Greenhorn Question: T400 Crashes Often

Hello Everyone!

I'm new to this forum so forgive me for any fauxpaes of being ignorant to the obvious. I recently got my T400 (specs below) and overall I have to say I'm pretty disappointed when it comes to reliability and performance. It came with Vista Home Premium 32-bit, and I wish I had XP-Pro though I'm not in a position at the moment to do anything about it.

Sometimes I'll turn it on and I can use it without any problems. Sometimes I will turn it on, it will take at least 5 minutes to load Vista and everything from PowerPoint to FireFox to Windows Explorer will crash. I've had to manually restart it about 10 times in less than three weeks. It really doesn't have any Bloatware, games, or memory sucking apps of any kind. I just use it for web access and MS Office.

So other than doing a clean install, should I be worried about the frequent crashing? Should I contact Lenovo? I hate to go through them if there is something simple I can do to avoid the trouble. Thanks to everyone!

SPECS:
7417CTO THINKPAD T400
42X6350 SBB 100GB HDD/7200RPM
42X6326 SBB INT.TURBOMEMORY1.6 2GB
42X6344 SBB CD-RW/DVDCOM24X24X248XUSL
42X6311 SBB EXPR.CARDSLOT/SMARTCSLOT
62P6054 VBB INTEGR.BLUETOOTH PAN
42X6325 SBB INT.WIFI LINK5300
42X6328 SBB INTG.WIR.WIDENET UPGRAD.
42V9338 SBB 6 CELL LI-ION BATERRY
41W1787 SBB CPK NORTH AMERICA
42X6388 SBB LPACK US ENGLISH
42X6335 SBB INT.CORE2DUOPROCP8400
42X6341 SBB 1GBPC3-8500 1067MHZMEM
42V9428 SBB PACKAGING US
44C1347 SBB 14.1"WXGA+LEDB/L BTCAMWWAN
44C1325 SBB LCDCOVBEZLEDB/L14.1"W/CAM
44C1383 SBB ODD SWFCD-RW/DVD/ROM,VISTA
44C1359 SBB MT 7417 SYSTE. LABEL
43Y3470 SBB WWAN MISCP-WWAN READYFULL
43Y3475 SBB WLAN MISCP-3X3FULL(F2
42X2659 SBB ENERGY STAR 4.0 PACK
44C1316 SBB BLUETOOTH W/ANTENNA
42V8011 VBB MS WIN VISTA HOME PREMIUM
42X1702 SBB BLUETOOTH SCREW
44C1318 SBB INTEG.WLESSANTENNA:14.1"
44C1356 SBB CL.PLATET400WLAN+BLUETWWAN
43Y3469 SBB UWB MISCP-ROBSON HALF(H1)
44C1351 SBB EXP.CARDSLOTNSMARTCARDSLOT
43Y4468 SBB INT GRAP.M.ACC.X4500FRULBL
43Y4024 SBB BASE 2ND TOUCH INTEGRATED
44C1410 SBB MECH MISC PARTS
43Y3961 SBB NEWINTLBL 2008 CENT 2 VPRO
42V7972 SBB MS LABEL (VISTA PREMIUM)
44C1222 SBB GEN VIS HOPREM32 US EN
44C1386 SBB GEOLBL.US,WLAN,BLUET.
42W7002 SBB FCC-ID/LABEL FOR WWAN
42V9665 SBB FCC, LABEL
40Y9213 1 YEAR THINKPAD PROTECTION
40Y9134 TPP TERMS AND CONDITIONS
42X6321 SBB 14.1 WXGA+ TFT, W/ CAMERA
42X6313 SBB INT.GRAPH.MEDIAACCELX4500
42X6305 SBB 2GBPC3-8500 1067MHZ2DIMM
42X6355 SBB KYB US ENGLISH
42X6322 SBB ULTRNAV(TRACKP+TOUCHPAD)

 

Could be a Windows or hardware problem. If possible, you might want to backup your system and then do a clean install of Windows. If the issues still occur, call Lenovo as it’s likely a hardware problem. For what it’s worth, my notebook, so far, has been rock solid.

 

Something else I wanted to add.... the LCD will often have a flicker when loading color intense application or webpages. For example, if I switch from a web page that is mostly black to mostly white, the image will flicker for about 10 seconds. The only other time I saw something like that was when I had a bad video card. Anyone else have this problem? Can a bad video card cause these other problems with frequent crashed and unresponsiveness?