Thinkpads Forum

T61P with W7, 3gb ram, 300 Intel ssd
Advanced dock with Asus HD6450 graphics card
Here's a stumper:
The laptop was working fine. I ordered the graphics card hoping to relieve the Nvidia of strain and avoid a future failure.
I just got the graphics card today and installed it into the dock along with the drivers. I was only able to startup with the T61 undocked. Then the problem started.
It wouldn't startup at all, docked or undocked. It would go into repair mode. No matter what I did, it would keep going back to repair mode.
Even if I tried to start in safe mode, it would go to repair mode. All attempts to restore to a last good startup failed.
I installed the original hdd with the W7 on it and no Asus (AMD) drivers-undocked. It too went into repair mode. Same deal as the Intel ssd. So I figure it's not an operating system problem or anything on the ssd or hdd causing the problem.
Running it in diagnostics mode shows no sign of memory or ram failure. I did remove the ram sticks and ran them one at a time. No diff.
I removed the card and packed it up to return it to Amazon, so I'm not looking to get it working.
If I can get it running so I can remove the AMD garbage, that might fix the problems. How can I do that?
I do not have the W7 disc, only the original hdd as backup (but it won't start either).
Any thoughts?

Another clue. I can get into the bios (Middleton) easily enough. It shows the ssd, but where it shows all the drives, it says "no valid operating system". It does this with the ssd and the original hdd. They both have the operating system on them.
I tried the hard reset trick of removing all power/hitting the power button 10 times/holding it down for 30 sec. No go.
I downloaded the Nvidia driver onto a thumb drive and reloaded it via the repair utility, no go.
Doesn't appear to be a display or Nvidia chip problem. Somehow the video card corrupted a piece of hardware.
Thanks for any help.

Have you tried to boot from a live CD/DVD/USB to do some hardware tests? Like for example Hiren's BootCD or any live Linux distribution.

I tried Linux Live and it wouldn't do anything.
Things have gotten worse. Now when I boot it no longer goes into repair mode. It says:
"File: \Boot\BCD"
"Status: 0x000000f".
"An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data".
It won't go past this. I can get to the bios but nothing in there helped. No safe mode, command prompt or anything else.
I'm downloading a copy of W7 and maybe I can load it with the product key I had the sense to write down when I first got the computer.
Any other thoughts?

Your mileage may vary with live CD/DVD but with a good drive you can boot most of them.

FalconFour 4.5 (MANY troubleshooting tools and WinPE/DOS/Linus/MS DaRT evironments), Window Maker live, Debian live, Knoppix, any Windows install CD/DVD, Linux Mint,
Ubuntu should all boot and run fine. That's a short list of live OS I've booted and run since more would be boring. Burn at slowest possible speed for best burn.

If spinning media won't boot then use Rufus on another PC to make a bootable USB flash drive. T61s boot fine from a properly prepared USB.

You can remove your SSD and connect it to another PC to check it with the Intel SSD toolbox software, but I doubt it got hurt. I'd connect it to another PC for testing and leave it out until your T61 boots reliably off live media.

Maybe the card drew too much power for some marginal component in that old T61 to handle. I wouldn't reinstall an OS to test a T61, I'd just boot a live one. If no workee but that live OS works elsewhere it's probably hardware.

If the system board is damaged it's easy to find T61s that boot to BIOS on Ebay and swap your good parts over if they are an improvement.. Every Thinkpad enthusiast ought to do at least one for training, and this forum is a great knowledge base.

EDIT: If you can find the Lenovo Hardware Maintenance Diskette (Lenovo no longer offers it for download) which tool can also write to USB you can attempt to boot that to test.

Nothing I tried for over 24 hours of working on it helped. I finally downloaded a new W7 and did a clean install, as much as I hated doing that. Now I have to reload all the drivers, if I can figure out which ones and the right sequence. Are there any driver packages from Lenovo I can load that will do all the drivers automatically? Is that what Thinkvantage is?

Thinkvantage System Update (TSU) http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/migr-73695

mbr12 wrote:Nothing I tried for over 24 hours of working on it helped. I finally downloaded a new W7 and did a clean install, as much as I hated doing that. Now I have to reload all the drivers, if I can figure out which ones and the right sequence. Are there any driver packages from Lenovo I can load that will do all the drivers automatically? Is that what Thinkvantage is?

Or you can go to lenovo China website, they have driver packages for download

Finally got the t61 working after 3 days of re-installing the os, drivers, programs, etc....
Sent back the 6450 for a refund and tried an ATI X1300. Still no go.
Drivers installed, adjusted the bios settings and connected the monitor to the card. Neither screen activates. Connect the monitor to the dock's output and get a distorted psychedelic image. Removed the card and all is back to normal. At least this one didn't cause an epic failure.
What needs to be done to get a card to work? The system is T61P w/Nvidia Quadro chip, 3 gigs ram, Intel 300 gb ssd, Samsung external monitor.
I didn't try it with 2 gb ram or booted undocked, then re-docked, since I don't want to use it that way.
Is the ATI/AMD driver not playing nice with the Nvidia? Would trying an Nvidia card help? Just fuggeddaboutit?

I wish I had a clear cut answer! A couple of months ago I had a reasonable amount of success on my T500 w/switchable graphics+dock w/HD6570. The hiccup I ran into was most likely the 2gb RAM limit. My T500 would go into a loop of power-on/power-off. I was able to bypass the loop by going into desktop on my T500 first and then placing the T500 on the dock. Not the best solution obviously due to potential accelerated wear on the docking ports. At the time it worked so that was what mattered to me. A couple of forum members and I had a discussion here--> http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=113724

Also have you gone into BIOS AND made sure you set the "Default Primary Video Device" to "PCI Express?" Also the setting for "Boot Display Device" may also need to be adjusted. Are you pressing F10 to make the settings stick after adjusting them? I am not 100% on the T61 as the GPU as my T500 had the ATI/Intel switchable graphics. Hopefully someone who used their T61 with the dock+card chimes in!

Also have you gone into BIOS AND made sure you set the "Default Primary Video Device" to "PCI Express?" Also the setting for "Boot Display Device" may also need to be adjusted. Are you pressing F10 to make the settings stick after adjusting them? [/quote]


Yes, did all those. I guess it's possible my 3gb ram is the problem, but I would rather keep the ram than the card.