Sunday, July 01, 2012

Windows 7 - Resuming from hibernation is slow on Thinkpad

This post describes the solution to a hibernation issue I had with Lenovo Thinkpad L412 laptop running Windows 7.

When waking up from hibernation the system resumed relatively fast, but then, for a minute or two after resuming, many applications (e.g. Explorer, Firefox) would be "not responding".

Additional symptoms:

  • During this period the disk activity was unexpectedly high, Resource Monitor indicated that most of it was paging (see the high "Hard faults" figure, and the c:\pagefile.sys requests on the screenshot), even though there was more than enough RAM available before hibernating.
  • The task manager also showed a drop in memory utilization -- the system used fewer memory after hibernating and resuming than before.

The program to blame for this behavior turned out to be this fine piece of software engineering:

"ThinkVantage Technologies Power Manager 6"

Just uninstall it and the problem is gone. You'll lose the large battery widget in the task bar and the confusing power management UI that mostly duplicates existing Windows functionality:

(If anyone wonders. the latest version at the time of writing (6.32) had this problem too.)

Troubleshooting tips that helped to identify the issue can be found here: Trace Windows 7 boot/shutdown/hibernate/standby/resume issues.

23 comments:

  1. vincebray8/24/2012 7:50 PM

    Nice find! I had just created the same hibernate log when I happened to add thinkpad to my google search and found your very helpful post. Totally solved my slow hibernate issue! I was waiting several minutes before I could use the pc, just resumed hibernate and firefox was totally responsive right at resume. Thanks again!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown9/19/2012 12:04 AM

    Sounds interesting, but does anyone have a tip on how to actually uninstall Power Manager? It's not listed in "Add/Remove Programs".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nickolay9/19/2012 2:08 AM

      I think it was there for me, since I didn't care to mention the exact steps. http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-70601#uninstall also says it should be there.

      Delete
    2. Unknown9/27/2012 3:06 PM

      Thanks for responding! I can see the "ThinkPad Power Management Driver" there, but I read elsewhere (http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Disable-Power-Manager/td-p/244772) that one should specifically not remove the driver, only the utility. Perhaps that was wrong - I guess I can just go ahead and uninstall that one and see what happens.

      Delete
    3. Anonymous11/20/2012 11:34 AM

      I uninstalled the driver and nothing happened, but then I noticed that there is a program called only "Power Manager". Uninstalling that removed the right program. It was not listed under "ThinkVantage". Without the driver, seems to reboot fine and Windows power management seems to work still.

      Delete
  3. Sash10/16/2012 9:37 AM

    Thanks a lot, worked like magic!
    Before I was using like 3.5 GB of ram when going to hibernate,
    on resuming, the system would return with only 1.8 GB loaded,
    and i couldn't use anything from the loaded session.
    Now I can work right away :) like it's supposed to be.
    THANK YOU for nerve and time saving.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown10/24/2012 4:43 AM

    Thank you for this. I have a Thinkpad with 16GB of RAM, and yet when I resumed from hibernation the hard drive would always churn for at least ten minutes before I could actually use the system again. After uninstalling this software, hibernation/resume is now working as expected.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Tony Hoyle12/25/2012 3:41 PM

    Thanks for this. I have a G780 - it often takes 2-3 hard reboots to get the wifi to restart after a resume - which amazingly is a common problem across the entire lenovo range! I hope removing the power management software (and anything driver related that's not the MS standard) fixes it, because the next step is an RMA and refund.

    It really is amazing to me that Lenovo have this fault repeatedly reported and they haven't even investigated it yet. It's the last time I buy anything from that company.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown3/16/2013 7:01 PM

    You've just saved my notebook :-) After waiting 7 (seven) minutes today with frozen apps and hyperactive HDD I decided to smash it... But then I found your post, removed Power Manager and.... computer is up and running in less than a minute.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Unknown4/12/2013 7:22 PM

    it works, thanks

    ReplyDelete
  8. RoHAn6/06/2013 1:35 AM

    checked the latest v6.54 released on 4th june and issue persists. Isn't there a way where we can report this. Functionality wise this is a really good piece of s/w
    BTW thanks for pointing out the issue my thinkpad no resume is quick again.

    ReplyDelete
  9. John R9/12/2013 1:59 AM

    Oh, you are the best!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Unknown11/28/2013 8:51 AM

    It works flawlessly!!
    I was struggling with this bug for a long time.

    Super work!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Unknown11/28/2013 8:53 AM

    It works awesome. I guess people who are suffering from win 8 100% disk usage on startup can also try this.(lenovo users)

    Super!!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Unknown12/10/2013 1:40 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Unknown12/10/2013 1:40 PM

    I've started a dialog with Lenovo about this on their forums to draw attention to the problem in the hopes that they can address it. Personally, I like Power Manager, as it has several features that Windows power management doesn't, e.g., battery charge thresholds.

    It would be helpful if some people here could go to the forums and mention that they have the same problem, since the Lenovo representative says he has not heard of this happening before.

    http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Bug-report-Power-Manager-causes-slow-performance-after-resuming/m-p/1340723#M24220

    ReplyDelete
  14. Unknown12/10/2013 1:42 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Unknown1/18/2014 11:53 PM

    Thank You!!!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Unknown2/26/2014 8:01 AM

    For those who like Power Manager, a fix for this was posted on Lenovo's support site. Power Manger includes a poorly designed featured called Fast Hibernation Resume, which is unnecessary and causes the problem. It can be disabled by adding the following registry key

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Lenovo\PWRMGRV\Data]
    "FastHibernationResume"=dword:00000000

    The thread can be found here: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkVantage-Technologies/Bug-report-Power-Manager-causes-slow-performance-after-resuming/m-p/1349923/highlight/false#M24262

    ReplyDelete
  17. Ondra Havlíček11/17/2014 5:32 AM

    Thanks for the registry fix! I will give it a try. I am also experiencing multiple problems which manifest themselves after restoring my T420 from hibernation, including: unresponsive programs, fingerprint SW also takes forever to load, the same (sometimes) for USB ports (mouse or flashdrive starts working after several minutes), OSD for brightness and volume does not appear, sometimes brightness is impossible to change via any means, and WiFi turns itself off or even the whole device needs to be restarted (using PROSet).
    After uninstalling Power Manager, most of this is resolved.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Unknown4/07/2015 3:18 AM

    Perfect thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Unknown4/07/2015 3:18 AM

    Perfect! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  20. SP4/08/2015 12:00 AM

    You saved my day buddy! I tried almost everything... uninstalled all the resource hogging apps still no luck... your solution was spot on!

    ReplyDelete

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