Thinkpads Forum

I may purchase another T510 that is identical to one of my T510's I currently own.

The difference is one of those I own is an i5 processor and the other I'm buying is an i7.

If I buy the one I'm looking at I'll sell the current machine.

Can I swap my old hard drive into the new machine so I don't have to reload all of my software and utilities?

The OS's are the same. Win 7 Pro 64.

It'll work fine, as long as both machines came preinstalled with Windows 7.

Vendor-locked OEM versions of Windows 7 check part the BIOS called the software license table (SLIC for short). If the SLIC is absent (e.g. Thinkpads that are shipped with no OS or FreeDOS) or different from what Windows is expecting ( different brand), then Windows Activation will fail.

The system I was buying was upgraded to 64 bit from 32, but same OS.

axur-delmeria wrote:It'll work fine, as long as both machines came preinstalled with Windows 7.

Vendor-locked OEM versions of Windows 7 check part the BIOS called the software license table (SLIC for short). If the SLIC is absent (e.g. Thinkpads that are shipped with no OS or FreeDOS) or different from what Windows is expecting ( different brand), then Windows Activation will fail.

Have you ever actually had this happen? Sheer curiosity on my end.

MikalE wrote:The system I was buying was upgraded to 64 bit from 32, but same OS.

You'll be fine after a reboot.

I missed out. It sold for about $20 more than I was willing to spend, and even at my high bid I thought was a few dollars too high too, but i7 T510's aren't as plentiful as i5's.

Maybe next time, but thanks for the information. It will eventually come in handy.

ajkula66 wrote:Have you ever actually had this happen? Sheer curiosity on my end.

Yes, on my dad's Asus EEE 1015P netbook. It had its system board replaced under warranty, but the replacement board didn't have the SLIC table, and Windows 7 reported a "Not activated" status.
It took the service center an entire month just to replace the board and send the netbook back to us, and we couldn't afford to waste any more time (my dad uses it for work), so I searched the web for ways to install the SLIC table into the BIOS.

Long story short, I installed the SLIC onto a BIOS image and flashed it into the netbook, and Windows 7 was activated again. To be honest though, I'd rather not do something like that again-- it's a borderline (if not outright illegal) method, but in my defense I was just fixing what the service center didn't bother to check.

MikalE wrote:I missed out. It sold for about $20 more than I was willing to spend,

Why not get an i7 processor and just install in your T510?

axur-delmeria wrote: Yes, on my dad's Asus EEE 1015P netbook.

I should've worded my question differently: have you ever had it happen on a ThinkPad? I've seen my fair share of DOS-licensed units and the factory recovery disks always worked, no questions asked...

axur-delmeria wrote:

ajkula66 wrote:Have you ever actually had this happen? Sheer curiosity on my end.

Yes, on my dad's Asus EEE 1015P netbook. It had its system board replaced under warranty, but the replacement board didn't have the SLIC table, and Windows 7 reported a "Not activated" status.
It took the service center an entire month just to replace the board and send the netbook back to us, and we couldn't afford to waste any more time (my dad uses it for work), so I searched the web for ways to install the SLIC table into the BIOS.

Long story short, I installed the SLIC onto a BIOS image and flashed it into the netbook, and Windows 7 was activated again. To be honest though, I'd rather not do something like that again-- it's a borderline (if not outright illegal) method, but in my defense I was just fixing what the service center didn't bother to check.

MikalE wrote:I missed out. It sold for about $20 more than I was willing to spend,

Why not get an i7 processor and just install in your T510?

There's a thought. I might look into it. Are these processors socket-mounted or soldered directly to the MB? Which socket is in the T510 and how fast of a processor can I install?

ajkula66 wrote:have you ever had it happen on a ThinkPad?

Yes, although I don't deal with factory images. I just recently did it on a T500. I had to reactivate Windows 10, which it did without complaint, but had to go through the telephone automated service to get Office 2013 reactivated. It installed a few new drivers reflecting the slight differences in the two units, and is working fine (aside from a multi-machine cardreader issue I've posted in the Windows 10 forum.)

And I've done it with various upgrades, such as a T60p to an R61 if memory serves.

Art

George, if I understand the question: I have moved a HDD from a ATI T500 to a Intel T500, it really did not like the move at first but after it rebooted it ran fine and the W7 stayed activated on both machines.

Ron

ArtShapiro wrote:

ajkula66 wrote:have you ever had it happen on a ThinkPad?

Yes, although I don't deal with factory images.

Well, the fact that you don't deal with factory images pretty much defeats the whole purpose of my question...

jronald wrote:George, if I understand the question: I have moved a HDD from a ATI T500 to a Intel T500, it really did not like the move at first but after it rebooted it ran fine and the W7 stayed activated on both machines.

Ron

That's the way it's supposed to be if the proper SLIC is in BIOS. My question was specifically related to installing a factory image on a system that shipped out with no MS COA since I have yet to see a DOS-licensed system failing to activate Windows that match its era...

ajkula66 wrote:Well, the fact that you don't deal with factory images pretty much defeats the whole purpose of my question...

Sorry, but I don't see any reference to factory images in the original enquiry...not trying to be argumentative or irrelevant; have I missed something?

Art

ArtShapiro wrote:

ajkula66 wrote:Well, the fact that you don't deal with factory images pretty much defeats the whole purpose of my question...

Sorry, but I don't see any reference to factory images in the original enquiry...not trying to be argumentative or irrelevant; have I missed something?

Art

I guess you must have missed the smiley in my previous post...so here's another one...

The debate that I was having - somewhat OT admittedly - with axur-delmeria was about whether a DOS-licensed unit would activate the image from factory media regardless of the fact that it was missing a COA. In other words, whether *all* the non-licensed machines had the appropriate SLIC already present in BIOS or not. My experience is that the SLIC is present, but am open to hear about different experiences.

Moving a non-factory image from one system to another will require re-activation in almost all cases. That's why I responded to your post the way I did, and made sure to include a smiley...

It has been known for years, that MDL (and other forums) have made any number of BIOS mods to add Slic tables and/or remove wifi whitelists.
Usually it is enough to set up a Google search for "lenovo t510 slic bios" [or any other laptop/model].

PS: if people would stop limiting themselves to only reading posts for THEIR model, they'd have found plenty references elsewhere on this forum!

I should've worded my question differently: have you ever had it happen on a ThinkPad?

Yes, I've encountered a few Thinkpads without SLICs (X61). Checking the serial #s on the then-working model lookup page on Lenovo's web site, they were explicitly mentioned as having DOS. I haven't used factory recovery discs on Thinkpads though-- they're far too rare to be sourced locally and international shipping makes it impractical.

And yes, it's veering off-topic, so I'm very much willing to stop at this point.

Nevermind.

OK now that Im a little clearer, I have an X130e that lost its SLIC 2.1, and defies all logic of putting it back in. It came originally with 2.1 installed but no matter what I have tried, I cant get it to go back. I used a different method to re-load, what was already factory ... without a SLIC being used.

The above has NOTHING to do with swapping a HDD, just a comment that i understood, through mis-fortune what we were talking about (finally).


Ron