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ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:16 pm
by unfaithfulsfan
I think(pad) I already know the answer to this but I'm not the brightest bulb in the box on a good day. This has not been a good day at all.

My neighbor comes across these wonderful deals that turn out to be monstrous piles of dog poo. Case in point, this ThinkPad, that he got for free. He asked me if I could reload the OS on it for him, to which I said, with all certainty, "Maybe". At first glance everything seemed to be in order: Primarily, it boots and there appeared to be an optical drive. That, unfortunately, turned out to be a battery.

Unless there is an image floating around out there in the ether for this exact model, the best use for this thing is a) a cumbersome paperweight or b) a small, underweight boat anchor, correct?

Thanks!

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 5:29 pm
by unfaithfulsfan
Doo-dee-doo-dee-doofus-do. Just happened to think that maybe I can try booting from a USB stick?

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Fri Jun 14, 2013 10:06 pm
by sgkean
What model of Thinkpad? I've used pretty much every version from the old T21 to the current T430 series...never had an issue loading an OS using the optical drive. Could be one of the reasons they got rid of it...

Try loading from the USB, optical drive could be bad, heck HD could be bad too...

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 2:46 pm
by Major_A
Try this, works with Vista, 7 and 8.
http://images2.store.microsoft.com/prod ... D-tool.exe

For Win XP I'd use this, easy peesy. Problem with this app is you need to convert the XP disc to an ISO file.
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multi ... b-creator/

This is also assuming that the laptop is new enough to boot from USB drives.

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 3:31 pm
by skier
make a bootable USB drive or even easier is to have an external DVD burner, they are pretty cheap and come in handy, these days with the surge of ultrabooks at mid level pricing is a good idea, as ultra books don't have optical drives either

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2013 7:45 pm
by unfaithfulsfan
sgkean, it's a Type 2373-7FU (how ironic) and there is no optical drive. When I first glanced at the thing (you can't really call a laptop a "box" can you? Never really thought about a pronoun for portable computers. There you go, PC! Oh, $@#&!, that's already taken!) I thought it had one. It's a lithium-ion battery.

Major_A, thanks for the links. BIOS options include USB CD- & HD- drives so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Just cannot find a single damn USB stick in the house. Just have to pick yet another up tomorrow.

skier, I thought about that, too. Much as I'd like to have one, though, this one is a freebie for my neighbor who has helped me out countless times on some of the trickier repairs to my old truck. Maybe after I get paid for my first (and hopefully my last) photo shoot.

Thanks again, guys!!

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Mon Jun 17, 2013 10:34 pm
by egloeckle
Fairly common on thinkpads used in the enterprise. The 'optical' bay is actually a multi-purpose bay that can be swapped for any number of things (battery is only one of them).

Being that I doubt you are going to have a thinkpad bay optical drive, either use a USB optical drive or install from USB if that unit will support booting off a memory stick.

You shouldnt really have any issues with drivers, just hit ibm's site for them after install. You may have to pull down the NIC driver on another machine and copy it over, but besides that the thinkpads tend to have easy to acquire drivers and no real quirks that make re-installing them difficult. They are built for enterprise environments so they usually dont have anything too crazy, just rock solid machines.

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2013 6:10 pm
by unfaithfulsfan
egloeckle, I remember when I was in my first job as a programmer in '98-99 hearing about how tough the ThinkPads were. I was coding RPG IV and CL on an AS/400 and the CIO shared an article about a 400 (one of the first small ones, I think) in NC that was standing in two feet of water after the storm surge from a hurricane. IBM support came in, cracked open the case, let everything dry out, put it back together and it booted right up. Not a mention of data loss, however.

Another good one I remember is a guy and his wife came home from vacation. He forgot that he had put his ThinkPad in the oven in case the house got robbed (oh, the days before wireless Internet access, right?). His wife, unbeknownst to him, heated the oven to ~300° before he caught it. They let it cool off overnight and it fired right up the next day. Again, no mention of data, but who knows. He may not have been bragging about it had he lost everything on the drive....

So far, as I haven't had much of a chance to putz with this one due to a paid project I'm trying to finish (so I can get to the "paid" part of the project), I tried the USB stick with YUMI to load XP Pro and got a BSOD. Don't know if it's because the only two USB options are HDD and CD and it doesn't see a flash drive as mechanical? I tried it on HDD. Gonna try on the CD option next. If that pukes, I may just have to break down and buy the external. I love my neighbor to death but I really don't want him trotting over here every time he wants to load something. Guess I could lie but I really don't like doing that. You almost always get better results with the truth.

Re: ThinkPad predicament

Posted: Thu Jan 10, 2019 3:31 am
by Gomez147
Hinges needed to be replaced. I replaced them. Bright idea occurred to me; since the machine is already open, why not replace the processor