T43p bios mod

[Hans Gruber]

I have a T43p arriving today. I have a Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ST980825A (80GB 7200RPM) on T43 with BIOS 1.23 which is supposed to work on the 1.23 bios out of the box without need for the bios mod. It also comes with a hard drive. Anybody here have any lucky with the Seagate ST980825A drive without the bios mod?

The next question. I downloaded the bios mod. Do I need to have Windows installed on the OS or can I boot it from a CD or floppy disk?

[ajkula66]

I have a T43p arriving today. I have a Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ST980825A (80GB 7200RPM) on T43 with BIOS 1.23 which is supposed to work on the 1.23 bios out of the box without need for the bios mod. It also comes with a hard drive. Anybody here have any lucky with the Seagate ST980825A drive without the bios mod?

Unless the drive has Lenovo firmware - by virtue of being an IBM-issued drive with a FRU number - it will throw the error on boot.

The next question. I downloaded the bios mod. Do I need to have Windows installed on the OS or can I boot it from a CD or floppy disk?

I've been doing it from within Windows. There might be another way but I'm not aware of it.

[Hans Gruber]

Thanks for the feedback George. It doesn't have a tutorial but do I simply run winflash from within Windows XP on different drive on the T43p? I am using 7-zip for the .rar reading. The T43 is a rom file.

The T43p comes with a HDD already so the bios mod is not needed right away. 4

[ajkula66]

Thanks for the feedback George. It doesn't have a tutorial but do I simply run winflash from within Windows XP on different drive on the T43p?

You're welcome.

Yes, winphlash is what you'd need to run from within the Windows environment.

[Hans Gruber]

Got the T43p, installed my new keyboard from my bad machine. Got all the recovery disks. These t43's are the most ornery buggers around. The HDD was wiped and put in the recovery disks and went through the process. It said I had to start over because of internal errors installing during disk #1.

I tried to install an original copy of Windows XP because I simply want to get an OS on to flash the bios so I can use my 80GB Seagate drive.

How do I bypass the rescue and recovery process? I think the drive wiped the recovery partition. I have not wiped the drive yet.

Has anybody encountered the internal failure error message? I suspect that is because the recovery partition does not exist after being wiped.

[ajkula66]

I tried to install an original copy of Windows XP because I simply want to get an OS on to flash the bios so I can use my 80GB Seagate drive.

You can put the Seagate drive in and install Windows on it, then flash the BIOS once the OS is installed.

How do I bypass the rescue and recovery process? I think the drive wiped the recovery partition. I have not wiped the drive yet.

No clue on what you're trying to say here...

Has anybody encountered the internal failure error message? I suspect that is because the recovery partition does not exist after being wiped.

No. In my experience it's bad media, flaky media drive or a combination of the two.

[Hans Gruber]

I can't load the OS on the Seagate drive until I update the bios because of the 2010 error. I tried a USB CD/DVD drive. I will have to wipe the existing drive myself. I got the same error message with the external optical drive.

[ajkula66]

I can't load the OS on the Seagate drive until I update the bios because of the 2010 error.

Sure you can. Just press "Esc" when the error shows up.

I tried a USB CD/DVD drive. I will have to wipe the existing drive myself. I got the same error message with the external optical drive.

So wipe the drive - that will take all of a minute with Parted Magic or something along those lines - and start fresh. If you bump into the same issue again, one of the disks is most likely corrupt.

[Hans Gruber]

George, I just got the machine a few hours ago. I have been cleaning it up and getting all my supplies together. It came with a 9 cell battery. I still have a green 6 cell and brand new but years old genuine 9 cell IBM battery. I went through my inventory and found a USB floppy drive, ultra bay caddy.

Thanks for the Parted Magic tip. Obviously the person who wiped the drive didn't do it right.

George, can I use my backup from my original T43 or since this T43p is fully loaded with discrete graphics and a hi resolution display and the 2nd fastest processor and 2gb of ram. Or would that cause a problem? I have my original backup disks. This T43p came with the original IBM recovery disks.

The way I am doing it, clean factory install. Then I will do a restore later of my old recovery disks using just recovering my old files.

[ajkula66]

George, can I use my backup from my original T43 or since this T43p is fully loaded with discrete graphics and a hi resolution display and the 2nd fastest processor and 2gb of ram. Or would that cause a problem? I have my original backup disks. This T43p came with the original IBM recovery disks.

You can use whatever backup image/disks you have. If they worked on your old T43, they'll work here. You will have to load the graphics driver and possibly the ones for wireless/BlueTooth depending on the cards used, but that's it.

[Hans Gruber]

Got XP up on the T43p with the drive it came with. I use disk management in the Windows utility to format HDD. I had to dig through my gear to find the PATA 2.5" adapter. Did a clean install of XP with an XP Pro copy. Flashing the bios and then installing everything on an 80gb Seagate.

I have always struggled to get the ethernet working on XP. Now I remember why I liked Vista and Windows 7. I installed the LAN drivers but of course nothing. I have to get into the TCP/IP stuff and remember dos prompts. I am only good with hardware, not software. Laptops are my hobby.

[Hans Gruber]

That was a frustrating all night process but I got the T43p up and running. I have the IBM recovery disks for this T43p. A 2.1ghz Pentium M and 14.1 SXGA+(1400x1050) TFT LCD, 128MB ATI FireGL V3200. 2GB of ram and my very old but brand new Seagate 7200rpm drive. I also put in my very old but brand new keyboard. My old but lightly used 6 cell battery still can hold a charge for 2 hours. I have a very old but brand new 9 cell genuine battery as well. This came with a 9 cell battery.

The palm rest has a couple of crack in it. I am going to transplant my old low end T43 palm rest over to the T43p, it has no cracks. It's a very good T43p.

[JPOESQ]

Odd that it was so much work to get your T43p up and running. I wanted a clean factory install of XP, so I ran R&R to completion, installed XP SP3 and ran windows updates, and then installed the latest version of Lenovo system update and pulled down those updates. Everything runs as it should. It took about 30 minutes to run R&R (running back and forth between R&R and other activities), and longer of course for XP and Lenovo updates.

[Hans Gruber]

You didn't ask me what was involved. 3 separate hard drives. Two separate installations, a bios upgrade, cleaning of the parts, repasting the CPU and GPU. Cleaning everything out. The installation took about an hour with the recovery disks.

[ajkula66]

3 separate hard drives.

This is the part that I don't understand, but I guess that it doesn't really matter as long as you've got the machine working to your satisfaction.

Have you installed ThinkPad Fan Control? Any undervolting? These laptops beg to be undervolted...

[Hans Gruber]

George, that is why I am here. You have more knowledge on the Thinkpads than I do. I have 3 separate drives but I only used two. I am up and running on my Seagate 80GB. I doubt I will use the extra HDD as a ultra bay storage drive. This T43p is an antique. Microsoft doesn't even support Microsoft updates anymore to the point when they stopped updating XP. I assumed Microsoft would still make all the updates available to the date when they no longer supported XP.

I am getting a wifi certificate error message saying that I don't have the certificates to connect wirelessly. It says windows was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network. I have the Atheros 11a/b/g wireless lan mini pci adapter II wifi card. I went to the Lenovo site to download the Lenovo automatic update utility but need net framework 4.0. There are more hoops to jump through because other software is needed.

Also the fan in this T43p probably needs to be replaced. It makes funny noises like a car engine changing gears. When I tip the T43 it sounds like a helicopter with different wind currents. I plan to take the palm rest from my old T43 and probably the fan and the bios battery (new) and transplant it to this T43p.

Is there thinkpad software that counts the battery cycles like on newer thinkpads for the T43?

All in all the T43 is running pretty good.

[ajkula66]

I am getting a wifi certificate error message saying that I don't have the certificates to connect wirelessly. I can connect to my wireless router but I cannot enter my wifi password because of the certificate issue. I have the Atheros 11a/b/g wireless lan mini pci adapter II wifi card. I went to the Lenovo site to download the Lenovo automatic update utility but need net framework 4.0. There are more hoops to jump through because other software is needed.

I've seen that error before but was always able to connect to the web. Are you on SP3?

Also the fan in this T43p probably needs to be replaced. It makes funny noises like a car engine changing gears. When I tip the T43 it sounds like a helicopter with different wind currents. I plan to take the palm rest from my old T43 and probably the fan and the bios battery (new) and transplant it to this T43p.

Personally, I use the M10 long fan from T42p (13R2657) in all of my T43p machines. It's quieter than the original M24, and cools just as well.

Given that yours is a 14" system, it's likely to get hot to the point of being annoying. You want to keep it cool. You want to keep it on 24/7/365 and just smack Fn+F3 to shut the screen off when not in use. That's what I do anyway.

Is there thinkpad software that counts the battery cycles like on newer thinkpads for the T43?

Yes. If you've installed XP from the IBM media it should be there already.

All in all the T43 is running pretty good.

Well, that's a huge compliment for a decade-old platform...

[Hans Gruber]

George, I used the IBM recovery disks for my install. I only have SP2. I am downloading SP3 right now.

I think I will just swap the fans, I looked into the long fan that you suggested. I gotta do the palm rest as well. It does look really good with the new keyboard. I am pleased that my 6 cell is good for 2 hours or more. I think the 9 cell will do 4 or 5 hours on a charge.

I don't think most people here realize when you acquire a T43p even from an original owner. There is a lot of work that goes into getting this thing running like a well oiled machine.

[Hans Gruber]

Fixed the wifi problem. Installed SP3 but that wasn't the solution to the wifi.