Thinkpads Forum

greetings fellow padsters

after ants got into and wrecked my old t60 beyond repair, i went and got myself......(drum roll) another t60!!!!! ....second hand and exactly the same specs as well....the very basic model with core duo 2400 and dim screen etc....but its okay cos its more than enough for my amateurish needs...i played around with getting a new t61 and a new t500 but in the end i just like the robust feel of the t60....it is a veritable beast.

have a problem though.........the new t60 is choc full with thinkvantage software and it runs like a 15 year old labrador on valium.....in fact my barebones xp t42 is way faster....but anyway....my old t60 that the ants killed has a sata harddrive in it that is fine.....i tried taking it out and putting it in the new t60 cos its got barebones windows xp on it and thats what i like.....but it wont work. Its exactly the same hardrive - standard hitachi sata made in thailand and the numbers are all pretty much the same...the only difference is the barebones one I like is 7200 and the sedated labrador one is 5300......i thought i could just pull one out and whack the other in and it would boot up easy and i wouldnt even need to do anything...cos i have done such a thing when swapping hardrives from a t40 to a t42...it just worked straight away no messing around.

does anyone out there have any ideas why i am having this problem? I just figured if i can get my old barebones t60 hardrive in the new t60 machine then i wont have to bother going through the rigmarole of either a clean windows install or individually uninstalling those cumbersome thinkvantage applications..

any help is really appreciated

do you get any error messages? bsod? or does it just fail to boot at all?

yes i get an error message,,,and then it just keeps turning off and rebooting by itself, with the same error message coming up again and again.

Tell you what i will try it again and write what the error message actually says....its 5am now though so gonna hit the sack.... will do it and post it in the morning

cheers

I would recommend reloading Windows...

devanshoom wrote:yes i get an error message,,,and then it just keeps turning off and rebooting by itself, with the same error message coming up again and again.

Tell you what i will try it again and write what the error message actually says....its 5am now though so gonna hit the sack.... will do it and post it in the morning

cheers

go into the bios and see what sata mode the machine is currently in. if it's 'ahci' switch it to 'compatibility'. or the reverse if it's already in 'compatibility' mode.

It may also help to post the TYPE numbers (e.g. 1951-XXX) from both systems in order to determine if there's a major difference between the hardware. You could have a situation where the hard drive from your older T60 does not have the proper drivers for whatever is in the newer system.

devanshoom wrote:after ants got into and wrecked my old t60 beyond repair

This may be the first time I've heard a computer failure blamed on ANTS! We usually blame our mistakes on the computer. Anyway, I think it's what the ants went in there to eat that did the damage. The ants were just in there trying to clean up the mess. That's their job. Right?

well thats what i was told anyway...ants got inside, made a base and over a period of time there "waste" or whatever accumulated and bugge*red up the motherboard (asterix is for Bills extremely thorough expletive remover LOL)....yeah thats what they said and they also said it was quite common....for all I know it could be the standard excuse they give when they dont know what the problem is.....no idea..having said that I have noticed there is a breed of very small yellow ants out here in the tropics that do tend to be attracted to laptops...might be the internal fan keeping them cool or something

okay...anyway here goes

......the dead t60 is as follows

type 2007 - CTO S/N L3 GA451 06/88...and the still-alive hardrive from it (the one i want to put into the new good t60) is a hitachi sata FRU PN42T1401 - 7200 revs

the new good but slow t60 is

type2007 - BH5 S/N L3 8M47G (cant read the last 4 digits on it the sticker is scratched)
and the thinkvantage laden HDD from it is FRU P/N 39T2703 - 5300 revs

when i put the preferred HDD in and turn the laptop on, the big thinkpad logo shows up, then quickly reverts to a black screen and suggests there might have been a recent hardware change and offers the option to start in safe mode, last known good configuration, or start windows normally......whichever one i choose it then goes to a blue screen that claims there is an error, but the message doesnt stay around long enough to get all the info from it....it doesnt look like it actually gives any useful info actually, seems to be just a general thing informing of an error...it then quickly reboots itself automatically and just keeps doing this in a kind of neverending loop till i press the standby button for 5 seconds and then it stays off.

sorry I realise my technical info above isnt the clearest.....but thats the general gist of it anyway...any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

From the parts lists (and your own info in the first post) both machines are almost identical.
I noted different wifi cards though.
Take out the wifi-card in the new machine (under the keyboard), then try booting again.

RealBlackStuff wrote:From the parts lists (and your own info in the first post) both machines are almost identical.
I noted different wifi cards though.
Take out the wifi-card in the new machine (under the keyboard), then try booting again.

will do....cheers

[/quote]

go into the bios and see what sata mode the machine is currently in. if it's 'ahci' switch it to 'compatibility'. or the reverse if it's already in 'compatibility' mode.[/quote]

i might give this a go first actually cos it doesnt involve taking anything apart...im not very fluent with bios though...not even sure what it is....will have a stab at it though cos i do enjoy messing around a bit with my laptops despite my lack of knowledge..learn by doing sort of thing

sarbin wrote:
go into the bios and see what sata mode the machine is currently in. if it's 'ahci' switch it to 'compatibility'. or the reverse if it's already in 'compatibility' mode.

well i did this...and it works! what an amazingly simple fix....and i now know what bios is and how to get into it...thanks so much

this forum does indeed kick rear end...its a pity i cant really offer anything to it myself apart from annoying everyone with conspiracy theories LOL

now with all the thinkvantage stuff gone im gonna do a quick search and see if there are 1 or 2 worth getting back....system update seems like a useful thing for a novice like me to have, possibly the system back up thing as well.....the windows restore thingy has let me down a few times in the past.

so all is well.....cheers

ah...spoke too soon it would seem

its all working well now but...now it wont shut down...when i click start, then click turn off computer, it shuts down and then immediately restarts again...as though i had pressed the restart button instead of the shut down button.

actually it was doing this before with the old hardrive as well....which probably explains that automatic "turn off turn on" neverending loop thing it was doing.

LOL ...anyone in the market for pristine t60 that suffers from imsomnia?

which sata mode are you currently in when it boots successfully? ahci or compatibility?

The most usefull thinkvantage utility (IMHO) is power manager - it is more accurate than the windows one, and allows finer control over diffrent settings than the windows version. (cpu deeper-sleeper...) and it lets you see the condition of your battery.

I hope that your new system has fewer "bugs" than the old one did

(couldn't resist )

As an update to your last post, go into the advanced page of the system properties box, and unselect "automatic restart on system failiure" - it sounds like the system is BSODing on shutdown, and automatically restarting.

If you get a BSOD, look for a file name, and post that, it should help to solve your problems

sarbin wrote:which sata mode are you currently in when it boots successfully? ahci or compatibility?

it was in ahci and i changed it to compatibility...and that sorted it

"I hope that your new system has fewer "bugs" than the old one did"

yeah right..LOL.

I am not going to leave it sat in the same place for months like I did the old one..i basically use it as a desktop it rarely goes anywhere. Will be moving it around though from now on....dont let them get any footholds

Put the legs of your desk or table in cans with petroleum jelly. You'll never have any creepy-crawlies on there again.

RealBlackStuff wrote:Put the legs of your desk or table in cans with petroleum jelly. You'll never have any creepy-crawlies on there again.

yes..this is also popular out here with old fashioned stand-alone food larders....cans with oil or something nasty inside. It soaks into the wooden legs.

sarbin wrote:which sata mode are you currently in when it boots successfully? ahci or compatibility?

devanshoom wrote:it was in ahci and i changed it to compatibility...and that sorted it

ok. if you run tv system update, do you get any updates for intel chipset drivers or for the intel storage matrix driver?

sarbin wrote:
ok. if you run tv system update, do you get any updates for intel chipset drivers or for the intel storage matrix driver?

hello again...yeah i ran the system update thing and did get an update for the atm graphics driver thing....downloaded it and it now the machine does turn off (although not every time)...only thing is that when it does shut down it later turns itself on again while the lid is shut, usually about 10 minutes later.

Dunno how serious an issue it is...dunno if a clean windows install would fix it either....or maybe just configure the settings so that by pressing the "off" button it goes iinto hibernation instead of actually turning off.....i guess could live with this but then again its hardly ideal. I know I can always take it back to the place i bought it from cos it is under warranty for 3 months...only thing is Im a bit worried they might try palm me off with another, possibly lesser, machine. This one is real nice...no shiny keys or anything and seems to have been well looked after....the battery lasts over 3 hours too.

check the mouse driver's properties and see if the device is allowed to 'wake' the computer.

sarbin wrote:check the mouse driver's properties and see if the device is allowed to 'wake' the computer.

could you briefly point me in the right direction as to how to do this...i just spent 20 mins going from Bios, device manager, power manager, and a few other strange arenas, looking for a mouse wake up orientated thing but couldnt find it.

it stayed off all night last night....might be cos it was on the table and not moved around or jolted

Harryc wrote:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/280108

yeah nice one

actually i managed to do what this link suggests this morning......the only thing is I couldnt find anything connected to "wake up".....i click on device manager, go down to "mouse and other pointing devices"....click the properties on that and it just opens a smallish window saying "general, mice and other pointing devices"...clicking on anything in this window does nothing.

I also played around with the "thinkpad ultranav pointing devices" properties, directly below "mouse and other pointing devices", ...also to no avail....just cant seem to find anything to click regarding "wake up".

the perils of being a laptop novice......anyway first thing monday I will be banging on the shop door staking claims to my verbal 3 month warranty. I just hope they treat it gently and dont start pulling things out and swapping stuff. ...The thing is out here, all seconf hand thinkpads are purchased from the west in large ex-corporate job lots....no doubt that shop has a bunch of similar t60s all waiting to be sold...i guess some are better than others and it was for this reason I harrased them to give me a good one...which i thought they had.

would a fresh windows install make any difference do you think? I can do this myself....takes a while but i have all day sunday with nowt to do.

anyway thanks for all the suggestions.....

devanshoom wrote:....i click on device manager, go down to "mouse and other pointing devices"....click the properties on that and it just opens a smallish window saying "general, mice and other pointing devices"...clicking on anything in this window does nothing.

That same window on my machine has a power management tab. I am running Windows 7 though. It would be easy for someone else here to check out an XP install with an external USB mouse.

devanshoom wrote:could you briefly point me in the right direction as to how to do this...i just spent 20 mins going from Bios, device manager, power manager, and a few other strange arenas, looking for a mouse wake up orientated thing but couldnt find it.

it stayed off all night last night....might be cos it was on the table and not moved around or jolted

sorry about not getting back to you. work got real crazy after i posted.

sarbin wrote:
sorry about not getting back to you. work got real crazy after i posted.

yeah no worries dude........and yeah thanks harry......

I will probably kill tomorrow installing fresh windows xp and if no joy will make some signs and placards, gather about 10 close friends and then make a noisy yet peaceful picket line outside that shop until the situation is resolved.

Just one more quick question

is a fresh xp install likely to help the situation...I mean is the issue likely something to do with windows, or is it something connected to the "bios-sphere"....im guessing the bios is built into the hardware and will stay the same regardless if you change windows or not.

Just wondering...i mean its a bit pointless doing it if its not likely to help anything. Installing windows is straightforward enough but It can be rather tiresome doing all the drivers and such.

i'm a bit out of the loop on the discussion, but what items do you see beneath/indented below 'mice and other pointing devices' in the device manager? i just now plugged a usb wired mouse into my t60p with the devman window open and a new 'hid-compliant mouse' popped into the category. double clicking the new item and selecting the 'power management' tab shows 'allow this device to wake the computer' as selected, which i think is the default.