Thinkpads Forum

I recently received an SL400 (Type:2743-48U) without a hard drive, complete with Vista business 32-bit recovery Cds. I installed a new 250Gb Hard drive, and tried installing the recovery Cds. It freezes on the first Cd when trying to load windows. I have Xp and 7 Cds and i tried those too. 7 installed once i put the sata in compatibility mode, but otherwise it would freeze when loading. And when it did install, it ended up freezing soon after the OS loaded when i was installing drivers. Since 7 didn't work, i tried installing Xp Pro SP2. When i tried to update it, it froze as well. I am stumped at why it keeps freezing. I have tried replacing the Ram, Cleaning the heat-sink(the fans always running even when its cool). The Bios is at the latest version, 1.30 so i have run out of ideas of what i can try next.I think its a software issue since it seems to freeze repeatedly at the same places before i have to hold the power button to get it to restart.This machine is still under warranty and any assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Update: I also now have tried another new hard drive and replacing the T5670 Cpu with a T7100 with no luck. Should i send it in for warranty repairs?

have you tried using portable bootable OS as XP or Linux using Hiren BootCD?

Outatime1989 wrote:<snip> I think its a software issue since it seems to freeze repeatedly at the same places... <snip>

Given that you've tried installing three different versions of Windows, I'm leaning more towards a hardware issue. I've seen Windows XP hang on install because of a bad MiniPCI card. Perhaps that's the case here; remove the MiniPCIe card and see if that makes a difference.