T43 motherboard failure? And all T43 recovery disks alike?

[Hammerstein]

I'm working on restoring a used T43 that I just acquired, because my previous one decided to stop working out of warranty (I'm thinking a motherboard failure, because it doesn't respond to the power button, even when docked in the port replicator). So I h ave two questions here:

1. The old T43 suddenly failed by stalling out such that I had to use the power button to turn it off. Next time I turned it on, I heard a kind of weird low-level scrapping sound, so I immediately held the power button until the machine went off again. Since then, it won't work at all, and the LEDs don't light up even when it's on AC power or in the port replicator. I know it's not the power button, because it won't turn on while docked. I also have reseated the RAM and wireless card and attempted to run the machine bare. It simply does not acknowledge being plugged in.

In light of these symptoms, am I right that this is a mobo failure?

2. The used T43 that I just acquired came in a non-default configuration. However, I have the recovery CDs from my first Thinkpad, and since both were models using the X300 and are actually very similar in most respects configuration wise (identical processors, in fact), I'm wondering if I can use those recovery CDs on this newly acquired unit despite the fact that they were burnt on the first, now defunct one?

Thank you for your help!

[Harryc]

Low level scraping. .. my guess is the hard drive or more likely the fan went south and shorted out something on the systemboard. But those are the (2) areas I'd look at. You should be able to share recovery media between machines.

[Hammerstein]

It's definitely not the HD, as I used an external USB enclosure to recover data from it (thank goodness).

Regarding the fan, how would I go about diagnosing that? Just acquire a replacement unit and mount it and see what happens?

[Harryc]

I think I would find a 5vdc power source, remove the fan and test it. Unless it is causing a dead short, it should not cause your symptoms though. Try just disconnecting it and powering up.

[sktn77a]

Any T43 recovery CD should work with any T43. In the unlikely event of an in-life revision, you might get a yellow question mark against a hardware item in Device manager but you can download the appropriate driver from Lenovo.

[sjthinkpader]

Each language has two different sets, one for ATI GPU (Types 26xx) and another one for intel GPU (Types 187x). But using either one should work. Just add the video driver later.

Since the two machines are close and your old HDD is ok, you should be able to just move the HDD and the other one should boot from it.