T60p & docking & changing addons - windows 7 boot-problems

[friedrich-eugen]

Hello,

following up the possible causes auf "no-display" seems - now - to me a rather standard problem, compared to the "other one"...:

I do use my T60p in an advanced dock, rather "pampered" by my previous A31P&Dock, I use to have a DVD-drive in my T60P and a second HDD in my docking station.

Lately I do experience the Windows 7 boot-process to stop, if the configuration ist changed (while not on or while on) by adding or releasing one of the drives (DVD or HDD).

It takes time to restore the main HDD to orderly function, Windows 7 does it, but it takes several trials and becomes the more and more irritating to me.

I do experience another problem too: actually the Screen has been restored several times, indicating a flaw/mistake while processing the image to be displayed on screen.

The System has a T7600 CPU, 4GB memory, a Travelstar 7k500 250GB (intended to become a 7K500 500GB), ATi FiregL, bluetooth and WLAN (Intel5300), running Windows 7 64bit Professional and a heap of Software (all standard stuff), and I use several administrative tools (O&O-Defrag and Acronis Software).

As I live up to Problems while cloning my primary drive, I do feel more and more intent to see a problem in an ageing systemboard (primarily) or an ageing dockingstation (rather not).

Any hints to where to look, PC-Doc didn't give me any clues...
... (Systemboard, & usb, & display, docking)?

Thanks again in advance
______________________________________________
P.S. note:
- Drives in the dockingstation and in the sd-bay are treated similar to USB-drives and
- the T60(p) has obviously a somehow both (P-ATA/S-ATA) controller, so the primary drive is handled as a SATA-drive, while the rest is not, as far as I understand.

[DaElderGeek]

I have the same problem. I have a T60p with 2 SATA 2 7200 rpm drives installed; the boot disk is 750GB and the secondary (ultrabay) is 500GB. After researching it, the issue seems to be caused by the secondary drive being to "speedy" for the SATA 1 mobo/bios. It occasionally hangs on boot trying to communicate with the drive in the ultrabay. I just pop out the ultrabay and ctrl/alt/del and leave the ultrabay disconnected until the boot process gets past the bios check. Occasionally it locks so hard that I have to do a battery pull. It never happened when my secondary drive was 5400 rpm. As I understand it, there's no cure for it with a T60p but with a T61p you can flash the Middleton BIOS and the problem will go away. I'll soon know for sure because a T61p should be delivered today.

Stay tuned.

[friedrich-eugen]

Well,

I finally got there...

... It was Windows, stupid, as happens from time to time.

A notebook with several (dockingstation!) drives, that are treated as USB-drives and are exchangeable seems still to disturb the OS, as it tends to look at them as a change of configuration...

As I did want to change the principle hdd without reinstalling, I had at last to use the windows process and finally managed to have all drives copied and placed. But in the meantime, extensive use of the installation-DVD together with the Windows-repair process. ... +hours and hours.

Acronis (11) did not help, The acronis clone did not boot. And I' m still not sure, whether it was Windows, only. I use Kaspersky Pure, that tends to close up, too, and I use Defrag-Utilities at boot (O&O)...

[RealBlackStuff]

Acronis TrueImage 11 (this does NOT mean 2011 !!!)does not support Windows 7.
You need to upgrade to ATI 2010 or newer.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6221#comment-11606
The above is a post from 2009-11-26

[friedrich-eugen]

You are right, RealBlackStuff,
but I meant (and I did use) Acronis disk director home 2011.

I got a beautiful copy from Hitachi 7k500 to Hitachi 7k500 using acronis, but the new one did not bother to boot...

Only by "restoring" I achieved my goal.

Still,
I know that I missed some simple clues and I feel, I have a hardware problem, too. But I have no indication where to look

thanks for taking the troubles to look a my post and have a nice evening over there ...