HELP, X61S Not Responding

I've posted this question a few times but have not gotten a definite answer so here goes again.

My x61s will often display "not responding" on the top of program windows (ie, firefox, word, etc) for about 3-5 seconds. When this happens, I can hear the hard drive starting to spin faster and then the program responds again. I've disabled turbo memory but this problem still persists. This happens 5-10 times a day and has become really annoying. I am running vista home.

Is this a problem with my harddrive, windows vista, or something else? What should I do?

Thanks again for any help, I really appreciate it!

 

a laptop usually shows 'not responding' when it can't run fast enough with your multitasking, could be because you don't have enough ram?

 

What are the specs of your system?

 

I have an x61s with an l7500 processor, 2 gb of ram, and 60 gig 7200rpm hard drive running windows vista home

 

Yeah might be true...what are the specs of your notebook?

EDIT: hmmm...nice specs...how many programs are you running at the same time? it might be spyware using up resources.

 

I am running 86 processes and all of them are programs that windows is running; I've had this problem since day 1...I did, however, install a 1 gig stick of ram into my system before ever turning it on...could this be the problem since it is not identical to the 1 gig stick that was in the machine?

 

Well the ram shouldn't be a problem...but you can try taking it out and see what happens.

 

When things are not responding, open up task manager and see what your CPU is at.

 

One possible thing is that Thinkvantage is lagging your system...check that out on the task manager and see how much cpu its taking up.

 

the task manager says that thinkvantage is not taking up any cpu usage as of right now; it's difficult to check the cpu status when my system is not responding because it only lasts for 3-5 seconds and then it becomes normal again.

 

ok, when my system freezes, the cpu usage goes up to ~40-50% but it doesn't show which program/process is taking up most of the usage. also, the physical memory is constantly at ~55% usage. does this mean anything? any ideas? thanks again.

 

I think I've also run into this, but since it's just ~3 second delay and does not seem to do anything else, it doesn't really bug me (though now that you've brought it up, I would also like to know the cause of this).

From what I can recall, it comes up when I switch between applications and windows. When this happens, the trackpoint/mouse pointer does not move and will then come back to life. Though I don't seem to run into it as frequently as you did, maybe once a couple of days.

My OS is Vista Business custom Lenovo installation, 2GB memory, Hitachi 5K160. I have all of the thinkvantage installed, with the fingerprint reader.