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Thinkpad T43 dead after 2 days... is hard drive to blame?

post #1 of 6
1/30/06 at 2:44pm
Thread Starter 
Hello all. I have a question regarding my thinkpad T43. I had it for about 36 hours and I was installing some drivers when the computer went to a blue screen and would not boot to windows anymore. I attempted to re-install XP pro but it would not read the CD and kept giving me read errors. I attempted to use my external DVD-RW and it had read errors too.

I then tried to use my Rescue and Recovery CD and restore a backup point from a few weeks ago (when I had my first T43 that was replaced). The backup would load but when windows went to boot all I got was a blue screen again.

Now, I installed an 80GB 7,200 RPM hard drive on the computer when I got it and loaded XP pro. Could my hard drive have killed the computer?? I removed it an put the factory drive back in as well as factory memory. The problem still exists. I even tried different memory to be sure the RAM sent by IBM was not bad. Problem still exists.

Has anyone had a similar experience? It seems my motherboard died and could my hard drive be to blame? I'm getting it repaired and when I get it back should I not put my 7,200 drive back in it? When I got the blue screen I was removing the IBM thinkvantage password software so could that have something to do with it? Sorry for all the questions just trying to figure out what happened and if it has happened to anyone else.

Finally, am I correct in assuming it is the motherboard? Thanks!

Also, is there any way to get the computer to stop telling me I have a non-IBM hard drive in it at startup? I keep getting an error message that says I have an incompatible hard drive installed. Thanks.
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post #2 of 6
2/1/06 at 4:34am
Thread Starter 
Anyone? I will probably have the computer back by the beginning of next week and I don't know if I should put the HD back in it. Any help/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
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post #3 of 6
2/4/06 at 12:41am
What kind of warranty did you get with your IBM Thinkpad T43 please?
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post #4 of 6
2/4/06 at 2:03am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by max2
What kind of warranty did you get with your IBM Thinkpad T43 please?
It was the 3 year depo mail-in warranty. I was just informed today that the motherboard was bad. I'm afraid to put the 7,200RPM hard drive back in when I get the computer back. The drive works fine in my old Latitude C400 series computer tho so I don't know what to think. Perhaps is was just a fluke?
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post #5 of 6
3/17/06 at 12:21pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chrispy
Also, is there any way to get the computer to stop telling me I have a non-IBM hard drive in it at startup? I keep getting an error message that says I have an incompatible hard drive installed. Thanks.
Go to forum.thinkpads.com. It is being discussed at length there. Search for "2010 error". The short answer is that IBM has a proprietary firmware installed on their harddrives that no other manufacturer's drives have. Unless you buy your drive from IBM you'll get the error message, a 10 second pause, a beep, and then you have to hit esc to resume boot. Have also read that performance suffers too. The BIOS looks for HD FW and throws an err msg if not found. The cynical would say that they do this to force you into buying "Only IBM" drives, as they seemingly will work fine, but only if you buy from them direct. And you guessed it, they ain't cheap.

Years ago I had an IBM Aptiva, after a terrible experience with a proprietary soundcard called MWAVE, which would not work with a certain application that I needed at the time, I vowed never to buy any more IBM pc products again. The worst of it was that it was not a replaceable card, rather it was imbedded in the architecture, and it could not accept a regualar old soundblaster to bypass. I could not get rid of that PC fast enough.

Fast forward to today, I have a T43 on order and it's still enroute from Hong Kong, and I am reading a lot about this Harddrive issue and also about issues with upgrading the Mini PCI wireless adapter. IBM is still at it with Proprietary this and uncustomizable that, and if you want to upgrade, see the IBM cashier and I hope you have a no-limit credit card.

Thank god I have 30 days to decide If I want to keep it.
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post #6 of 6
3/23/06 at 7:14am
OP, sorry a little late to the party... your existing hdd wasn't all that bad.. why did you decide to go this route and not say.. an external hdd with a mother of a storage capacity and speed? like a 250-400GB and 7200 rpms? I got a 250GB for around $75 which I think was considered cheap..

eh, just curious and good luck. Probably fixed by now huh? What exactly was to blame?

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