T30 with fresh install of XP SP2 crashes on IE

[Njit]

Hello,

a colleague of mine asked me last week to look at his T30. He had been unable to run certain programs like Internet Explorer, Adobe Acrobat Reader. He was also unable to install Internet Explorer 7, Windows Media Player 10/11 (they all crash when you try to run them after installation).

I offered him to do a fresh installation of XP. I did so yesterday. Please follow me in these steps:

- Performed Backup of important data on C: drive
- Booted from XP installation CD (has SP2 slipstreamed into it)
- Removed the C: partition, formatted it and installed XP
- After installation the T30 booted just fine. Some devices were missing in the Hardware overview.
- Installed the drivers and utilities from the Lenovo download site

At that time i wanted to go to Windows Update to install the latest fixes. I opened Internet Explorer but to my horror it CRASHED in the same way it did before. Very strange! Other functions of XP depending on the IE engine also crash (like User Management in the Control Panel).

I installed Firefox and that just ran fine. No crashes.

So now i've come to you guys. I would like to know if this is a known issue for T30's. Is there something else i can try?
(i did a Bios update - just in case. Did not help)

Martijn

[RealBlackStuff]

Have you also loaded the Intel Ethernet drivers from the Lenovo website?

[Njit]

I did not. I have installed them now and it did not make any difference.

Any other suggestions?

[Njit]

Also installed Internet Explorer 7. Same crashes.

[RealBlackStuff]

I think not many people will be able to read your Dutch error messages (but I can).

If you have 2 SODIMMs in there, take one out and try again, first in slot 1, then the same SODIMM in slot 2. Then do the same with the other SODIMM.
Also, download memtest86+ here: http://www.memtest.org/
You can get it in floppy or ISO format (to burn a CD from).
Test your SODIMMs, singly and both in every slot combination.
Either one of your SODIMMs is faulty, OR you may have the ubiquitous T30 RAM-slot error.

And please put your T30 details in your (Profile-)Signature, see mine.

[Njit]

If you have 2 SODIMMs in there, take one out and try again, first in slot 1, then the same SODIMM in slot 2. Then do the same with the other SODIMM.
Also, download memtest86+ here: http://www.memtest.org/
You can get it in floppy or ISO format (to burn a CD from).
Test your SODIMMs, singly and both in every slot combination.
Either one of your SODIMMs is faulty, OR you may have the ubiquitous T30 RAM-slot error..

I ran memtest from CD. It performed all tests without any problems.
Total memory is 256 mb. But i'm not sure if there are two SODIMM's in the machine (and one of them is failing)

Will i have to open the laptop to be sure? Found the instructions on how to do this overhere: http://www-307.ibm.com/p.c/support/site ... 42404.html

[Njit]

Good news! Windows update downloaded 85 updates.
I installed them on shutdown. When i started the machine again IE7 worked! No crash, no errors.
The User Accounts panel also works now.

I guess one of those updates fixed the problem (but which one?).

So i think i can make someone happy with a working T30!

[kawal]

I don't know if this is related, but my sister-in-law was having the same issues with her T30, but both crashes and very slow performance. It finally wouldn't even boot up.

After trying to reload a fresh XP install, once I installed SP2, it again wouldn't open Windows. I swapped the hard drive with a new one, and it opened Windows just fine, but then I noticed it only had 256 Mb of RAM - with two 256 Mb chips installed.

I read about the failing memory slot in the T30s, and just posted this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=58093

Now with 1 Gb in the good slot and a new hard drive, so far it performs flawlessly.

By the way, before I loaded SP2, I did a defrag on the old hard drive and large areas would not defragment. So I believe most of the problem was related to the failing drive.