T23 Upgrade Fubar - Can Anyone Bail Me Out?

[ArtShapiro]

What should have been a routine T23 upgrade has gotten me into a bit of a mess.

Yesterday I received a Hitachi Travelstar 60 gig 7200 drive to replace the original 20 gig slow drive. I used the Acronis "Migrate Easy" product to clone the existing drive into the new guy, mounted in an external enclosure. Given the slow USB of the T23, it took several hours but completed without incident aside from reported bad sector about halfway through - a read error, not a write error.

This morning, I swapped out drives and was distressed to have the machine get through the POST routine but not access the disk and bring up XP. Putting back the original drive worked fine. I repeated this process a couple times with consistent results. I note that the BIOS screens don't seem to report the presence and characteristics of the hard drive, at least in the older 1.12 BIOS I'm using, so I can't absolutely prove that I've installed the new one correctly. But that seems unlikely. I didn't risk a FORMAT A: /MBR if that even still exists.

I decided it might be time to update the BIOS, thinking the faster drive might necessitate a newer BIOS. First I updated the embedded controller to 1.06a. This seemed to go OK, but when I brought up the machine the orange battery light on the right hinge was rapidly flashing. The battery gauge in the toolbar is gray rather than reporting a percentage of charge (which should be 100%). Reinstallation of the 1.43 power software didn't affect the problem. Battery status shows ERROR.

I'm not sure how to proceed at this point. Clearly I won't dare to update the BIOS without the machine realizing that there is a fully charged battery there. How do I make the T23 realize this fact? Any guesses on the original problem with the new hard drive?

Art

[AllTPedOut]

Art,

I don't have the doc in front of me, but I think there's a note about setting up the migration where your original HD goes into the enclosure and the new drive goes into your laptop.

Try google to see if you come up with similar reference and I'll try to dig up the doc tonight when I get home

[rkawakami]

From the sounds of it, the new drive did not get the proper boot sector information. Double check the settings in Acronis and see if your copying method includes this. I have not used Acronis but if there is a "clone" operation as opposed to a "copy", then I'd opt for the clone procedure.

As far as the BIOS/EC updates goes, another user has recently reported a problem with the battery not being recognized after a BIOS update. I think that the fix was to downgrade to a previous BIOS or embedded controller version. However, in order to do that, the system needs to recognize a fully charged battery. Story is here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=56910

[ArtShapiro]

I drove home from the salt mine and fetched my other battery. It turns out to be an official IBM product, whereas the battery in question must be an unlabeled aftermarket brand.

With the new battery, the green light came on with the battery reporting 94% charge. I updated the BIOS to the latest 1.20, which eliminated the chicken/egg problem of that new embedded controller requiring a late BIOS. No problems.

Putting the original battery back in gives the flashing orange.

I think the theory that the greedy [censored] are trying to force IBM batteries is valid. I bet if I take this battery over to the friend to whom I gave my old T20, and put it in that unit, it will be just fine. Either that, or downgrade the BIOS and embedded controller to a previous level before the malfeasance in question.

I guess it's now time to try the new drive again, expecting the same failure. Then I can start investigating some of your suggestions.

This just shouldn't be rocket science!

Art

[ArtShapiro]

Not trying to monopolize the forum, folks!

The 1.18 BIOS unexpectedly is causing the same results: the IBM battery is fine; the aftermarket battery is getting the flashing orange.

Art

[ArtShapiro]

And downgrading the embedded controller to 1.05 from 1.06 has blessed the aftermarket battery. We are green again, reading 99%.

I'd say this is where I'll stay, unless for some grotesque reason it's relevant to the original problem recognizing the new hard drive.

Art