T43 issues

[cegan09]

I'm a new member here, but i've owned and used thinkpads since around 2003. I currently have a t43 type 1871. I recently upgraded the hard drive to a seagate momentus 5400.3 120gig drive. I get the wonderful 2010 error, but from what i've read that is something i'll just have to deal with.

I've had a few other problems i was hoping you could help me with, and before you suggest it i did search. I'm not new to forums and searching was the first thing i did.

The first thing is the computer now takes forever to turn on, with occasional exceptions. It will just sit at the loading personal preferences blue screen after i type my password for a good few minutes, then take another few minutes to load everything once it gets past that. It used to take a little to turn on, but not this long, and i don't even have all the programs i used to have installed.

Some other problems that aren't that bad, but somewhat annoying. I use a 19" external monitor as my primary monitor, and the notebook as the secondary, and now when i close the laptop lid for more than 5 minutes the laptop screen will not turn back on and i have to reapply the display mode (via fn+F7 director). Also it used to be that when i set a background it would stretch it separately for both screens since they have different resolutions. Now it just sizes it for the 19" and applies it to the laptop at that size so its cropped.

Last question, (i know this is a lot) is updating the bios worth it? i have 1.04 and there is 1.29 available. I know that you shouldn't update unless there is a problem, but are there any significant benefits to the newest one?

thanks

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

It is always good to update BIOS, even if it doesn't bring any "visible" changes to the funactionality of your machine.

The infamous "2010" error and prolonged boot time are in connection. To put it in layman's terms, your machine's BIOS isn't too happy that it's seeing the unsupported HDD, and takes longer to "read" the rest of components etc. You may want to look into a "supported" HDD, if you find this problem too annoying in the long run. Any newer Hitachi or Fujitsu should work...but don't just take my word for it, do a little more research.

Funny enough, I've had a bunch of T43 machines (all from 26xx series, though) and have never run into this...not to say that I won't in the future.

I never use external monitors, so I can't really help you with that part.

[andyP]

cegan09 wrote:

snip... The first thing is the computer now takes forever to turn on, with occasional exceptions. It will just sit at the loading personal preferences blue screen after i type my password for a good few minutes ...snip

Try searching with terms like "boot" AND "freeze", you should hopefully find something. Here's one possibility to try

[cegan09]

Thanks for the responses. I've read about the supported drives, just didn't happen to do that before i bought this one. Seeing as how i already have this one and i really only like Seagate and western digital drives, i don't think i'm replacing it again. Hopefully the computer runs normally apart from the boot issues described before. It seems to run fine once its up and running.

I'll try the bios update after thanksgiving.

anyone with dual monitor experience have suggestions for my other problems?

[GomJabbar]

Try and make sure that Access Connections is not trying to make a network connection to a network that is currently unavailable. This could be either the internet or a local network.

Check that your hard drive is using DMA mode and not PIO mode.
The Windoze XP IDE Transfer Mode Failback “Feature” & Fix