Thinkpads Forum

Hi,
Just bought a used W701 - 2544 W1C from ebay.
Didn't come with a hard drive, but I took one from a previously dead laptop

Also, original charger was DOA, got them to send another charger, and everything works except the Motherboard doesn't have any model or serial number programed into it.

It has the 2200 error on boot, but it doesn't seem like any other problems.
I downloaded Hardware Maintenance Diskette 1.9 to try to fix this, but the two different flash drives I used, both stop showing up in the boot list after being formatted with the program.
I tried using ever usb port, and they all cause the same problem.
USB bios support is enabled.
I was wondering if using an external floppy drive would work instead, or is there something else I am missing.

Lenovos support website lists the serial number as a W701ds for some reason, but I can find the machine type and model in the spreadsheet someone on here complied and its listed as

i7-820QM(1.73GHz) 4GB RAM 320GB 7200rpm HD 17in 1920x1200 LCD 1GB nVIDIA Quadro FX 2800M CDRW/DVDRW Intel 802.11agn wireless Bluetooth Modem 1Gb Ethernet UltraNav Secure Chip Fingerprint reader Camera 9c Li-Ion Win7 Pro 64

which matches to what is actually on the laptop (besides the hard drive).

I did open up the laptop to notice it has 2x 2GB and 1 x 4GB ram, so I assume someone upgraded at some point.

The only other thing I noticed as that one antenna post on the wifi card was starting to break off. I never touched those wires, so I know I didn't cause that.
Really, the laptop is clean, looks lightly used, not damaged in any way, so I rather fix it and keep it than give the seller a hard time.
I'm wondering what did happen to this laptop though, the lack of model programed into the bios and the broken antenna post makes me think that the motherboard was potentially changed and not done carefully enough. It would explain why the inside had very little dust, and almost perfectly clean everywhere.

Is there anything I should check, stress test to make sure there are no other problems? Any other thoughts? Ways to fix the 2200 error without buying a floppy drive.

Thank you.

Not every model and type are listed. I would use the model and type you state in your post.

You shouldn't need a floppy. How about a USB drive?

Brad

I'm using the cheapest of the cheap 64MB (that's MegaByte!) USB stick for my HMD (currently 1.86, haven't needed it in a long time).
I made it using the included USBFMTPW.EXE program.
Alternatively, make a bootable USB stick with Rufus and then copy the HMD programs onto it.

Thank you.
Using rufus let me get in, I followed someone else post about formatting with rufus, and then copying all the files over.
That lead to an EEPROM lock message, which told me to press ESC, but that didn't work. I tried ESC with a flashdrive directly made with USBFMTPW.EXE and that worked.

Someone clearly messed with this before.
Options 01 and 20 were both just the 7 digit serial number.
and option 40 was a 22 character string.

I will work on changing these values to their proper values when I get home tonight.

Thank you

Thank you,
Everything is working now.
No error on boot,
everything on the laptop works, including system update.