According to a recent entry on Lenovos “Inside the Box” blog, the reports earlier this month about a Vista/Thinkpad conflict are true: Lenovo admitted that some Vista-based computers manufactured either by IBM or by Lenovo may take an additional 10 to 20 seconds longer to boot than a similar Windows XP-based configurations.
This problem, according to Lenovo, only occurred on ThinkPad systems with an Ultrabay, the companys brand name for a swappable modular bay, when a user tried to hot swap optical and hard drives.
Lenovo claims that it was initially a Vista beta code problem on hotswap drives where they were not immediately recognized when inserted into the system. This happened because an optical drive takes a few seconds to be ready at power up and the Vista drive recognition logic “could not handle the device insertion in time.”
Microsoft has since fixed the problem by adding a 10 second wait for optical drive insertion, but that change also affected cold boot time on certain ThinkPad systems.
Now, both Lenovo and Microsoft have come up with a new solution that fixes this problem and eliminates the extra time needed for the drive to be recognized.
Next month, Lenovo will refresh its system preload images previously shipped by the company, as well as update its ThinkVantage and system support site. ThinkPad users will then be able to obtain a fix to the boot time problem when it becomes available.