a plea to all thinkpad veterans

[devanshoom]

I have a mate living in the UK who has a T43 and is suffering padder problems. He is asking me for advice (sort of) but I really dont know enough to sort him out...was hoping maybe someone here might be able to shed some light......I have just copied and pasted his email to me below so if you got 2 minutes maybe you could check it out....thanks

His email now follows....


"Just been thinking about the T43 I have. It crashed initially on the day I got back from holiday in Austria a month ago. I was loading photos in from my camera when it happened...I wonder if it just rattled something loose with all the recent travelling I have been doing? It's been back and forth to my girlfriends place probably 30 times though this past 2 years with no trouble...and she lives 130 miles away

So the state of it is this:

It's slower, youtube vids are really jerky to start with....AVG for some reason keeps updating and that really slows it down, like I mean, click to open a folder and wait almost a minute. It crashes at random times, even if just sitting there performing no task at all.....Before crashing you can hear an electrical crackle noise, like when the mains cable isn't pushed into the power supply properly. But this sound is from the laptop and quieter. It does it without the adapter plugged in so its not actually an electro crackle, just sounds like it.

So could something have jiggled loose? Could it be just the hard drive that's gone?"

...end of His email

Not much to go on I know, but any help you guys can offer would be well appreciated

[GomJabbar]

Try running PC Doctor:
PC-Doctor for Windows - Desktops / Notebooks
PC Doctor for DOS bootable CD - ThinkPad

Personally I suspect the hard drive is on it's way out. Could be a virus, but that doesn't account for the sound you are hearing.

[RealBlackStuff]

Another suggestion (but not a solution): get rid of the AVG bloatware and replace it with the (also free) much faster Avast.

[Neil]

I would guess the hard drive has developed bad sectors. Running PC-Doctor as recommended by GomJabbar should reveal if that is the case. He could also try removing the hard drive and booting a live Linux CD. If the noise is gone and themachine runs normally, that would indicate a faulty hard drive.

[Colonel O'Neill]

It's possible the sound is the audio driver crashing at a low level.

[devanshoom]

as always, thanks guys....i will mail him to have a look at what you have all said. If he gets back to me with any further info i will copy and paste it here

actually i did suggest he join this forum but he is kind of pushed with 2 jobs right now...

[devanshoom]

okay ......looks like it was indeed the harddrive that was the problem....my friend bought a another t43 and swapped drives and lo and behold the old one now runs perfect.....the newer T43 he bought, now with the knackered hardrive inserted, is blue screening and frothing at the mouth.

He wants to buy another harddrive to replace the duff one (thus giving him the use of two T43s) and is asking me which one should he get......i was under the impression you could throw anything in there, sata, hitachi, sansung etc, provided it was the right size and same number of pins. Is this correct? Does anyone have any recommendation as to which hardrive he should buy? I mean do some work better than others in a T43.....5400 revs or 7200?

as always, any ideas are much appreciated

[Harryc]

He can put any sized 2.5" IDE laptop hard drive in there, but non-IBM FRU's will throw a 2010 error..by-passable with a function key press or a modified BIOS. The Samsung 160GB HM160HC drive seems to be a popular recommend for that machine.

[Neil]

......i was under the impression you could throw anything in there, sata, hitachi, sansung etc, provided it was the right size and same number of pins. Is this correct?

Well...you could throw a SATA drive in there, but it won't work unless you have done some extensive system board modifications. The T43 is built for PATA drives, but it does have a SATA controller, so there have been some brave souls here on the forum who have modded their T43s to use SATA.

In my opinion, and experience, just use a modified BIOS that doesn't have the HDD white list, and get the drive Harry recommends above.

[craigmontHunter]

you can use any IDE hard drive, but be warned that if it is not certified, it will throw an error message on boot that can be bypassed, or you can disable it with a bios hack (it is stickied at the top of the category). SATA drives will not work with a normal system, and if all you want is a working system, IMHO it is not worth the effort to make the mod.

7200 may be marginally faster, but I have always found 5400 to be fast enough and it saves *some* battery life, so I don't see the point of paying a premium for one or the other - get the capacity and price you need, and all else being equal use speed as a tiebreaker.

I personally have had good luck with western digital hard drives, but that is just because they are generally the cheapest in the local area.

[lukee]

7200RPM SATA drives are pretty fast. If you will want to use a PATA drive, any modern 5400RPM drive will beat the fastest 7200RPM ATA drive for laptops (Hitachi Travelstar 7K100) because the modern HDDs uses larger density of platters. So the Samsung HM160HC will beat the 7K100 in transfer rate, but 7K100 will probably slightly beat the HM160HC in the access time.

[roguetrooper]

He can put any sized 2.5" IDE laptop hard drive in there, but non-IBM FRU's will throw a 2010 error..

Even IBM FRU'd 2.5" drives throw a 2010 error... a T41 original drive thrown into a T43 displays just this!

[RealBlackStuff]

Stop staring yourself blind on the (harmless) 2010 error.
That's only a minor inconvenience (until you apply a modded BIOS).
The T43/R52 laptops run fine otherwise, with or without that error.

[devanshoom]

well...just to let you all know....both his laptops are now up and running......the samsung harddrive and a clean sweep upgrade of ram (2gig in each) worked wonders and has turned them into a tag-team of chugging beasts, hopefully with a good few years of beastliness left in them...

he is very grateful for all the comments provided here and plans to join up at some point.

He is also a "conspiracy theorist" though so watch out folks!! never know I might have someone to help out next conspiracy thread I make.

[Harryc]

He is also a "conspiracy theorist" though so watch out folks!!

Please no, anyone but another conspiracy theorist.....I am begging .

[Bibin]

Glad to hear you've got it working out after all. For reference, should you ever want to perform the SATA modification, it's the link in my signature.