Thinkpad T60 goes catatonic for 1-2 minutes at a time

[Muse]

My Thinkpad T60 laptop occasionally goes catatonic for a minute or two, maybe more at a time. I'd say that if I compute for an hour a day on the machine it generally happens 1-2 times. I only reboot occasionally, electing to put the machine into suspend when not using it. Rebooting doesn't appear to alleviate the problem

It's running Windows 7 Home Premium on an Intel 330 180GB SSD, partitioned with OS on C drive at 60GB and the rest is a ~120GB D data drive. When the machine goes totally unresponsive (I don't even see a mouse cursor), I hit CTRL+Alt+Delete and wait until my monitor goes blue to know it's come out of whatever is hanging it up. When I close my browser for whatever reason I've taken to not restoring the windows/tabs because they would take up over 1GB of RAM and the machine's only running 3GB. I don't believe the machine would benefit from bumping it to the max of 4GB.

I'm running MSE. I don't see any correlations to what I'm doing with the machine, it seems random. It's been going on for months now, it's extremely aggravating and frustrating.

What could be the problem here? I could restore to an early version of the OS, but of course I'd have to install and configure a bunch of stuff. Still, it's the only thing I can think of trying. I could image the current system and if restoring to an early version doesn't work I could restore my recent backup. Suggestions?
- - - -
"Conformity killed the cat. Curiosity was framed."

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Open event viewer.
go to "windows logs" and "system"

Look for any yellow alert symbols or red stop sign things that are timestamped around the pauses, and post them here.

Sounds like an I/O halt, possibly a failing SSD.

 

[Muse]

Open event viewer.
go to "windows logs" and "system"

Look for any yellow alert symbols or red stop sign things that are timestamped around the pauses, and post them here.

Sounds like an I/O halt, possibly a failing SSD.

Yes, actually I had a failing SSD error episode. Running some utilities seems to have resolved that but I should maybe attempt an RMA with Intel, however someone posted that getting Intel to honor the warranty is very problematic, so I didn't pursue that. This was about 5 weeks ago. The error message in WD Data Lifeguard:

-------------------------------------------------------------
DLGDIAG for Windows
-------------------------------------------------------------

X Quick Test::Read Verify Sector Ext error!


[OK ]
-------------------------------------------------------------

I will go check the error logging now as you indicate.

 

[Muse]

So, going to event viewer it so happened that I had another such problem. After about two minutes Event Viewer finally appeared. There was sure enough an event in System for the previous minute:

Device: \Device\Ide\iaStor0 (I assume this is the SSD)

Error: The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

I'm assuming this indicates that the SSD is not performing once in a while. 😕 I guess I have to try to get Intel to honor the warranty on this.

Edit: In fact, I started a thread in Memory and Storage when I got that error about June 10:

SSD error, how to proceed?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I guess I have to try to get Intel to honor the warranty on this.

Yup. Good luck.

 

[corkyg]

The "suspend" when closing the lid is not a Windows setting, but a T60 setting. I read your post on SSD error, and my sense is that the problem is that action. Suspend can be sleep or hibernate. Once you have a SSD installed, my experience is that lid closing suspend is not a good idea. I have a T60 and a T510 and I find the most reliable setting when closing the lid is "Do Nothing."

Cold boot time with SSD is usually faster than hibernate and restore and more reliable. I normally power down before closing the lid. There are too many things that can go awry with "suspend."