Thinkpads Forum

Hello to the forum.....Long time lurker - first time poster...

I have an old T40 whose HD crashed a couple years ago. Thinking that it would take more $$ than it was worth, I put it away and bought my wife a then new T400. After reading many threads here (thank you...thank you...thank you...), I'm thinking that I may still be able to get some useful life out of the machine. IIRC, my T40 only had 756K RAM on it (or thereabouts) but it's upgradeable to 2GB. I'm going to look into a new HD, but my problem is that I do not have Windows XP installation disk not do I know how to boot up from a brand new HD. I have the product key from the origianl XP system, but that's all.

I'm fairly new to making repairs to a computer but since this has been FUBAR, I figure what the hell. I did some research here but haven't yet come across what I think I'm looking for. Getting and installing new RAM isn't the issue, it's getting the new HD in, formating it and installing XP (or W7 if I can do that from a fresh HD). Can anyone here help me out - or maybe at least point me in the right direction?

Many thanks in advance - and many thanks for all that you guys do and post.

Welcome to the forum!

Any PATA/IDE 9.5mm/2.5" will work in that T40 of yours. Startup procedure - once you have the hard drive installed - and the recovery disks handy is very simple.

Set the machine to boot from the media drive (press F12 on boot to chose it as the temporary booting device) and the disks will "walk you through" the rest of the process.

T40 is best left with XP IMO, since there's no support for its graphics card in Vista or W7.

Go to the Marketplace forum and place an LF: (Looking For) ad there, asking for XP install CDs for T40.
Include the 7-character TYPE from the bottom (looks like 23xx-xxx or 18xx-xxx), if possible.
If that is missing, just tell us if your T40 has ATI or Intel graphics.

Just about any OEM XP install disc for the correct version of XP (look at the sticker - probably XP Professional) should work with your key. Ask around, if you have any IT friends they'll be able to easily burn you a copy. Once you do that, you'll need to deal with installing drivers, but that's easy (if a little time consuming).

FWIW, you can use the restore media for T41/p as well as T42/p, these will have newer drivers when compared to the original T40 release. They will also include SP2 while T40 disks were SP1 if I remember correctly.

You should not use T43 or R52 restore disks due to a different HAL that was applied to these.

Thanks everyone for the replies. FWIW, I posted a LF in the Marketplace section (any comments on the post, please feel free to let me know). I may also give Microsoft and/or Lenovo a call this week to see if they still have/sell the disks, but I don't think that will get me anywhere.

Lenovo - presuming they still sell the media - will ask for $45+S&H+tax.

You can do better than that.

Calling MS will not get you anywhere.