How to avoid system freezes, and slower shutdown times on Lenovo T61.

I had Lots of system freezes, slower shutdown times with my Lenovo T61, and i was getting used to it. The system became of no use to me with above problems. Like everyone, I searched internet for solution but no luck. I searched online, and I found out that vista was running fine on other laptops except lenovo. The problem must not be in Windows Vista then, it must be with some third party software. I wanted to spend some time to fix but never had much. The time had come.

It was friday night and my computer was about to goto it's final resting place for the night, and i decided to check my emails before going to bed, and i launched IE and system suddenly froze. I ran simple chkdsk (without /F) and it reported disk error. I issued chkdsk /f and no luck, it never ran next time when my system was booted. I was going like frenzy. I had many system freeze in the past. This is standard with lenovo. I searched internet for solution. I found out vista is not causing problem. The problem must be with the third party drivers. I did clean install and ran lenovo's system update. The problem was about to resurface and i found out "Windows Hybrid power management mode" implemented by intel in it's sata driver. So After clean install i disabled that option on my hard drives. Now the same old problem, taking ages to shutdown my system. I started uninstalling all lenovo's software, and reboot after every uninstall to see any change in shutdown times, but no luck. Now I am finally left with "Rescue and Recovery" software by Lenovo. I decided to say good bye to that software, and i uninstalled it. Wow! now my system shutdowns in 17 seconds. I can run chkdsk /f and next time it runs. I guess Rescue and Recovery problem was preventing chkdsk to run, it never did disk check or disk repair. If i ever need backup I'll use window's backup. I think lenovo should read this blog and fix their software. Their system is really built nice and I love it. The construction of their machine is very good, just quality on their software is going down.

1. Update the latest Turbo memory driver from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/ (DON'T reboot).
2. Update the latest Intel Matrix Storage driver from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/ (REBOOT)
3. Goto Control panel, Power options, Change Power settings, select advanced, and click on Harddisk, disable "Windows Hybrid Harddisk power saving mode" for both AC and Power. Do this for all power plans. (Balanced, Maximum life, High Performance ...). Reboot now.
4. Uninstall Rescue and recovery. It prevents running of chkdsk and doesn't even does repair bad sectors. This application prolongs shutdown time sometimes upto hour so disable it. At times I had to plan my shutdown two hours in advance, and it won't shutdown, i had to press power button to shutdown. After uninstalling this, It shutdowns with in 17 to 20 seconds. These are the main important steps, optionally you may want to disable lenovo's services, but you can safely jump to item #7 from this point.
5. Load msconfig and goto services and uncheck all services that stats "Lenovo" except client security.
6. Load msconfig and click on startup, once again, just leave microsoft started services and uncheck whatever is in lenovo folder, you won't need it.
7. Follow steps outlined in the blog at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532
8. Reboot now, your machine's startup and shutdown time will be fast, your harddisk light won't be winking at you continuously. You can do chkdsk /f and it will run next time system startup, otherwise it is prevented by Lenovo's rescue and recovery software, if possible do clean vista install, and follow the steps outlined here.

Note: As of today (April 25th, 2008) my computer still functions better without lenovo's rescue and recovery software. It has become faster after disabling certain background services from lenovo. I have also done some changes related to performance from control panel. The life is much better now. I asked people around some people don't have problem with rescue and recovery on X61 tablet, but just uninstall Lenovo's Rescue and Recovery. Life will be much better. Good luck.