Thinkpads Forum

Acquired a T420 some 10 days back. Laptop is physically in a fine condition.

I have a 4236-fz6 model with intel graphics.
Got some issues which are not resolving,

T420 recognised the hard disk only when I put it in AHCI mode in the bios.
-Win xp(sp3) install took 3 tries, was getting stuck at the 13min mark at registering components (also some error msg about not finding resetwmi.exe)
The win xp disk is fine, no issues at all. Some 8 hours have been spent just installing xp.

-no valid ethernet driver available on lenovo's site for the t420. Had to download it from elsewhere.
Ethernet works intermittently (duplex/half duplex problems?)

-wifi was working fine after installation but is not working now

-startup takes too long

-audio is not installing. It told me conexant needed .net 3.0 or higher, tried installing .net 3.5 and it gave me an error so no audio for now.

-graphics is slow, scrolling through a page and similar makes this laptop feel like it's a celeron laptop.

-I've checked the hard drive and it has no problems.
Can attach cpu-z results if needed.

For those who have installed win xp on this laptop, have you been able to resolve some of the issues? I thought win xp would run well on this laptop but am severely disappointed.

How can I resolve these issues as win 7 is not a choice. Thank you folks.

Sounds like you are having a lot of drivers issues. Not surprising as XP was first released nearly a decade before this machine came out. Not a whole lot you can do about driver issues. I doubt Lenovo is going to update XP drivers for the T420.

There are XP drivers for the T420 and there are people who run XP on the T420.

I would try installing using SATA combatibility mode, install the proper Intel Rapid Storage Drivers, change back to AHCI mode. If that doesn't fix the problems and slowness try nLite.

People have used nLite to load the necessary drivers, and .NET framework. There are guides out there how to install XP on the T420.

yukon wrote:... T420 ... win 7 is not a choice.

Why not? If you had Lenovo's Windows 7 disks for the T420, would you install it?

My comfort level with xp was probably too much, been using it for 13 years. I've installed win 7 today as a dual boot option and am using it now. The t420 is running win 7 surprisingly fast. Let's see. Have combed all the relevant threads for xp on the t420 and came up with a guide to run xp on page 10 or 11 of the 200+ page discussion thread of an unnamed website(NR). That guide, in pdf format is no longer available.

I really don't know how to set it all right as I've already spent some 10 hours trying to get things up and running. Need a working laptop. It just looks like I've been dragged kicking and screaming into the new world. Ah well. Although, might spring for an older HP elitebook for my father.

Have you seen this page?

http://www.patchysan.net/computing.html

"PatchySan's Windows XP Clean Installation Guide for ThinkPads (PDF)" is for the T420.

It takes effort to install it, and it takes also effort to learn Windows 7. The choice is yours. Most people coming from XP prefer Windows 7 over XP though. You also have the option of trying Classic Shell to make 7 behave more like XP.

This probably is the guide I was looking for. Thank you. I am at the moment trying to xp-ize my win 7 experience. Windows explorer is my greatest frustration hence Classic Shell has somewhat come to my rescue. Will possibly take a Acronic image of my c drive as backup and attempt the xp install when time permits. One of the very reasons why I bought this notebook instead of the newer versions of some other brand.

EOMtp wrote:

yukon wrote:... T420 ... win 7 is not a choice.

Why not? If you had Lenovo's Windows 7 disks for the T420, would you install it?

This notebook came with win 7 pro license.