T42P - Media Test Failure

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2 Bricks Short · #1 Post by **2 Bricks Short** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 5:47 pm

This may or may not be the same motherboard issue that I have read about elsewhere but I need to ask anyway.

After a short airplane ride in a padded carrier, my T42 started going to black after being on for a short while. Throughout a Saturday morning it let me watch it die. Soon it began to tell me the following after the power button was pushed:

Initializing and establishing link...
Media test failure, check cable
Exiting Intel Boot Agent
Operating System Not Found

Well. I made a mistake. I took it to a computer "repairman" who said he could fix it. When I picked it up, it was working and had a series of tiny holes across the palm rest that had been patched with something. I got it home and it booted up ok but a slight thump around the hard drive caused it to go to black just as it had done before I paid for the "repair".

The hard drive is accessable, sorta, when it is installed in my ExDrive. Sometimes it does nothing at all in the T42. Sometimes I get the epitaph that I have written above.

Can this be fixed, and is it REALLY just a cable problem?
Is it a hard drive problem?
Can I fix it myself? ( I really don't want the last "reparman" touching what is left of it.)
Should I tie a rope to it and drag it behind the car as I have often wanted to do?

#2 Post by **richk** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:23 pm

First, the holes on the top. If you put screws in that are too long, they poke holes thru the top of the palmrest. There are 19mm screws for the keyboard bezel. If you use them by mistake instead if the 14mm screws that are supposed to be there, you get the holes you describe. I think you need a new repair guy - they don't really look similar.

I am guessing your HDD is ready to die. There is no hdd cable.

BTW, if the holes bother you, I am just breaking down a bunch of T40s. If you want to replace the palmrest/touchpad, I'll sell you for $10 plus shipping. Send me a private message.

zacha81 · #3 Post by **zacha81** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:29 pm

sound like a dead or nearly dead harddrive for me too. btw to change hard drive you will only need to remove one screw and you are able to pull it off.

2 Bricks Short · #4 Post by **2 Bricks Short** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:29 pm

richk wrote:
BTW, if the holes bother you, I am just breaking down a bunch of T40s. If you want to replace the palmrest/touchpad, I'll sell you for $10 plus shipping. Send me a private message.

I let you know. Sounds like I need to figure out how to instal a new hard drive first. I'll search the threads.

I get confused on how to do it. I have some restore disks from the last hard drive failure but I do not have the procedure for using them anymore. I would be happy if it could be as simple as formatting a new drive and then installing XP.

zacha81 · #5 Post by **zacha81** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 6:33 pm

it is very easy. hard drive is in the front on the right side if you watch from the top. just rotate your tp for 180 degrees, remove the one screw of the harddrive case, ensure your display is opened a bit and pull off the harddrive case. you will now have the harddrive with its case. undo the four screes (two on each side) and you may swap hard drives. the hard drive motor goes to the bottom (where the foil is). remount the screws and put it back in. voila.

btw the media test error means that the ethernet card is trying to boot via network as there has no valid hdd been found.

to restore the tp just put in the new hdd, the first restore disk, start up your tp press F12 chose cd rom drive to boot from and follow the instructions.

2 Bricks Short · #6 Post by **2 Bricks Short** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:06 pm

I have a Rescue and Recovery (Disc 1 of 1) and 7 Product Recovery CDs. The computer does not boot with either disc 1. The Product Recovery Disc 1 causes the previously listed notifications to appear. The whole while the new hard drive is clanking away. Also, there are times now when the screen for boot drive selection does not appear.

#7 Post by **bill bolton** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:50 pm

2 Bricks Short wrote:The hard drive is accessable, sorta, when it is installed in my ExDrive.

If its still accessible in an external enclosure, you could probably use something like Acronis True Image to clone the existing drive image onto a new drive.

Cheers,

Bill

Gord K. · #8 Post by **Gord K.** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:03 pm

Just received a T40 (2373-91U) that I purchased knowing I wasn't getting the hard disk drive. I took the 40 GB hard drive that has Windows XP Pro on it out of my T21 (2647-8AU) and installed it in the T40 and I get:

Intel(R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.02
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation

Intel Base-Code, PXE-2.1 (build 083) BA1202BC
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Operating System not found

I put the hard drive back in the T21 and it's fine. I also tried a 30 GB hard drive that I have previously used in my T21 and it gives me the same error in the T40.

Does anyone have any ideas what's wrong?

Thanks

Gord

#9 Post by **richk** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:24 pm

They use a different master boot record to take care of a different way to store the recovery info.

Gord K. · #10 Post by **Gord K.** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 6:05 pm

richk,

I don't understand your answer if it was in response to my entry. Can you please clarify what you mean.

Both hard drives are functional when installed in my T21. One is formatted with XP Pro, the other Win2K. Neither the bootable CD version of PC Doctor nor a Windows XP install disk see a hard drive in the T40.

Thanks,

Gord

#11 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 7:01 pm

@Gord K.
There are a couple of possibilities here.

The most likely is that the hard drive is not properly lined up with the connector in the T40. This happened to me on my T42 with a new hard drive. If you do not have a hard drive caddy on the new hard drive, the pins might not line up when you insert the drive. Try holding the laptop upside down while you push the drive into the drive bay.

A second possiblity is that the BIOS of the two ThinkPads see the hard drive with different geometry. Try running a hard drive diagnostic tool such as one of the following.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Fujitsu Diagnostic Tool

Samsung HUTIL

For more info on this: Hard disk geometry thread

Gord K. · #12 Post by **Gord K.** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 11:42 am

My apologies, this is a long one...

@GomJabbar

Thanks for your input, right now I'm looking at a $400+ paper weight so any help is appreciated.

I do have the hdd caddy, plastic cover, and three screws. The only thing I didn't get was the hard disk itself. When I installed either the 40GB drive or the 30GB drive, the laptop was upside down and opened slightly to allow installing the drive. I don't really feel any resistance as the pins on the drive would be entering the mating connector in the chassis. When I remove the drive it also slides out rather easily.

The geometry issue was one that I was not aware of. Does anyone know if different series of Thinkpads use different drive geometries?

In terms of hard drive analysis programs, here's what I've tried so far:

1. Boot without a cd and I get:

Intel (R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.02
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation

Intel Base-Code, PXE-2.1 (build 083) BA1202BC
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
Operating System not found

2. Boot with System Rescue cd.

sfdisk --list returns nothing
sfdisk --show-geometry returns nothing

parted print 1 returns a string of messages starting with
hdc: media error (bad sector): status 0x51 {DriveReady SeekComplete Error}
and ending with
Error: Unable to open /dev/hdc - unrecognized disk label.

3. Boot with the Ultimate Boot CD.

Maxtor Maxblast V4.0 - I get the message:
Your RAM Disk is C:\
Thank you for using MaxBlast 4
C:\>

Seagate Disk Manager V9.56a -
Disk 1 fails RECAL or TEST_DRIVE-READY
DISK MANAGER was unable to locate a hard disk.
Check BIOS settings, cables, power connections and drive jumper settings.

Seagate DiscWizard 2003 V10.45.06 -
Your RAM disk is C:\
Thank you for using DiscWizard
Please remove the CD and/or Floppy Diskette
Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot your system
C:\>

Samsung Disk Manager V10 -
A message box comes up that is titled No Drives Detected and the text
says Disk Manager cannot continue due to the following reason: No hard
drive(s) detected.

4. HITACHI Drive Fitness Test Version 4.08 Build 00 -
The only device it sees is the Secondary Master - the DVD/CDRW.

5. The bootable CD version of PC-Doctor 2.0 from the IBM/T40 downloads page -
Diagnostics menu, Fixed Disks test - no drive information is displayed
Hardware Info menu, Physical Disk Drives - shows Disk 1 being 54272 kB - RAM disk?
Hardware Info menu, IDE Drive Info - Primary Master - no device detected; the only
entry on the list is for the DVD/CDRW

I'm certainly open to further recommendations. This looks like a potentially great laptop, I'd like to be able to use it!

Gord

#13 Post by **richk** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 12:08 pm

The drive will work in a T40. You cannot use the XP image built on a T2x. You need to install XP fresh or from backup CDs. If you are interested, I can sell you a cheap copy or you can install a fresh version of XP.

Gord K. · #14 Post by **Gord K.** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 2:11 pm

@richk

Since I bought this laptop without a hard drive I will have no means of creating a set of T40 recovery disks. If you have a set that will work, I am interested.

The first issue for me, however, is to get the laptop to actually see the hard drive. I just tried using a retail Windows XP Pro disk to reinstall windows on the 30GB hard drive. The setup program starts and goes through the motions of copying files and then stops with a blue screen:

Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer.

There is some other text on the screen but the bottom line is it doesn't see the hard drive. I'm not really sure what to try next, but until I hear from the seller, I'm not prepared to do anything invasive.

Gord

#15 Post by **richk** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 2:46 pm

If you cannot see the hard drive, recovery disks are not going to help. Are you aware that the T40 disks go in "upside down"? The drive goes into the caddy normally, with the electronics against the bottom of the caddy and the printing visible? The caddy slides in with the printing down and the electronics against the touchpad? Installung the wrong way will cause the symproms you describe. If you did it that way, make sure no pins are bent.

Gord K. · #16 Post by **Gord K.** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 3:53 pm

@richk

"If you cannot see the hard drive, recovery disks are not going to help." - I realize that, I am optimistic that I will resolve this and that at some point I will need recovery disks.

"Are you aware that the T40 disks go in "upside down"?" - No, I didn't realize that. I tried putting the drive in the way you described and get the same result with a Windows XP disk: "Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer."

Thanks, I do appreciate your efforts to help.

Gord

#17 Post by **richk** » Sun Apr 22, 2007 4:20 pm

It really sounds like the drive is not plugged in all the way

T42P - Media Test Failure

T42P - Media Test Failure

Re: T42P - Media Test Failure

I'm getting something similar

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