Updated Mini Debriefing & Reformat Guide on T60 Duo 2

[o1001010]

Order Date: October 21, 2006
Orders Changed: Once, from 100 GB Harddrive to 60 GB
Shipped Date: October 31, 2006 (Trick or Treat!)
Method: UPS Express (free)
UPS First attempt delivery: November 02, 2006
Finally Got it: November 03, 2006

First things first: UPS is the most reatrded delivery agency ever. If the address is listed as a residence, why will they possibly want to deliver during the day? For God's sake I need to work to pay off my thinkpad and to pay for the shipping. But when they fail the first time they decided it will be a good idea to come back the same time the next day, knowingly that I will probably be at work again. But no, they don't do weekends. THUMBS DOWN.

Specs: in my signature
3 usb ports, vga port, standard t60
Feel: I didn't know until I read an article after i purchased the T60 that the Core 2 is only few percent faster than a Core Duo but whatever, Lenovo stop selling Core Duos.

Additional things that I found out: in the Lenovo outlet there is a t43 with 14" IPS+ screen. I called in wanted that first but was told it's a typo.

More Core 2 experience coming soon.

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design, it is more modern, the thing looks cleaner and the lack of the ledge made it loook more generic but more modern. the straight side edge instead of the slop made the impression that it is thicker than the t42, but it is not

drain hole and roll cage is a huge plus
i personally have no comment with the new power button and the thinkadvantage button. i do not think it is more cheap looking. i also thing that the lack of the red stripes on the mouse buttons don't made it a difference.



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as many of you who read my post i had a problem with the atheros wifi card. everything was installed but it just will not power on. after talking to IBM i have written this complete reforat guide so hopefully it will help some people
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machine specs, read the signature for T60

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first things first, the very minute you get the machine, power on and check all hard ware are working. expand the device manager and take screen shots of the device listed under it and save it on a cd or usb drive.

then proceed to make a recovery set. do this so you will not regred it later.
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BIOS
go into bios, you need to predesktop area into disabled
go into sata, you need to set it into compatible mode

if you have a cd from maxtor or seagate hard drive, use it to boot up and you will find a option called zero partition. whenever i get a new thinkpad i always run the full zero partition option once. after that the quick option will do.
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XP

i choosen a more manal control. insert win xp cd and let it boot. then select repair option (r) i think you should use zero option becdause i can not log in the original ibm win xp because the admin password was unknown.

in command prompt i enteered diskpart and delete all partitions if there is any. since you zeroed the hard drive there shouldn't be any left so create one with whatever since you want.

power off the computer. restart and this time after hit r key you need to format the hard disk. format c: /fs:ntfs

reboot and this time install windows xp and everything should be on default. (the installation will say leave teh partition along)

you can have the windows xp installtion create and format the partition in a single process but in my experience there can be something go wrong with it.

after i finished windows installation and it boots to desktop i disabled remote access, auto updates, and hard drive monitoring.

i then installed the intel chipset driver and the ethernet driver. there was 2 ethernet controller showed up in my device manager and upon close inspection one of them says it's on pci bus and the other one is on the pci slot. the one in the slot is the wifi card. so i picked the one on the bus. i used windows update to update the os to most current. there are 3 items that i left out in the system update process: ie 7, malicious software tool, and synaption touchpad driver.

after eveything is done i installed the osfix patch from ibm. it can be found under software section of your machine's page. contrast to most believe, it is not a patch of ibm to make teh os unique, rather it is a collection or a package of hot fixes from microsoft that does not appear in windows update. i left out something i will not need such as the touch screen or the firewire fixes. there is a very important fix, 888111 which is the enhance high def audio driver which is required before you can install the sound driver.

on screen will pop up the found new hard ware message. just ignore it and reboot.

install the sound driver from ibm. after it finishes wait because after about 20 sec it finisha message box will pop up prompting you to reboot

after reboot i installed the sata driver. it is strange. you double click on the install batch file and nothing happens. it is normal. you reboot and go into bios. change the sata from compatible to achi and boot windows as normal.

when it detect new hardware it will left you with a message about where to find the driver. just navigate to the place where you extra the sata driver and it will install itself.

directx gets installed next and after reboot the ati driver. i think the control panel for ati is retarded so i installed the driver only. (uncheck control panel)

TPM are extract and installed via unknow device and update driver menu. there are two different unknown device at this stage of installtion. a unknow on the system bus and unknown on acpi bus. pick the one on system bus and update it's driver by navigating to the extract tpm folder.

it turns out there is a particular way to install the wifi properly or the access connection will not work. it took me about 6 phone calls to get to the right tech that actually done this before. so here is the proper order

install the power management driver first. on the download page it should say something about fn + f3. that is the right one. (NOT the power manager)

next you should install the hot key utility

then install the driver (in my case, atheros driver)

and then BT driver if you have it

Last access connection if you choose to use it. i did not install acess connection because i fear it mahy fail me again.

i disabled modem and inferad because i never use them.

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configure windows xp to your liking. if you use nero like me to burn crap, i recommend turning the Image buring service in Admin >> Services to disabled.

i also turn the netbios and 802.1x authenication off.

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if there is anything please ask, i am writing this in a rush and from memory.

[corymcnutt]

I second that with UPS...after giving him two sob stories, my Lenovo rep was nice enough to "expedite" my order for me so my ship date went from 11/20 to 11/2 and he send it Express service from HK. On Friday and Saturday UPS tracking showed it as picked up on 11/2 and rescheduled deliver of 11/6. But on Sunday their website showed it picked up on 11/3 and rescheduled delivery on 11/7? Then this morning I looked again and it showed pickup on 11/3 and reschedule delivery of 11/6??? It says it's out on the truck for delivery today and I usually get their stuff by 10:30...we will see!

[carguy]

I took some pictures, but for now here's one. Post if you'd like more, and give specific angles you'd like. I'll try to provide them if possible. Here's one to get started.

[Kyocera]

There is a shipping sticky above for these type of posts.

[marlinspike]

I took some pictures, but for now here's one. Post if you'd like more, and give specific angles you'd like. I'll try to provide them if possible. Here's one to get started.

Ugh, they put all those ATI and Windows stickers on there? I know what's coming off as soon as I get mine.

[agarza]

The T60 looks cool with the Lenovo branding logo!
hope you could post more pics of your machine.

Thinkpads are the most sexy laptops ever

[gator]

That T60 looks awesome. Great pic!

[rleo25]

By goodness sake! where are those pictures? I can't see 'em...

[carguy]

I put a bunch of Thinkpads in a few pictures. In order from top to bottom in each picture: T60, R32, 770X, A31p
Back The A31p has a replacement motherboard in it from a non-"p" system, so it's missing an S-video in port. The new motherboard also recently died
Right side
Front
Left side (oops, forgot to put the blank in the Ultrabay on the left slot of the A31p)

T60 alone
Logo, left side, right side, stuck subpixel The stuck subpixel is blue. I gave the other colors to help give context. (it's hard to get good close-up pictures with my cameras)

[rleo25]

Thanks carguy, your collection is awesome, and it gives a lot of perspective to any design analysis. Of course the most I like is the T60, (If T42 were in the stack I would have prefered it). It is a pity the blue buttons have gone...

[o1001010]

updated