& hardware hell continues
This week, posting (even by my own shabby standards) has been somewhat erratic mainly because this is what is wrong with my laptop …
1. Initial attempt to repair boot sector by booting from XP disk and using the Recovery Console tools "fixboot" and fixmbr". The system
would not boot as it required a third-party driver which was not included with the XP distro. The system would BSOD with an Inaccessible Boot Device error code (0x0000007B).
2. Removed hard-drive and attached it to a second PC as a slave to inspect the file system. A signature was written to the disk and no errors were reported by the system. That said, there were no files found on the disk, not one.
3. Downloaded the latest drivers from here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62909 and
attempted to install them as part of the boot process. The driver ("Intel(R) 82801GBM SATA AHCI Controller (Mobile ICH7M/DH)") would load
and the Recovery Console reportedly fixed the boot sector and the MBR.
4. Repeating the setup process above, but this time to install a fresh copy of Windows the setup process would not format the disk. It would stop at 20% and go no further. This is a repeatable error.
5. BIOS disk diagnostics would run for 20 seconds or so and then stop with a "Read Error".
6. DOS 7 FDISK would not create a new disk partition, it would attempt to check the integrity of the drive and fail.
7. A new disk was bought, a Western Digital 80Gb SATA (WD800BEVS-00VAT0) and fitted to the machine. BIOS disk diagnostics would report that no disk was fitted. This is a repeatable error, though the new disk works perfectly in two other systems.
8. The original disk was replaced and an attempt to update the hard-drive firmware was made. The iso, fwsh11.iso, (from here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-63685) would fail to boot correctly with an error message stating that the CD Drivers were not loaded.
9. An attempt to update the BIOS also failed using the latest iso, 7buj24uc.iso, (from here: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-63145) and this failed with the same error.
I think that that means that larry laptop is well & truly …!
Comments
I prefer your posts in English.
Posted by: thud | April 19, 2008 12:10 PM
I see it becoming a target for Micky Mauser one day soon.
Posted by: ajdshootist | April 19, 2008 12:52 PM
Stuff Mickey M, use a .303 several of the chaps on the www.fishnhunt.co.nz forum used rifles on their old computers. the most damage was posted by the .303 user :D
Posted by: Rhys | April 19, 2008 2:10 PM
why not shoot Billy Gates?
Posted by: Chris Edwards | April 19, 2008 8:47 PM
Sounds like you had a hard drive controller fail in a intermittent manner, then fully. This would account for your initial problem, then the inability of the new drive to behave.
I'd guess that a new motherboard would solve this (the controller is integrated into the board). Is the machine still under any warranty?
As for the data on your old drive, it MIGHT still be recoverable.. but that will probably take professional recovery services ($300 and up). /shrug.
Best of luck, all the same...
Posted by: Drachenfels | April 20, 2008 4:13 PM
Thankfully
1. I managed to get the data off before meltdown occured
2. The machine is still under warranty
But, & this is a huge but ... dealing with IBM's customer service department is a whole world of pain in itself. Watch out to further posts on this topic !
Posted by: Mr Free Market | April 20, 2008 4:29 PM
Thank goodness you got the data first... Suggestion, Keep a 'recent' copy of critical data on a removable drive, and burn cd/dvds of other mission critical data at least quarterly.. more often depending on what you do. It's astonishing how frequently I hear about critical data being lost due to a single hard drive dying.
As for the warranty.... good to hear that it's not your nickel to get if fixed, but yes, IBM customer service sucks unless you call about your AS/400 or something huge like that. :-( Don't get me started on trying to find drivers on their website, whatever key-mashing chimpanzee came up with that mess must have worked with AOL. /smack forehead.
If you have to use windows, buy a Dell. Better yet, get a mac; OSX is a pleasure to use, unlike Vista.
Best of luck to you, when your primary system dies and you're between a rock and a hard place... and that's no fun.
Posted by: Drachenfels | April 21, 2008 12:21 AM
Obviously the IBM support is different from country to country. I bought a second-hand T42 off eBay, here in OZ, and it had a problem. I phoned IBM, gave them the serial number, where they informed me that it was still under warranty and sent a courier to my house to collect it.
That's pretty good service.
Posted by: Oubaas | April 21, 2008 3:16 PM