R30 HDD oddness at boot and other issues...

[Red_October_7000]

Hello fellow ThinkPad fans; I have a question about the odd behavior of my Thinkpad R30 2656 20U.
The major problem is that at boot it will sometimes hang at one of the following places:
Right after the "IBM ThinkPad" splash, sometimes to a black screen, sometimes to a messages saying "A disk read error has occured, press CTRL-ALT-DELETE to restart" (or some such copy), sometimes it hangs at the inital monochrome loading bar, (rare) sometimes at the boot-select screen (If you see it due to reboots). and most frequently it will simply stay at the color windows XP loading screen with the scrolling bar for ever. Occasionally it will stick at a black screen before or after this screen. This happens most frequently after the machine has been sitting for a time without use.

It is a Thinkpad R30 2656 20U, Intel Celleron 900 MHz, 376 MB RAM (One stick is some funky Third-pary stick), 20 GB Travelstar Drive (The previous owner replaced the 10 GB with this one, which I strongly suspect is used because it has Compaq stickers on it). Windows XP Home SP2.

Have tried:
PC doctor scans of HDD, memory, and motherboard. All pass with flying colors.
Norton Disk Doctor and Speed Disk, windows Defrag and Scandisk. Norton SystemWorks One Button checkup, Ad-Aware scans, re-seating relevant components.

The machine has a storied history; it was property of my best friend's mother who took no care of it whatsoever and ordered it without any options (Hence the rare 900MHz chip and its lack of ability to take an UltraBay Battery). I cleaned it up for her once after it stopped working; it had 256,000 K of temporary internet files and all sorts of other crap on it. After a regular regimine of maintenance (Scandisk, Defrag, you know the drill) it was returned in working order. In the course of the next year the old lady died; her husband followed, and my buddy, drowning in computers (inluding two brand new Dell Latitudes) gives me the R30. I gladly accept. It had at some point in its life been in for maintenance once or twice; the Compaq-labeled drive leads me to believe the second time was NOT to Big Blue.
(He still has two more ThinkPads; an ancient 36Xx(x) series and an X20 I'm trying to get out of him; I do love ThinkPads )

Any Help appreciated, including advice to ditch it for another model with UltraBay Plus. Thanks in advance!

Oh yeah... the other issues! The TrackPoint sometimes will idly move the cursor up very slowly. Tweaking it stops this behavior. THe hardware keys (ThinkPad, Hardware volume) do not work even though I have the software for them installed. The system can overheat and will shut down rapidly. Playing the DOS game ADOM can do this, as did the PC-doctor advance patern memory test; but I was using it on a bed at that time, but with the Port Replicator that raises it up a bit. The memory seems to get the hottest. Could it be the weird 3rd party memory?

[Thane_Bitter]

Hi Red_October,

Since you think you may have a thermal issue I recommend downloading a little program called motherboard monitor.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Oakland/8259/ Here are my temperatures to give you a baseline (few web pages open, typing in MS Word, system is basically idling), in a room that is 20 C, CPU = 45~51 C, Main board = 43, and HD = 55 C.
There is a Bootable DOS version of PC-Doctor (available from IBM/Lenovo's website) which might offer more specific memory & hard drive tests, though it sounds like you might have run it already.
The memory & mini-PCI areas will get warm (totally normal), however you could try pulling one and see if there is any improvement.
You mention the boot issue is most prevalent if the computer has been off for some time, I kind of think that may be more of a hardware issue with the drive. There use to be a hard drive testing program available from IBM at one time, but I am at a loss of locating it on their site right now.
Yes it’s annoying that you can’t use a drive bay battery (or hot swap devices), for that you need a TP with an Ultra Bay, like the T series (you’re R30 has the UltraBay Plus). On a new R3x battery you should get a run time slightly over 3 hours (actual time depends on power settings and options).
The volume & ThinkPad buttons are part of the keyboard, try reseating the connectors and see if that helps. I do recommend downloading the Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM) from IBM/Lenovo. It shows all the required steps for removing parts and also has some test procedures as well.

Thane

[Red_October_7000]

I am taking it in for service tomorrow to a local shop that specializes in Thinkpads. It may in fact be the Hard Disk Drive; I will find out. I'm doing OK though because I just bought an old road warrior of an X20 from the same buddy for the price of a new memory stick. It should see me through until the R30 is back on her feer or replaced by something suitable... Not that the X is a bad machine; but it's a little slow and small for me. (ordered by the same family, so it's the lowes-end model. I'm not sure if it even has the 1024x768 screen). The CF cardslot is nice, though.

[Red_October_7000]

Fixed. Thanks for the help.

[Chiana]

Well, what was the problem?

[Red_October_7000]

Sorry to gravedig the thread but I realized I never answered.
It was in fact the Hard Drive. A new 40GB one and it boots like lightning. As I understand it, it's a known property of ADOM to overheat laptops, especially Thinkpads (or anything else with poor heat disipation). It's coded.. oddly.