Help me solve a mystery

[jargoone]

Got a good one for you guys.

Just got a T40 from eBay. Average specs, in great shape, with lots of extra parts. Seller did a poor job with the listing, so I snagged it at a great price. Looking at the bottom of the system, the last half of the serial number sticker is missing. Uh oh. Look in the BIOS at the serial number and find it. Check Lenovo's site, and get this message:

Our apologies

Information for Warranty was not found. Please click back and try again or you may navigate clicking on 'Warranty'.

It looks like the site might be having trouble, but it's not - it finds my own serial number just fine.

You can save the reply of, "Sounds like it might be stolen", because that's obviously what I'm thinking. My main question is, where else might I be able to gather the serial number from? I don't have a unit sufficiently disassembled to see if there's a serial number sticker on the bottom of the motherboard. And if it is, in fact, stolen, this guy's gone to pretty great lengths to conceal it as is (modifying the serial number in BIOS), so I wouldn't put it past a person like that to take it all the way apart.

This was going way too well, I suppose.

[Harryc]

The serial number is in BIOS and on the bottom of the unit, that's it. I've run across a few older machines where the serial # is not in Lenovo's database so no surprise there. Also the serial number in BIOS may be from a replacement system board.

[richk]

If you looked this morning, try again. The warranty lookup didn't work for a while.

[frankiepankie]

Is the serial number something like "2373-8CG" ??

Then you can go to the IBM ThinkPad website, and do a search for drivers, and click on "Automatically detect this system" Install the software applet if asked for, and it should recognize your lappy. Then you can see the 2373-8CG (in my case it is that number) on your screen.

[Temetka]

What you posted is the model #.

The serial # is quite different.