Thinkpads Forum

OK I've got a T60p and when I press the blue ThinkVantage button at boot time, diagnostics is grayed out. How does one enable this feature? I'd like to be able to test my system from within the service partition, how do I do it? I don't want to always be dependent on a portfolio of disks, if my system fails.

Thanks
Dah

Just speculation. Is PC-Doctor for Windows installed?

I do not have a bootable service partition on my present ThinkPad because of Linux, and I have not run diagostics from the service partition on my previous T42. I do not know if it uses PC-Doctor or something else.

You also have the option to burn a PC-Doctor for DOS bootable CD and run diagnostics from there. Download is on the drivers page.

My understanding of the purpose of the bootable partition is that in the event the main partition fails, I can boot into the service partition and recover and or test my system. Kind of defeats the service partition if I have to carry a dozen or more CDs with me at all times. Yes I have PC Doctor install, I have a CD with PC Doctor on it. Within rescue and recovery is an option for Diagnostics that is disabled. Seems reasonable to me that the program should be on the service partition.

You are right. I do not have a good answer for you. I wonder if there is any possibility some BIOS setting is causing this? If you are using a ThinkPad with the corporate image installed, maybe the IT department did something to disable or remove that feature - either on purpose or by mistake.

I talked to IBM today about it, and they say that the diagnostics is part of the service partition, that it can only be updated by doing a full restore. Now I am running Vista on a machine that came with XP, so IBM will 'only' send me rescue and recovery 3.0 and it is incompatible with Vista!

It seems that someone at IBM simply doesn't get customer service. My T60p is 'suppose' to support vista, but IBM says uninstall the service partition, just not an acceptable solution to me. If I want the service partition I need to buy a machine with it preinstalled.

Nope it is my own personal machine.

As I recall, I used to be able to run diagnostics from my service
partion, but the last time I was in it the diagnostics help file was
available, but there was no button to press to run diagnostics.

I don't go into it often, so I don't know when or by what it was
disabled - an update of Rescue and Recovery or PC Doctor 5 are the only
two I suspect.

I thought it odd that the diagnostic help file was there, and it told me
to press a button that was nowhere to be found.