HELP!! Find out whats slowing down my computer!!

[BuckWeet]

We have a corpoate image for our IBM Thinkpad t40/t41 notebooks. We're using Win XP, SP1, and all other business apps.. We don't have anything running as a server process.. Every so often our PC's will just lag when typing. I can't for the life of me figure out what is causing it.. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do to track it down? I've tried using performance monitor and monitor all processes, nothing spikes the CPU.. And just before you ask, the system is 100% clean of adware, virii, etc...


Thoughts

BuckWeet

 

[bcastner]

What you describe is most likely due to IBM's Advanced Power Management feature on their drives.

"This feature allows you to change the default power saving mode of the drive. The device preserves the
selected power mode across all forms of reset, that is Power on, Hardware and Software resets.
APM is a technology that adaptively adjusts the power saving feature of IBM hard disk drives to suit
your working style. Power is saved by idling the actuator arm, additional power is saved by unloading
the actuator arm and heads from the disk to the off-ramp. The technology actively adjusts the trade-off
between disk delay and power consumption. This program allows you to change the aggressiveness of
the power saving." Taken from this IBM document:

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/ibmftool_userguide.pdf

If you wish to confirm this, you can download the IBM Feature Tool and completely disable the IBM APM. Disabling APM should also rid the drive of head parking noises. In addition, there are other performance adjustments for the drive as well. Download link:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

If you're interested, IBM also has a page with recorded sounds of hard drive failures (I love this link):

http://ssddom01.storage.ibm.com/hdd...4b1a62a50f405d0d86256756006e340c?OpenDocument

The most important thing to do is to update the drive firmware:

http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-41008.html

Download and run fwhd2501.exe. The firmware update utility will show all of the HDDs that are detected. Follow the instructions displayed.

 

[linney]

This is from a transcript on the web.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=/servicedesks/webcasts/en/transcripts/wct051303.asp

"Otto: We have a couple of questions regarding compatibility with Citrix. For instance: Have you heard of any issues with 5- to 10-second pauses when typing words in Outlook, Word, and Excel, in a Windows 2000 Citrix 1.8 Terminal Server environment?

Mark: I haven’t really seen that on a frequent basis. A lot of the customers I’ve talked to who use Terminal Services, probably 50 percent use Citrix MetaFrame 1.8 or 2000. So it’s very common, and I haven’t had too many issues with people saying that they’re getting a typing delay. Typically speaking, if you’re seeing that in the applications, you could use some tracing tools to see if you can discover where some of the hangs are taking place, maybe even with RegMon or FileMon or something like that.

Because the applications that you just mentioned in Outlook, if you’re using WordMail, will instantiate a printer, I would really start by looking at the printers that you have installed. Maybe remove them all and see if you’re still having problems."

Other suggestions I saw while looking -

Maybe a keyboard driver issue?

DirectX update issue?.