Upgrading a G40

[Norway Pad]

I currently have a Thinkpad G40 in my possession. I have never seen a G40 live before, and it's a brick of a laptop. It belongs to a friend of mine, and he has asked me to take a look at it and give it a little tune up, if possible. An old laptop, yes. But he isn't using it much, so it covers his needs.

The processor is a 2.4Ghz P4, so basically better than any single core laptop I currently own. The main upgrade here will be to add some more RAM, as it's currently running only 256MB. So the question is: What is the maximum amount of RAM the board can see? Wikipedia says "128 and 256", but I guess this refers to which amounts of RAM the G40 could have when it was new. I see some threads here referring to people running up to 2GB in these laptops, but I would like to have it confirmed. I have yet not checked what's in there (2x128 or 1x256), but I think that 2x512MB or 1x1GB is the way I will chose to go here.

And if there are any other things regarding this particular laptop that I need to be aware of, I would also like to know that.

Thank you!

[dr_st]

The processor is a 2.4Ghz P4, so basically better than any single core laptop I currently own.

I believe the Pentium-M CPUs of your T42/T43 will actually beat this Pentium 4, due to more efficient architecture. The HyperThreading-capable G41 CPUs with 3GHz+ speeds may have a small edge though.

I see some threads here referring to people running up to 2GB in these laptops, but I would like to have it confirmed. I have yet not checked what's in there (2x128 or 1x256), but I think that 2x512MB or 1x1GB is the way I will chose to go here.

Lenovo's TAWBOOK indicates 1GB max for these machines, although they will __probably__ take 2GB. It is possible that 1GB sticks were not available when the laptop was released.

[Neil]

R40 supports max 2GB RAM, but if there is only 1 stick in there now, your best bet would be to leave it and add a single 1GB stick of PC2100 or PC2700, IMHO. Not much to be gained on an R40 by going beyond 1.25 or 1.5 gig.

[cliddell]

My G40 (also 2.4 gHZ) currently has 1.5 gb of memory installed so 2 gb will also work. Don't think you can go any higher - do 2 gb DDR 333 mHZ memory DIMMS even exist?

[Norway Pad]

Thank you for the replies.

I wasn't aware that the the Pentium M Centrinos are that much more effective than the Pentium 4s. That's interesting and useful to know.

After discussing with the owner, I will look into the 1x512MB module route. Looking on eBay right now. If that's still not enough RAM, we will just add another 512 module. Depending on what's in there now, he will end up with 640 or 768MB, so that will be an improvement over 256MB. Right now the G40 just starts trashing as soon as I try to do something that demands some memory resources. I (and most of you other guys here) would of curse go the full 1GB route, but his demands are apparently different than ours. As long as it works "acceptable", it's fine for him.

[Norway Pad]

Last night I finally had the time to work more with this project, and I decided to try first with a 512MB module from one of my T30s. Luckily the G40 had a single 256MB module installed, so I ended up with a recognized 740MB. That didn't exactly turn the G40 into a racer either, but the trashing seemed to decrease, and it responded a bit faster. Not the improvement I hoped for, but *probably* acceptable for the owner.

Would an increase to 1GB (2 x 512MB) improve it much? I honestly doubt that.

Otherwise the small (15GB) HDD is pretty much filled up, so I will have to advice the owner that a bigger HDD is needed if he's going to save stuff on it. Other than that, XP was actually reinstalled by my wife last year, and it's hasn't been used much at all since. And Malwarebytes and MSE didn't find any unwanted stuff on it.

Are there any other tricks that relates directly to the G40 that I should be aware of here?

Thanks!

[jronald]

Bump the memory up to 1.25 or 1.5 gig (already recommended above).
Dump the HDD, and while your at it swap in a 7200 RPM type.
These 2 changes will make it fly, compared to what you are used to.

Ron

[Norway Pad]

Yes, if this was my personal laptop I would definitely have done both these upgrades. No doubt.

I will present these options (1GB RAM module + new HDD) to the owner, and he will have to decide if he wants to spend that kind of money and wants me to put that amount of work into it. Or just leave it with 740MB RAM, the old HDD, and "slightly" improved performance.

The reason for me asking once again is that I have no experience with the G40, and I am not sure how they are supposed to perform. Since this is a "customer", I have to make sure I can give a reliable estimate how much improvement this will make, and don't make someone spend their money on something that don't give the expected result.

Thank you!

[Norway Pad]

Ok, one more question to you guys:

After clearing the max spending amount with the owner, I purchased a 1GB module and a Scorpio Blue 80GB harddrive. The extra 512MB memory gave another slight boost, so that was a good surprise. The bad surprise came with the hard drive. I tried to make an image to put back on the new drive using Clonezilla, but it fails halfways due to bad sectors on the old drive. (Which can also explain the slowness) Funny thing is that Scandisk and PC Doctor doesn't reveal any errors, neither do anything show up in the Event Viewer. In Clonezilla's Rescue mode I managed to actually create the image, but it fails due to "corrupt image" when I try to restore it back to the new drive. So I guess I can forget this.

(Edit: This was not the case, the old drive was fine. See the reason in my last post)

But I do notice that the old hard drive has the Recovery Partition intact. Pressing the blue button at bootup takes me to a screen where I can restore to factory settings, make diagnostic disks, access the BIOS etc. I have never had a Thinkpad with this function intact, so not quite sure how to use it. Does this old laptop have the option to create recovery disks that can be used to restore the new drive? I am fine with using that since it's not my own laptop.

If nothing else works, I have to do a clean XP install, that is no problem. Except some extra hassle with locating and installing drivers for a laptop I am not familiar with.

Thanks!

[RealBlackStuff]

According to this you can

[Norway Pad]

Thanks. It says it can be done, so I better take a closer look..

It even says they are created from the pre-desktop area, which answered my second question here. I could only find an option for creating diagnostic CDs, which seems more like a PC-Doctor thing to me. But if CDs are already made, wouldn't the entire R&R pre-desktop go away and the Access button only give access to the BIOS like it works on my other Thinkpads?

Edit: I made my way half ways into the "Restore to factory condition" menu, but aborted to avoid having the R&R operation start and try to recover and wipe the old drive. Is the option to make disks somewhere in here if I chose to go further?

[schen]

Since that drive is showing to have bad sectors I'm not all that certain I'd trust it even after a restore. You could give a different clone software a try to see if it'll work better. I've had good success with Acronis True Image and you can get a fully functioning trial download. I liked it enough to buy it outright. If that's successful, then have the "new" HDD do a restore from the recover partition.

As far as the RAM is concerned, I'd highly recommend 1.5Gb. Yes, I understand that for your friend, buying the one 1Gb stick was kind of a splurge since they are quite a bit more expensive than DDR2 these days, but if you can replace the 256Mb stick with 512Mb I think it'll make a noticeable difference. Here is my rationale: with a current load of Windows XP (SP2 or later), 1Gb is pretty much the minimum that you need for a machine to run without thrashing around constantly accessing the hard drive. Then 256Mb above that is a pretty slim margin to run one more applications on. The main reason I recommend 512Mb is that to most people (on most machines), that amount doesn't help them much since 2 of them only get a computer to 1Gb, so that can be had VERY cheaply, and as you already know, moving up to a 1Gb stick is quite a bit more. So, for a relatively small further investment, you receive quite a bit more gain.

[Norway Pad]

Since that drive is showing to have bad sectors I'm not all that certain I'd trust it even after a restore. You could give a different clone software a try to see if it'll work better. I've had good success with Acronis True Image and you can get a fully functioning trial download. I liked it enough to buy it outright. If that's successful, then have the "new" HDD do a restore from the recover partition.

Yes, once I established the fact that there was an error on the old drive, I decided that I can't give it back before I have XP installed on the new drive.

So you are suggesting to make a new try on the imaging with Acronis, and if that works, restore the image back onto the new drive, and then do a recovery install from the R&R on the new drive? If the imaging works, and XP runs smooth from the new drive, I'll probably just use it as it is, since the XP install was pretty new and not cluttered to begin with. But the R&R partition will be there for any future restores.

Does the trail version of Acronis provide full functionality, and is there a setting there that ignores the bad sectors?

As far as the RAM is concerned, I'd highly recommend 1.5Gb.. ...with a current load of Windows XP (SP2 or later), 1Gb is pretty much the minimum that you need for a machine to run without thrashing around constantly accessing the hard drive.

I realized that, there was a significant boost from 760Mb to 1.2Gb. The initial 256MB worked to some extent with XP SP2, but made the machine totally unusable after I upgraded to SP3. I will mention this to the owner, but I guess it works better with 1.2Gb than it ever did before, and with the new and faster hard drive I have already stretched the costs a little more than he initially planned for.

[madkat]

From my experience - pre-DDR2 thinkpads run very poorly with XP Sp3 - regardless the amount of ram. Best appears to be the Sp2.

[cliddell]

Perhaps that is why my 1.5 GB RAM 2.4 GHZ G40 seems to run like a tranquillised dog with one leg when running XP SP3, even with a clean Windoze install! My kingdom for a 3.46 GHZ G41 (watch this space)...

[schen]

From my experience - pre-DDR2 thinkpads run very poorly with XP Sp3 - regardless the amount of ram. Best appears to be the Sp2.

I would absolutely agree with this. I rarely run older systems on SP3 and never on less than 2Gb. Newer Core Duo, or better yet Core 2 Duo seem to be OK even with 1.5Gb of RAM. I simply set those systems to never remind me to install again.

[ajkula66]

Agreed with madkat and schen...

Furthermore, anything that will run XP SP3 smoothly is pretty much W7-ready...I'm "migrating" the machines in my house one by one...

No, that list won't include the butterfly in my signature... ...or A31p when it finally gets fixed...

And cliddell, where were you when I was selling a mint-condition, top-end G41 not that long ago...

[Norway Pad]

That's interesting. Over the years I have noticed that the installation of SP3 slows a clean XP SP2 install down a bit. But I have always thought that on a personal computer that is used for sensitive personal stuff (email/banking) and connected to the internet, it is best practice from a security standpoint to actually do the updating, SP3 included. I also have the impression that the lack of SP3 might prevent later security updates from being applied, even though I am not sure if that's the case.

On a computer used in a "closed" environment, however, the need application of SP3 might be questionable. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it)

This is interesting as I am right now doing a clean install of XP on the above mentioned G40. The old HDD was bad, and couldn't get cloned or imaged easily, so I didn't want to waste more of my time fooling around. Anything beyond what was agreed upon with the owner is basically free work I am doing here. Since this is another person's laptop, and I have no control over what it's used for and any consequences the lack of SP3 might cause: Is it advisable to skip it and set it as "never remind me of this update again"?

[schen]

This is interesting as I am right now doing a clean install of XP on the above mentioned G40. The old HDD was bad, and couldn't get cloned or imaged easily, so I didn't want to waste more of my time fooling around. Anything beyond what was agreed upon with the owner is basically free work I am doing here. Since this is another person's laptop, and I have no control over what it's used for and any consequences the lack of SP3 might cause: Is it advisable to skip it and set it as "never remind me of this update again"?

That's what I would do on an older machine. As far as I can tell, it doesn't keep necessary security updates from being applied. My sense (since I don't have a complete list of all the individual patches that make up SP3) is that it's a BIG package of security updates along with a bunch of embellishments that are all the necessary AND tends to slow down the machine due to adding a bunch of processes running in the background.

[Norway Pad]

Thanks, I will see what I chose to do here.

Btw, I just managed to clone the old hard drive. It turned out that it had no bad sectors at all. After running into even more problems with a XP Pro install disc that didn't work, I did more research on how to fix the old HDD and be able to clone it. Then I found out that by disabling the "Predesktop Area" in BIOS I could suddenly clone the old HDD just fine.. The R&R partition was the object that created problems, but Clonezilla presented the error the same way as if it had been bad sectors. It doesn't appear that the R&R partition can be reenabled on the new drive, but that's no problem. I did a recovery before I cloned the old HDD, so I will keep the old HDD and if my friend messes up his OS, I can clone the fresh install over and over again.

I have never had a Thinkpad with a R&R partition before, so this was new and interesting knowledge.

[cliddell]

In reply to the question from ajkula66 in his post of the 15th, probably up a certain well-known creek without a paddle, financially speaking