Is the T43 supposed to be this slow at booting?

[jaimegmr]

I was given a T43 that was completely disassembled and missing a hard drive. I put it back together and found that it has the GPU detachment problem. I applied pressure and turned on the laptop, but it seems to stay at the initial IBM bootup screen for a long time before it attempts to boot from the network. It also takes a while (maybe 10 seconds or more) to get into the BIOS after pressing F1. Is this normal or do I have a motherboard that has something else wrong with it other than the GPU?

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Most of the older systems I've dealt with (see my .sig below) will take a few seconds longer to boot if the hard drive has been removed. However, it's usually in the order of 5 or 6 seconds. I suppose it would also have to do with the BIOS setting for the boot order but for a "normal" system which looks for any removable drive (i.e., floppy), before going to the hard drive and then other devices, but there will be some delay if the system can't find the HD.

A couple of other explanations for a boot delay could be:

- extended memory test is enabled in BIOS; you should be able to check for this in the BIOS
- an Ultrabay optical drive is not properly configured; usually is caused by using a non-IBM drive

[davidspalding]

Also: check "Startup" in BIOS and see that HDD0 is the first startup device (you can press F12 on startup to select from a startup device list).

I've noticed that if I have an ExpressCard memory reader in the side slot, without bootable media, my T43 takes a long time to boot after waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting for a boot loader in the memory reader. HTH.