Restoring the Serial Number of the System unit

[nickbw]

Hi. I have been using Desktops, constructing and installing them for 30+ years but I am less familiar with Laptops. Three years ago I gave my eldest daughter a T40 (2373) with Win XP Pro Sp3 for use in her A level work. She subsequently went to Uni and used the T40 extensively including viewing downloaded TV programmes and Utube. All this without mishap until she accidentally chipped off part of the yellow DC power jack. She used it on the power adapter because the battery was not holding charge for much more than an hour.

Six months ago she got herself a new Dell Studio laptop and returned the T40 to me. I dismantled it using instructions of Maintenance Manual and found the connections between the power jack and the mainboard had shorted seemingly shorting out one of the components immediately below the wire run (capacitor?) I replaced the jack with a new one.

The repaired laptop worked fine except for charging batteries - I tried a brand new one. After a few months it developed an intermitant fault of freezing after working for 20 - 30 mins. I decided to change the motherboard for a certified good T41 board. I successfully installed it and I am using it to post this.

However I am worried about the fact that serial number in the EEPROM does not match the board and the UUID is now different to the original.
I have read the relevant manual pages on this (67,68) and have a copy if the original sn s however I could not obtain version 1.73 of the Thinkpad Maintenance Diskette, only V1.71.

I have tried putting this on a bootable floppy (Win 98) with files in root, but the disk has not sufficient capacity to include all files. As an alternative I made a bootable USB drive with the TMD files in the root directory. This will boot at startup and is seen as C:\ presumably because bootable pen drives are considered as HDDs and DIR shows the files are present but there is no autoexec.bat file and no menu of operations 1 through 4 as per Maintenance Manual appears. I can read the UUID and SN System Unit but I have resisted attempting to write the old values back.

Questions: - Is that operation possible with V1.7 or only with V1.73 or higher? Is is necessary to alter all three values, System Unit, Board Serial Number and UUID and should I put the replacement board numberof the original - I understand I need to change the EEPROM values for Sys Unit and UUID to the originals- and in what order should this be done. Finally in the event I fail to do this can someone who is offering computer hardware and software services locally do it for me - what would be a realistic cost?
I have checked the board and not found any postings relevant to this topic though many instances of board changing so presumably this operation is done routinely by them.
Incidentally the Dell has already needed a new HDD (in 6 months!) and because they sent someone out to fix it we had to buy an extended waranty as a condition £150 for 3 years!
All help most welcome! Nick

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

The software on diskettes that you're referring to is considered to be intellectual property of IBM/Lenovo and its use and/or ways to obtain it are normally not discussed on this forum.

Only the company itself and their authorized service partners are supposed to be in possession of it.

Good luck.

[RealBlackStuff]

There is most likely a blown fuse (F2) on this mobo.
Check the website The Board Room in my signature, I host a file with T4x fuse locations.

Note from Admin: Remainder removed as not allowed here.