Thinkpads Forum

I left my thinkpad on my bed and my a/c unit is right above it. The a/c unit freaked out and poured a ton of water right on top of my thinkpad while it was on and while it was open.

I just bought a x200 from the lenovo outlet store. I currently live in South Korea and had my brother bring me the laptop a week ago. I haven't even had the darn thing for a week and now its dead.
As soon as I saw water was dumping on the thinkpad I shut the computer down and took the battery out. Dried it with a paper towel as much as I could and let it sit over night. In the morning I plugged everything back in and fired it up, it fired up and I could see the thinkpad sign on the bottom left corner but then noting happens. It makes a beep and black screen. Also when I press the F keys I can get into the bios but the screen is super dim like I have to tilt the screen really slanted to see anything. It tells me that it can't recognize the hard drive. So the hard drive is done for but is the screen dead too??

I'm in South Korea and I don't know what to do and if there is even anything I can do at this point. Do I now own a very expensive paper weight or is there anything I can do to save this???

I am so freaken [censored] and frustrated, I really have no idea. Can anyone out there have any words of wisdom or any help you guys can offer....???

Thanks and this totally suck by the way....

First I would take it apart (completely) and make sure it is all very dry before trying to turn it on again. You might get lucky and may just need to replace a couple of the lower cost components.

ok so I dried it out as much as I could but I think the HD is fried. I took the HD out and booted up just fine but without any OS I can't do anything.

Sorry I never had something like this happen. I can just get another HD but how do I get the original OS with all the drivers?? I was not able to make a restore cd yet, I only had the darn thing for less then a week.

Do you have a USB CD/DVD-ROM drive? You can boot to a bootable linux CD to check and make sure components are in good working order.

You might be able to get some restore disks from someone here or you should be able to get some from Lenovo.

no cd-rom but I have a usb stick. Where can I get a bootable linux??

then I just book up with the ubs stick in??

I'm currently in South Korea working so I don't know if anyone can help me out, does lenovo ship out a restore cd??

There are several distros that you can set up on a thumb drive for use. Go here for more information.

What operating system: Windows XP or Vista?

win vista

I called lenovo to see if they would send me a recovery CD but they said it would cost me $50.

I have a wd passport, I took it apart and plugged it into the thinkpad. It recognized the HD but obviously I didn't have any os on there. This seems like a stupid question but if I just use that HD how can I install vista back on with all the drivers?? Where do I get the drivers for my x200?? is there anywhere I can download them or what do I do?? man I am no lost with this right now.

Can anyone point me in the right direction??

You would need a Windows Vista disc that matches the type found on your machine (Business? Home Premium?) and it also has to match the service pack (none or SP 1). The drivers are available on Lenovo's website under "Support."

I still think you best bet is to try and find someone here willing to part with their restore discs or to buy them from Lenovo.

lets say I pay the $50 and buy the restore cd from lenovo and get my hand on a new hd. Then how would I install it? sorry normally I would do a simple install rather then a fresh start like this. Also I don't have an external cd-rom, wouldn't I need that to pop in the restore cd?? or could I do it with another laptop??

thanks for the help...

If you want/need the Rescue and Recovery partition rebuilt and the drivers and applications from the R&R CD's loaded on your drowned Thinkpad, you'll need to add an external CDROM player to the list of items to purchase. There are no known work-around to this.

Ok thanks, I'll have to wait till I get back to the states to get all that stuff.

Thanks for all the help.

A simple solution to your problem would be to have someone with an X200 load a hard drive from their restore disks and ship the drive to you. If your hard drive was the only part damaged, you would be up and running five minutes after the drive arrived.

What operating system were you running and what size hard drive did you have?

man if someone is willing to do that, that would be freaken awesome!!

I was running Windows Vista Business on a 160 gig hard drive.

PM sent

I'm a bit surprised that the HD would be damaged by water - they are hermetically sealed to keep out dust and dirt, so plain water should not cause much harm. Also that wouldn't explain why the screen is not displaying properly.
It might be worth connecting the HD as a secondary drive to a desktop PC, to see if you can read it on that.
You have had a tough break with that accident - good luck in getting it fixed!

I am still confused about Lenovo charging for the recovery disks.

Anyway, they had sent me the three DVD discs for the X200, Vista Business 32 Bit for free when I called about my X200T. I just returned my tablet and got another. A couple months later I called them back and asked them to send me the R&R disc for my tablet and they did, again for free.

The PN for the three DVD disc package is: 46V1162 of which each DVD has a PN too.They are:

Disk One, Start Recovery Disc 43R9961
Disk Two, Operating System Recovery Disc Vista Business SP1 46R5200
Disk Three, Applications & Drivers Recovery Disc 46V1241

Now you didn't mention if 32 or 6 bit or the type but these discs are for 32 bit, TYPES:
2023, 2024, 7454, 7455, 7457, 7458, 7459


So if it turns out you need these disks just let me know and you can have them for what I paid for them

Good luck