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This may be too obvious, but I may as well post it anyway. Did you reboot? I almost never reboot my own laptop, just let it go into sleep mode and then wake it up. Turns out there is a Win7 bug which can sometimes prevent your USB ports from waking up. There is a registry change you can make to avoid this issue detailed in this MS technote : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928631

It is for Vista, but applies to all Windows OS. Or you can just reboot to see if the USB ports are once again recognized.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh! It’s all my fault!

I finally figured it out, and it was entirely my fault. All of the changes above did improve things, but the laptop seemed no faster than my previous XP laptop, so I was resigned to that being the best it could do despite the drastically upgraded hardware and much newer OS. I have a docking station for the old T61p laptop (XP machine) on a stand in my office. When I received the new laptop, I also replaced the docking station with a new one which fits a W510 Thinkpad, but I just used the same power adapter since the connector was identical. The cord was passed up behind my desk against the wall, so I just plugged in the old one since it was a pain to crawl under my desk to exchange them. After days of making changes, tweaks, etc., and yet another reboot, I needed to cold start the laptop. This time, a nice big message appeared on the screen “A power adapter with a lower wattage has been detected. Please use the power adapter which shipped with your laptop. Your laptop battery will charge at a slower rate and your computer will automatically lower the performance of your computer to adjust for the lower wattage.”

Learn something new every day. The new brick is rated 135W 20V, the old one only 90W 20V. I switched bricks, and presto, snappy performance after my next boot. Doh!

OK, looks like I have it working much better now. It was a long combination of things, but I am willing to bet disabling all the Bluetooth elements removed some interrupt contention. Fortunately, I don’t need bluetooth on this laptop. Changes made :

1). Moved UAC down a notch from the company-preset highest setting to second setting.
2). Turned off a long list of services (Adobe Acrobat Update Service, Nvidia 3D, Superfetch, Remote Desktop config, Fax, Wireless Bluetooth (2 services), ActiveX Installer, BES Client, Bluetooth support services, and Parental Controls.
3). Removed all USB devices prior to boot (apparently there is a known loop with USB devices plugged in at boot which may cause perf issues).
4). Disabled Bluetooth Software pre-load
5). Upgraded to latest Nvidia drivers, disabled 3D Vision.
6). Upgraded BIOS.
7). Upgraded all drivers via Lenovo tool.
8). Upgraded Win7 via Windows Update including all Optional Updates.
9). Ran CCleaner.
10). Turned off Aero, went to a basic Win7 theme.

– I also tried a few things I reverted. I originally set to “Adjust for Best Performance” in Performance Options dialog box (Control Panel – System – Adjust Performance…) but Win7 ended up looking unacceptably ugly so switched back to “Adjust for Best Appearance”. There was a slight increase in perceived performance, but not enough to justify the ugliness.
– Turning off 4 of the cores via msconfig – boot – advanced, but that had no discernible impact. Went back to 8.

System is much snappier now, about what I had with XP. With the additional cores and RAM, I expect it will be quite a bit more stable. After I test this new config for a few days, I’ll turn Superfetch back on since in theory that should improve application loading performance and boot over time.

DD.

Ah, I hate this new laptop! It is a complete slug. I can type faster than it puts up the characters in most applications! The hourglass comes up all the time. I have since learned that a corei7 is actually comprised of 4 physical cores and 4 virtual. Is there any way to turn off the 4 virtual cores? Maybe it is some sort of weird contention problem between cores. I am out of ideas, I can’t help thinking I should have ordered a Corei5 instead.

If it’s company-provided it’s a no-brainer. The company must have a systems administrator, and it’s his job to make them work. Period.

Yeah….. the HelpDesk will simply re-image the laptop. I’ll do that if I get desperate, but I have put a fair number of hours getting it ready for use transitioning from my old laptop (and yes, it was slow before I changed a single thing). The latest nVidia drivers seemed to have helped, but not very much. The XP system was still snappier. What also helped is toning down UAC from the top selection to the next-one-down. Now it has stopped asking me for a password every time I change a system parameter. My Windows Experience is measuring 5.9, which seems quite good but that still doesn’t account for the hourglass coming up all the time. Even doing something simple like launching Control Panel brings it up. The system is definitely usable, but I am simply not seeing any improvement over my past system despite the markedly better specs.

I’ll keep plugging away. I have even tried turning off 4 of the 8 cores to see if that made a difference (via the msconfig boot options tab). That appeared to make zero difference at all, which tells me that the 8 cores are not really being used efficiently. Am on to network issues now, trying to see if different MTUs improve things, wireless vs. wired, etc. I am convinced there must be some contention surrounding the 8 cores, some delay when the OS decides to which core it assigns a thread. Just a guess, but something along those lines. Any other suggestions appreciated.

I doubt I’ll be able to do that, this is a company-provided laptop with the mandatory image. For info, the XP laptop was as well, with the same level of security. It’s not Win7 I am blaming it on, I have no idea what to blame it on (yet). When I first installed Vista on a desktop machine years ago, I remember the same type of behaviour. It was caused by the endless checking for User Access control, and Vista never really improved. I have UAC turned on on my desktop, and it shows zero slowdown as a result. So still unsure what it is, but it is very very sluggish. There is a lag regardless of what option I choose.

It’s a little better, I selected the “best performance” option, which turned off every option in that dialog box. Without question it is snappier, although a lot uglier. Fonts are hilariously 90’s. However, hourglass still comes up a lot. I also went to a non-Aero “basic” Win7 theme.

My desktop is a 4GB RAM Core2Duo 6420 OC’ed to 3GHz with Win7 64-bit installed on an 80 GB SSD. It is lightning fast despite the older gen CPU, and half the RAM. I realize much of that performance comes from the SSD, but still, once files are loaded into RAM, the laptop should not be impacted by the old-style Hard drive.

Am now upgrading the Nvidia Quadro FX drivers on the laptop, although the ones I had weren’t that old. Am running out of things to do. Just like the OP stated, the laptop is acting like it is loafing. When I select an option, it’s like it has to get off the couch to fulfill the request. Even doing something simple like email, any menu option starts with the hourglass before the drop-down list. Something is seriously wrong…..

DD.

I have the same problem. I just upgraded from a Thinkpad T61p with 3GB RAM running a Core2Duo 2.4 MHz CPU on 32-bit XP SP3 to a W510 Thinkpad with 8 GB RAM running a Corei7 2 GHz X920 CPU on Win7 SP1 64-bit. Without a doubt, the old XP machine was faster. This new Thinkpad is very sluggish, often I can type faster than it can put up the characters.

What the @#$@#$#@ is going on? This machine should be much faster, with a much more recent current gen CPU, more than double the RAM, and a 10-year-more-recent OS. Yet the Win7 machine is like a big slug. The hourglass comes up constantly. CPU usage on Task Manager is never more than a few %, RAM usage is nowhere near my full 8 GB (usually it is 3 or so). Both Thinkpads have 7200 HDs (not SSD).

I ran Windows update to update every available update, as well as the Lenovo utilities which upgraded all drivers (10 newer drivers were found, including a BIOS upgrade).

Any ideas? I want to go back to my boring old XP! This reminds me of the upgrade to Vista on my desktop machine…..