My T30 is on the verge of dying... any rescure?

[cn487311]

Hi there,

Need some help here. Thanks in advance.

I have a T30 (2366-21U) for several years. Installed Windows XP Pro SP2 and worked fine. I bought it from IBM certified used equipment and it seemed to have the new motherboard which recognized two memory modules (256 + 512).

The fortune changed several days ago when my daughter slam closed the screen... bang!... reopened and I saw a blue screen,

Since then, I saw many blue screens, most of them saying "paging error in nonpaging area". I had to press the power button for more than 4 seconds to turn off the machine. But the machine would not boot immediately. It simply showed a blank screen. Removing the battery and power source, leaving it there for some time (like 10 to 15 minutes), it would boot again, showing the normal boot screen. But a blue screen will show up anywhere within 5 to 30 minutes since pressed the power button.

Tried to re-install Windows XP Pro SP2 several times. Always died somewhere in the process with a blue screen.

Tried to use one memory chip, switch slots, use another chip. Seems the same, blue screens after blue screens.

From the above, which part of the machine seems to be faulty? I hope not the motherboard. Any rescure suggestions?

Thanks,

[ajkula66]

What's with kids and T30s...one of my sons got tangled in wires a couple of years ago and sent mine flying which ended up with a busted LCD...

Anyway, here's how I would go about it:

a) Run PC-doctor on all components of the machine. If you don't have it, you can download it from Lenovo's website.
b) To me, this sounds like a HDD issue, but I might be wrong. Depending on what PC-doctor tells you, proceed with caution, but I would start the Recovery Console from the XP install disk, and then run chkdsk /all from there. That should get you up, at least in my modest experience, temporarily if nothing else. If the issue is indeed with your HDD, this would give you some slack to clone it an move on.

Good luck.

[cn487311]

Well, thinkpad is designed to endure all kinds of torture, kids is one of the toughest category, someday thinkpads should be labled "kids test passed"...

I actually have run PC-DOCTOR before posting. One time it says hard disk failed, the other time it says memory failed. Anyway, to make a long story short - now I am pretty sure that memory is the one to blame in this case. I removed both memory chips and inserted a 128MB chip found in the toolbox. Reinstalled Windows XP, so far things are good. No blue screen for a whole day now. Just that 128MB is way too small. System is still slow even with all the visual effect turned off.

I will let it run a little bit longer to make sure that darling blue screens do not show up again. Then probably insert one old piece one time to see whether one of them caused the trouble. I just realized that old memory chips are much more expensive than new ones (should I tell my daughter that she has just lost $80 of toy budget? ). If none of them works then it will likely become a game machine for her (5 years old). Or put it this way, she just expediated the transition process.

[ajkula66]

PC2100/2700 RAM that you can utilize in that T30 is ridiculously cheap these days...you can likely get away with $20-25 for 512Mb shipped...

[MintyMadness]

I just went with PC3200 for this T30. I have 2x512mb, and it was actually cheaper for the PC3200 than for the PC2100/PC2700 that was listed next to it. Granted this was ~5-6months ago.. I haven't looked for it recently..

Edit: PC3200 is backwards compatible.. It wil just run at max speed of the mobo - 333mhz in this case I believe...

-Jeremy

[ajkula66]

266 Mhz in this case

[MintyMadness]

266 Mhz in this case

I stand corrected

[cn487311]

Final update - I ran more PC-Doctor tests in Windows and finally determined the root causes - the 256MB chip is bad and the DIMM socket 2 is somehow loosened by the impact. The two combined made I suspect that both chips are bad. So here is the good news, I still have the 512MB chip.

Since socket 2 is loose, the folded paper solution seems working fine for the old 128MB memory chip. Darling blue screens did not come back.

Now here is the question - the 128MB chip is PC2100, CL2 @ 133MHZ, the 512MB chip is PC2700, CL2.5 @333MHZ. I understand that when two chips are put together, they run at the lower speed. So... if I put these two together, will the performance really be better than the 512MB chip alone because the latter alone can actually run at a faster speed?

[ajkula66]

No, because your board will only go at PC2100 speed, which is 266Mhz, regardless of how you combine 2100/2700 chips, it will "see" a 2700 chip as 2100.

NB, if you were to put a single 2700 DIMM, it would not run any faster than the 2100 DIMM of the same size.

[RealBlackStuff]

And don't forget that T30 can take 2x 1GB chips as well!
So even with one slot working you'd still have 1GB of RAM.

[cn487311]

You are right - 266MHZ is the upper limit. PC2700 will run at the same speed as PC2100. I downloaded "Performance Tester 6.1" and did a comparison. With or without 128MB, the performance is about the same, with the former slightly better. So... left the 128MB chip in slot 2 and added a piece of folded plastic to make sure it is tight.

The impact of the "bang" finally is reduced to 128MB memory short (orignially 512 + 256, now 512 + 128). Not too bad. Thinkpads are really resilient.