W701ds - any way to disable dGPU?

[lana587]

Hello all, I am new around here so please don't tear me up too bad haha.

I have a thinkpad W701ds and am looking to get an AMD or someway for the system to rely on a different gpu other than nvidia because it's causing issues for me.

My specs are :

Intel Core i7 Q 720 (i7-720QM)
4GB RAM
320GB HDD
NVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M

After doing some research, I believe this cpu is too old to have an iGPU in it like more modern ones have. If I'm wrong please correct me! I also unplugged the card, and just as a I thought, upon boot, I was greeted with a black screen and nothing. I expected this to happen since I guess the bios relies solely on this dGPU(obviously since there is no iGPU). Is there any chance that I will ever be able to get this thing working without the nvidia gpu? I would be okay with putting a super low end MXM card in too it doesn't really matter, I just can't be using an nvidia card. I don't care about performance, if that helps. I'm guessing I'll have to be doing some bios modding which I know literally nothing about. Is there a different CPU I can put in it that would supply me with an iGPU?

If there is any way anyone could help me it would truly be appreciated, thank you so much!

[SAIYAN48]

There is no iGPU on the first gen quad core i7s. The MXM dGPU can be replaced, bt only with another one on the list since the vBIOS is locked. an eGPU may be an option for you.

[axur-delmeria]

AFAIK no one has succeeded in making a non-Thinkpad MXM GPU work on the W700/701 family.
This means you have to use the Thinkpad-specific Quadro FX 2800M or 3800M cards.

I'm not aware of any modded BIOS, or a Coreboot port for that matter, for these models. :

[lana587]

There is no iGPU on the first gen quad core i7s. The MXM dGPU can be replaced, bt only with another one on the list since the vBIOS is locked. an eGPU may be an option for you.

Ah okay, thank you very much for the information! Yeah I suppose I will have to look into one of those!

[lana587]

AFAIK no one has succeeded in making a non-Thinkpad MXM GPU work on the W700/701 family.
This means you have to use the Thinkpad-specific Quadro FX 2800M or 3800M cards.

I'm not aware of any modded BIOS, or a Coreboot port for that matter, for these models. :

Awe rats, well it appears I'm way in over my head haha...Thank you for the information and I suppose I will be trying to find another use case for this laptop.

Lana

[unixed]

... because it's causing issues for me.

You can't easily do much about changing the hardware but if you elaborated on the issues there may be a solution.

[lana587]

... because it's causing issues for me.

You can't easily do much about changing the hardware but if you elaborated on the issues there may be a solution.

Trying to get Qubes OS to run on it, which heavily hates nvidia cards. It wont get to the graphical installer (anaconda, it uses fedora). I tried using nouveau drivers and different boot params, even using kickstart to auto install certain things, to no avail it has been failing. The issue is the graphics card, and since the cpu has no igpu, and with other people helping here with information, I realized it's probably over and to just use a different laptop for this.
Thanks

Lana

[unixed]

First I would try the nomodeset kernel boot parameter.
Failing that use an external graphics card via the expresscard, using a docking station, and an external monitor for installation. The expresscard is basically like a mPCIe slot so you can use a full size PCIe graphics card. Look at something like vidock to get an idea of what to look for. Once you have that setup working with your normal OS, you can look through the BIOS settings (F1 on startup) and make the PCIe graphics card primary on startup if that option is available. Try installing qubes on a different drive so you can easily recover by switching drives and can revert the BIOS settings, for example.

[lana587]

First I would try the nomodeset kernel boot parameter.
Failing that use an external graphics card via the expresscard, using a docking station, and an external monitor for installation. The expresscard is basically like a mPCIe slot so you can use a full size PCIe graphics card. Look at something like vidock to get an idea of what to look for. Once you have that setup working with your normal OS, you can look through the BIOS settings (F1 on startup) and make the PCIe graphics card primary on startup if that option is available. Try installing qubes on a different drive so you can easily recover by switching drives and can revert the BIOS settings, for example.

Thank you very much, I will try this out!

[unixed]

I would also try and run anaconda in text mode, probably achieved by specifying "text" somewhere as the next line of attack if nomodetest does not work.
Interestingly the W701 BIOS does not let you choose the default primary video device but the W700 does (Config -> Display -> Default Primary Video Device [PCI express | Internal]). The W700 also has the dual screen W700ds but the limitation to 8GB RAM would make it less suitable for running qubes.

[lana587]

I would also try and run anaconda in text mode, probably achieved by specifying "text" somewhere as the next line of attack if nomodetest does not work.
Interestingly the W701 BIOS does not let you choose the default primary video device but the W700 does (Config -> Display -> Default Primary Video Device [PCI express | Internal]). The W700 also has the dual screen W700ds but the limitation to 8GB RAM would make it less suitable for running qubes.

Yeah, I used the inst.text parameter and did a full text install. So the issue is that the text installer seems to be bugged, where it can't continue because it never asks if you want to set up the encryption password. In order to do that, I had to use Kickstart to somehow trick it into prompting for the password creation, then it went smoothly and installed. The issue is that it doesn't boot with "quiet" erased from the advanced boot options, it gets stuck at a string of words. After doing a bit of research I found a post that has the exact same issue as me, perhaps you would take a look. https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/qubes-on-a ... 01ds/15886

Failed to start systemd looks like.
Same specs as their's but 4gb of ram (will try to upgrade if it works).

Thanks for talking to me

Lana

[unixed]

The W701 can have 3 drives. So you don't have to wait to get Qubes working, just install anything you were going to run using Xen on a single inserted drive, then insert up to 3 drives and select the boot device using F12 on startup. At any rate there will be some alternative means of doing whatever it is you want to do.

Then you can work on installing Qubes at your leisure.
How you go about that depends on your abilities and resources.

You can try what I've already mentioned in a previous post.

If you can find for example a hp 8740w elitebook (without the DC2 display) with ATI MXM GPU cheaply you can install on that then figure out how to switch to NVIDIA drivers (you can swap in an NVIDIA MXM GPU on that); then put that drive in the W701ds and fix up the install if necessary. Get the 8740w that has 4 RAM sockets (2 at the bottom) and can take quad core CPUs, these are similar to the W701 and differ from those that use the same generation dual cores which do in fact have selectable integrated graphics in general (but limited RAM).

You can try and fix your current install. Using a live CD, mount the Qubes iso, extract the contents, find the install scripts, use that as your roadmap.

You can search Fedora forums since Qubes seems to be based on that and there will be a bigger community that run Fedora with NVIDIA GPUs.

[lana587]

The W701 can have 3 drives. So you don't have to wait to get Qubes working, just install anything you were going to run using Xen on a single inserted drive, then insert up to 3 drives and select the boot device using F12 on startup. At any rate there will be some alternative means of doing whatever it is you want to do.

Then you can work on installing Qubes at your leisure.
How you go about that depends on your abilities and resources.

You can try what I've already mentioned in a previous post.

If you can find for example a hp 8740w elitebook (without the DC2 display) with ATI MXM GPU cheaply you can install on that then figure out how to switch to NVIDIA drivers (you can swap in an NVIDIA MXM GPU on that); then put that drive in the W701ds and fix up the install if necessary. Get the 8740w that has 4 RAM sockets (2 at the bottom) and can take quad core CPUs, these are similar to the W701 and differ from those that use the same generation dual cores which do in fact have selectable integrated graphics in general (but limited RAM).

You can try and fix your current install. Using a live CD, mount the Qubes iso, extract the contents, find the install scripts, use that as your roadmap.

You can search Fedora forums since Qubes seems to be based on that and there will be a bigger community that run Fedora with NVIDIA GPUs.

Thank you so much for all your help, I really appreciate it. I've been swamped with work lately so when i get some free time i will work on this. Copied down your posts and saved them so i can look and work on it offline. That's super interesting about the elitebook, found some cheap ones for like 11 dollars on ebay so i may go that route too.

Thanks again for all your help!

Lana

[TheForgottenKing]

You can boot Linux on the W701ds without any hardware hacking. I've done it. You just have to boot with the nomodeset parameter until you install the proprietary Nvidia 340xx drivers and then everything works fine.