Advice for Testing a Used T60

[aliceinlenovoland]

I have been a proud and very happy owner of a T60p for about 9 months now. Best computer I have ever owned, and given that it was my first foray into the world of laptops, I have been a big proponent of it to anyone who will listen.

My husband finally was convinced that I was on to something (took him long enough!), and decided to get a used T60 off of Ebay (several reasons for this a) you can't get a new t60 anymore, b) he was able to get a great deal on one ($200 cash back!), and c) the seller looked and sounded legit d) it is covered for almost 2 more years on the Lenovo warranty). Anyway, the computer arrived today, and now we want to make sure that everything is kosher with it.

So, I have two questions. Does anyone have a list, or know of a good article of things that should be checked to make sure there isn't some hidden deficiency?

Second question is the first thing that I noticed is that the seller seems to have wiped the ThinkVantage off the computer. When you press the blue key nothing happens, and there is no listing of it in the start menu. Is there anyway to restore this (we didn't get any recovery disks with the computer)? How critical is it, and is there a benefit from not having it (less programs running, less space used on the HD)? I admit that I only use it occassionally, but I do think it is nice. Any advice?

Finally (sorry for the shotgun approach), the auction stated that his computer has discrete, whereas mine has integrated. But his has the same graphics card as mine (ATI Mobility Radeon X1400). How can we check whether this is a discete or integrated graphics card?

Thanks in advance for any help provided, and sorry for the long post.

Alice

[carbon_unit]

Welcome to the forum.

Download and run PC Doctor to find any problems.

All the downloads for the T60 are in the above link.
Rescue and Recovery is available here.

ATI video is discrete, Intel video is integrated.

[Harryc]

Good luck with the new T60 and welcome to the forum. You both have discrete graphics (x1400) Use PC-Doctor to check out the new T60. Run all tests.

Edit: carbon_unit beat me to it .

[mgo]

...a used T60 off of Ebay (several reasons for this a) you can't get a new t60 anymore, b) he was able to get a great deal on one ($200 cash back!), and c) the seller looked and sounded legit d) it is covered for almost 2 more years on the Lenovo warranty). Anyway, the computer arrived today, and now we want to make sure that everything is kosher with it.

So, I have two questions. Does anyone have a list, or know of a good article of things that should be checked to make sure there isn't some hidden deficiency?

Second question is the first thing that I noticed is that the seller seems to have wiped the ThinkVantage off the computer.
Finally (sorry for the shotgun approach), the auction stated that his computer has discrete, whereas mine has integrated.

Indeed, the T60 is a dandy machine.

The seller should provide model number info (2623-D3U for example) and maybe post complete specs on the sale offering.

This will help you see what hardware is on board, (or should be)

If thinkvantage is gone, then perhaps the hidden recovery partition is gone. Why? A new hard drive would be a legit reason, but the original recovery disks should have been created before the hidden recovery partition was deleted. It does not return much hard drive real estate to take it off...just around four gig.

Some members on this forum may have some original install disks for your machine in XP and/or Vista for sale at a reasonable price. Using those disks would re-create the original hidden recovery partition (and Think Vantage) but would of course also delete any programs that came on your machine.

The recovery disks would return the T60 to original factory specs.

Another solution is, restoring the T60 to near factory can be done by installing your own operating system (XP or Vista) and then use Lenovo's system update to grab the other features from their site. It's pretty much automatic. One caution, if you will be reinstalling XP, it's necessary to download the Ethernet drivers from Lenovo ahead of time and have them ready on another drive. XP does not have those drivers natively, but Vista does.

Somce RAM is cheap these days, plug in two or three gig for max performance, especially if running Vista.

The T60 hardware limitations will not accept more than 3 gig of RAM, by the way, even with Vista 64bit on board.

Hey, let us know how the purchase went, eh?

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

Answers to some of your questions:

The best way I know how to test out the various systems in the Thinkpad would be to use what IBM/Lenovo has supplied - PC Doctor. You can download a copy of the bootable CD image from here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62928 (T60/T60p drivers and software)

Scroll down to the "DOS bootable CD" section and click on that link. You download this huge file (~57MB) and burn it to a CD. You then boot the system from that CD and run the diagnostics. I'm a big fan of using the DOS version of this utility as opposed to the one which normally is accessible from within Windows simply because if you have a problem booting in the OS, then what good is it?

Not sure about the ThinkVantage button's lack of action. I'll have to admit that I never use it on any of my systems .

"Discrete" graphics generally refers to a graphic processing unit (GPU) which has its own dedicated memory bank, as opposed to one which uses a portion of the system memory for video display (aka, "integrated"). To be sure of your specs you can get the configuration of your system by plugging in the TYPE number (e.g.., 2007-8LU) into this site:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... OME-LENOVO

Enter it into the "Enter a product number" box and you'll get a brief listing of the way the system was configured.

edit: Ack, beaten several times... gotta start typing faster!

[basketb]

Alice, congrats on owning these fine machines.
Since your husband's machine is used, I'd recommend to reinstall the OS (completely wipe out the HD) - as you never know what kind of programs (viruses, trojan horses, other malware, etc.) there may be installed.
Since the recovery partition seems to be gone and you didn't get any recovery disks with the machine, I'd suggest that you either create recovery disks from your machine (if you haven't already done so) and use these or clone your HD onto your husband's (there is plenty of info around here on how to clone HDs).

[Johan]

Congratulations with "your" new T60, Alice - when I read your post the old ThinkPad-saying immediately came to mind: "Once you go black, you never go back!"

In addition to the excellent suggestions above, you may perhaps also want to check the thread Would u say that a used T42P is reliable ? + Things To Check - incl. the posts there of Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:42 pm and Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:30 am.

Johan