Does the first disc have to be a CD? These days, blank CDs actually cost more than DVD's.

tobyg wrote:I use 1 CD for the Boot Disc and 1 DVD+R DL dual layer DVD for the Product Recovery Disc.

Don't bother wasting a DVD, especially a dual layer DVD, on the first boot disc.

okay... we finally got (after a few phone calls and some mis-direction) someone at Lenovo to send out a recovery disc, part 46V0812. $55 (Canadian funds) after applicable taxes. Next week hopefully we'll be able to get these babies up and running! Worked like a charm. Thanks everyone on this forum ...

okay... we finally got (after a few phone calls and some mis-direction) someone at Lenovo to send out a recovery disc, part 46V0812. $55 (Canadian funds) after applicable taxes. Next week hopefully we'll be able to get these babies up and running!

Thank you again. I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you meant that the recovery disc could only be used on one specific machine, which didn't make sense to me. My friend who bought the these laptops is not technical. She has a lot of questions, and I am simply trying to reassure her tha...

Further to this, on Lenovo's own forum there's a similar thread and someone has stated: "wjli2 is correct. Thw windows on the recovery discs is pre-activated and will only install on a Lenovo/IBM machine. Since it is using a Volume License Key the same recovery disc set is valid for use on any same ...

okay... I must be misunderstanding something here. In a previous post, I suggested that we could buy one recovery disc and use it to recover more than a single machine of the same type/model, which you agreed with. Now you're saying that she needs to buy a recovery disc for each machine. There are o...

Thanks for this information. My colleague tried phoning IBM at their customer support line (1-800-565-3344) which is supposed to be 24 x 7 - they told her to call back during regular business hours. Then they not only wanted the machine type/model, but a serial number as well. Now she's concerned th...

A friend is buying two identical T61's from a business liquidation. They have valid Windows Vista Business product keys on them, but no hard drives and no recovery discs. If she purchases one recovery disc from Lenovo, will she be able to reinstall Vista on both machines? They are the same machine t...

I own a Thinkpad T60 for which I have two operating systems - Windows XP Pro which came with it (and has the COA sticker on the bottom of the unit), and Windows Vista which I purchased the disc and key for through the "upgrade" program through Microsoft/Digital River. When I installed the Windows Vi...

Sorry for the delay in replying. I'm still in the process of getting the new system up and running but once that's done I'll let you know what I'm asking for the 14.1" base. I've already pulled the RAM, hard drive, DVD-RW, and battery from it for the new system. It is otherwise in very good conditio...

I'll pull off the parts I can use on the T61 (hard drive, RAM, possibly the keyboard/trackpoint, battery, DVD-RW) and then I guess I'll sell off whatever's left. The new one's a 15 inch model, so the chassis, bezel and screen aren't much use to me as spare parts.

Thanks for the dock tip - I tried that but no luck.

I was able to pick up a T61 6457-4UU - sans hard drive - for less than $300. Glad I was patient and looked around a bit before purchasing.

thanks - I checked the original specs and you're correct. I don't know the FRU number because these machines are being sold through IBM as "certified used" equipment - presumably, the network card is either a typo on their ad, or IBM is refurbishing them with their own network cards. I'm inclined to...

I wish I could determine with certainty which component failed, without swapping in new parts (which I don't have). I took the machine apart last night - removed the keyboard, wrist-rest, hard drive, and DVD-RW. There was some dust in the fan but not an undue amount - I was still able to make it mov...

My T60 died last week and I'm looking at replacing it with another T60. There's two I'm looking at, comparably priced and optioned except that one has the Intel network adapter and the other has an IBM network adapter. Is there any real difference between these two? My original machine had the Intel...

Yes, making a set of recovery discs of *just the factory software and settings* is a highly recommended process for all computers built with a recovery partition rather than system discs (which is pretty much all computers nowadays). The instructions are provided with the computer's documentation - ...

Oh, you have the DVD/CDRW combo drive. I would still recommend making recovery disks *for the factory-settings backup partition* - that will only take about 5 CD's if I remember rightly. It is cheap insurance. If you don't have those, and the drive dies, then you've lost the operating system as well...

I upgraded mine from an 80GB to a 320GB without any trouble - the hardware swap is very simple, one screw, 5 minutes work. Just be sure that you get a SATA drive, not the older PATA type, and that its the standard 2.5" laptop drive. You can also go with a higher-speed drive such as a 5400 rpm or 720...

I was able to hook up the drive with SATA power and data cables in my desktop, and successfully retrieved my data. Thanks for confirming that this was do-able! Having taken care of the real emergency, I can take my time with the next step - determining the cause of the problem and deciding whether t...

Thanks for the quick reply. Thank goodness, I didn't set a password at the hardware level (there is a windows XP password, of course, but that's easy to get around.) I've already tried the power button trick. For now I'll start with getting my data off that drive. Then I'll attempt to disassemble th...

My T60 seems to have bitten the dust, 6 months after the end of the warranty. Similar to the problem other people have reported - nothing happens when you push the start button, it just won't start up. If I disconnect the battery and plug in the AC adapter, the green LED for the plug-in lights up, a...

Definitely works. I downloaded XUbuntu 8.10 and made a fresh CD, it installed flawlessly and recognized the hard drive properly. It even recognized the D-Link PCMCIA wireless network card when I plugged that in. Nice to get a little more life out of a nearly 9-year-old computer, even if the battery ...

I installed the 160GB drive last night and tried to install Ubuntu Linux from a CD... the Ubuntu 8.04 installer recognizes the disk as 160GB, but the installation failed - error message said something about the CD possibly being dirty/scratched, so I'll try again with a different CD later this week....

Thanks for the quick response. It had never even occurred to me to check what kind of interface the newer T60 had! The drive is the older PATA type, so that's good news that it will work on the old A21m.

Has anyone tried installing a 160GB drive in a Thinkpad A21m (or any A2xx machine from the same family)? If so, did it work? I'm planning to load either Linux or Win XP Pro SP2, so OS hard drive size limits aren't an issue. The original drive no longer contains the service partition so I'm not conce...

I found a way to get even more performance out of my 2 GB of RAM. This may not work for everyone, depending on what sort of applications you run and how demanding they are on the RAM. In Windows XP Pro, I turned off the "Virtual Memory" settings - that is, set the page file to zero - which requires ...

Got the Vista disc today... finally! Unbelievable.

Moduslink billed my credit card the day before yesterday. No new e-mails, but hopefully being billed, also means that the product is being shipped. About bloody time!!! Jun. 19, 2007 USD27.04@1.098698MS VISTA 8009999999 UT 29.71 I see they've now posted a note on Moduslink's site that says: Please N...

Further to this - I got an e-mail response from Moduslink confirming that my order is in the queue and should be shipped out in the next 3 - 4 weeks... Gives a whole new meaning to the term "vapourware". I don't even want to upgrade to Vista at this time, just want the darn disk for future-proofing'...

I paid $39.99 (Canadian dollars) per 1 GB stick (on sale) from www.ncix.com for Corsair Value RAM. It cost $10 to have it shipped. I believe NCIX ships to the US as well as Canada, but I can't see them being competitive with prices in the Silicon Valley which I'd expect to be lower. I've dealt with ...