the hard drive protection system, I know that it parks the hard drive head when I move the computer. But I always had that installed with the Win7 beta through today, and this problem has only crept up when using the Win7 RTM. Also, I've kept my drivers up-to-date as much as possible.

I just wish my computer could work as well when I used Win7 beta It rocked then, and now it just seems kinda sucky.

 

Let's eliminate the usual suspects. Since you say you are running the latest drivers, have you updated to the latest BIOS? Have you run windows update (not Lenovo update)? Give those two a try if you haven't already, and report back please.

 

I did Windows Update, no new updates, and System Update, only a hotkey utility or something, ( I installed it anyway). I just noticed my BIOS is 2.21, and the latest is 2.27 (I thought System Update was supposed to find the latest BIOS, but whatever). I'll try that. Maybe I'll reimage on Sunday to 64 bit Win7.

 

My guess is that with my Windows 7 install right now, I have a huge amount of software on my laptop that I didn't have when I was running the Windows 7 beta. I guess having this stuff really slows it down. (Adobe, Office, Visual Studio, bunch of other stuff I didn't run with the beta). Argh it's frustrating.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Lenovo Thinkpad tools. On the one hand, they are pretty awesome and provide a lot of functionality that Windows 7 doesn't provide by itself. On the other, they clog up your RAM and CPU cycles, slowing down your system. Before Windows 7 beta came out in January last year, I was running Windows Vista and I was mortified by how much RAM it was using and how slow the computer felt. Then I used the Windows 7 beta almost exclusively until April this year, when I upgraded to my university's Windows 7 image for my laptop. It's a little slower than the beta due to all the extra software, but acceptable for me. But now this has become more of a problem recently.

I'm going to try to make sure the laptop goes to sleep before I put it in my bag. That's about the only solution I can come up with now, aside from reimaging again.

 

For me, even after it goes to sleep, it just turns off suddenly for some reason.