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thinkpad T60 lost its own identity
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 9:50 am
by mluger
hi folks,
I encountered quite a strange problem with my thinkpad T60 running windows XP SP2. the symptoms are:
1.) at lenovos support website there is a button to "autodetect this systems". hitting this button results in "No products match '-'."
2.) attempting to install the new presentation director (version 3.03a) fails with the message:
"internal error: failed to load Lenovo_GetSystemType"
3.) system update (version 3) hangs (presumably because the system is not able to detect it's own type/model number).
so for the moment I'm stuck with the currently installed version of my thinkpad tools.
any hints how to solve this problem?
thanks in advance,
matthias
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:37 am
by wswartzendruber
Go to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Information and see if it tells you anything important. Also check to see if the BIOS has this information in it.
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:50 am
by Brad
If the BIOS does not list the model type and serial number this can be added. Search for hardware maintenance diskette.
Brad
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 3:17 pm
by mitchellst
Brad is correct. If the motherboard has been replaced since the laptop was manufactured, they probably didn't update the information.
You'll need a USB floppy drive to do the update as well as the Hardware Maintenance Diskette v 1.74 or higher. I don't think the older versions work on T6x machines, but I could be wrong. There are several links to it throughout this forum.
Posted: Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:26 pm
by rbena
"thinkpad T60 lost its own identity"
Alternatively, it may be a case of identity theft. This is certainly on the rise. I suppose Thinkpads are not immune to this?
Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 2:51 am
by mluger
wswartzendruber wrote:Go to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System Information and see if it tells you anything important. Also check to see if the BIOS has this information in it.
1. the BIOS setup utility shows a perfect string of type/model/serial number
2.) system information does not work at all: I get the message
"auf die software von WMI konnte nicht zugegriffen werden. Möglicherweise wurden die Windows-Verwaltungsdateien verschoben oder sind nicht verfügbar"
or in english (please apologize for a possibly wrong translation)
"WMI software could not be accessd. Probably WMI files have been moved or are not available"
the services Event Log, Windows Management Instrumentation
and Remote Procedure Call (RPC) are all running.
thanks,
matthias
Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 8:11 am
by wswartzendruber
mluger wrote:wswartzendruber wrote:
Where'd you get this Windows install from? It sounds kind of broke.
Posted: Sat Oct 06, 2007 10:40 am
by mluger
wswartzendruber wrote:mluger wrote:
this installation was a brandnew preload directly from lenovo. the only thing I did was deactivitating some of the more power consuming thinkvantage utilities and MS system services. at a certain point the type/model info was gone ....
Sounds like WMI is corrupt
Posted: Sun Oct 07, 2007 12:02 am
by bdmclacken
Check out this link for instructions on fixing WMI in Windows:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/repairwmi.htm.
Do a search for wmidiag on Google also and find the current download link from Microsoft, as they provide a tool, wmidiag.vbs, to help diagnose problems in WMI just in case reloading the WMI components don't help. The tool may be able to tell you enough about the problem to further diagnose what is wrong, like if there is a permission problem of some sort, or specific system file missing.
FYI- to completely reload the WMI components from the link above, you'll likely need the Windows XP CD as well as the Windows XP SP2 files. This might be tricky if you don't happen to have your own copy of Windows XP on disk somewhere so don't start that process unless you have that somewhere.
Re: Sounds like WMI is corrupt
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:12 pm
by mluger
bdmclacken wrote:Check out this link for instructions on fixing WMI in Windows:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/repairwmi.htm.
Do a search for wmidiag on Google also and find the current download link from Microsoft, as they provide a tool, wmidiag.vbs, to help diagnose problems in WMI just in case reloading the WMI components don't help. The tool may be able to tell you enough about the problem to further diagnose what is wrong, like if there is a permission problem of some sort, or specific system file missing.
FYI- to completely reload the WMI components from the link above, you'll likely need the Windows XP CD as well as the Windows XP SP2 files. This might be tricky if you don't happen to have your own copy of Windows XP on disk somewhere so don't start that process unless you have that somewhere.
thank you - sounds pretty tricky. I'm going to dig into that and will come back with my findings ...
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 12:28 pm
by andyP
Have a look in;
C:\Programme\Gemeinsame Dateien\Lenovo\egatherer
"egatherer.exe" should be there, I believe it is responsible for gathering the information required for system update and help center. It maybe that it has been deleted as you uninstalled one of the TVT softwares
Problem solved!
Posted: Tue Oct 09, 2007 4:25 pm
by mluger
bdmclacken wrote:Check out this link for instructions on fixing WMI in Windows:
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/repairwmi.htm.
Do a search for wmidiag on Google also and find the current download link from Microsoft, as they provide a tool, wmidiag.vbs, to help diagnose problems in WMI just in case reloading the WMI components don't help. The tool may be able to tell you enough about the problem to further diagnose what is wrong, like if there is a permission problem of some sort, or specific system file missing.
FYI- to completely reload the WMI components from the link above, you'll likely need the Windows XP CD as well as the Windows XP SP2 files. This might be tricky if you don't happen to have your own copy of Windows XP on disk somewhere so don't start that process unless you have that somewhere.
WMIDIAG.VBS did the job! the tool can be found at:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/script ... idiag.mspx
envoking
rebuilt a presumably corrupt repository and healed this difficult case of transient loss of consciousness.
so this years nobel price in Applied Thinkpad Sciences goes to:
bdmclacken
and of course: thanks to all the other contributors.
Solved my problem
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2008 8:39 pm
by Tseng
Thanks a lot for the info. I had exactly same problem with my T61 & Presentation Director 3.05. The tip totally solves my headache.
