Dam, spoke too soon. This #thinkpad #P70 running #Win11 #LTSC decided to shit the bed overnight. I was using it last night to organize #ROMs, closed lid should have hibernated. Tried to start it up today, get #BIOS test screen and then a quick flash of text, then a black screen. Tried booting into advanced recovery mode, unable to get it to work with the holding the power button 3x, so I try to boot with my win11 LTSC install USB and get the same black screen....

I picked this up a few months back. Intel xeon i7 2.66 with 64 GB RAM, primary storage is a Samsung M2 which is showing up in the boot BIOS and as a boot-able device in the BIOS.

As posted previously, I was having some weird USB issues over the weekend when I was moving ROM collection file to external SSDs for archiving, but I had attributed to the #SSD in the external #USB sleds that was/has now failed. Man, it would bite of the controller chips on this #motherboard are failing.
Thankfully I had already moved all my job hunting notes & stuff to a different laptop, but all the ROM and #hakchi2 stuff is on this #laptop

Just in case, I started the #Lenovo diag mode to confirm hardware was ok when the battery died (I swear I had it plugged in). Now this POS will not even go into Diag mode.

Any thoughts on next steps for getting this Thinkpad booting again?

Any chance I can take the storage out of this and put it in a comparable P70 I have? and it will boot & let me log in?

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Talking with the folks in the local #vintage / #retrocomputing community, they clued me in that the #ThinkPad #RAID is a steaming pile of 💩 and not worth the trouble.

🤷 Oh well. Thanks for cluing me in

So I swapped out the two testing #NVMe drives I was using and reinstalled the original sticks - to have #windoz10 demanding for the #bitlocker recovery key. 🤦‍♂️

Well, time to wipe & install #windoz11 then.

Install went fine, only 4 rando #drivers to find for all #devices to be recognized and working.

Using my #CTT scripts to install the majority of applications, then to remove the #spyware #bloatware and other garbage #micro$oft added to #windows11

Then migrate my #data from my other ThinkPad. Welcome to my #sunday #funday

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#retrocomputing #retroComputers #WallOfRetro #retroTech #retroTechnology
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#computer #tech #computerHardware #laptop #laptops
#IBM #thinkpad #thinkpads #VintageThinkPad #X86 #WindowsVista #IBMhardware #lenovoHard-ware #Thinkpadnium
#upcycle #restore #TechnologyRepair #ThinkPadRepair #WasteNotWantNot #Thinkpadnium
#makeShitMonday #showmewhatyougot

Part 4/4 following up on the thread:
The continuing efforts with the #ThinkPad #W510: Though that 32GB tested out fine with #MEMTest86plus v7, that does not mean the #BIOS and other circuitry in a W510 can handle 32GB. Thanks to the local vintage computing group cluing me in that e820 BIOS routines were not tested against 32 GB of physical memory. If wonky, then that could confuse the bootloader – the issues I was running into.

On their suggestion, I replaced the #DIMMs with four (4) 4GB DIMMs totaling 16GB. Ran #MEMTest86+ and they passed.

Reinitiated the #Win11 install, and the install worked! But like the #Win10 #x86 install I had on here previously; #Windows is dog slow on this laptop. It was usable, was able to update the latest patches and such, but painful and not the end user experience I wanted. With only a i7 1.6Ghz processor, this may be the cutoff for usability. Any of the i5 or i7 ThinkPads with >2Ghz processors ran Win11 with minimal issues and certainly not with this slowness I experienced.

So, I have re-thought my plans for this #laptop reinstalling #debian latest and thinking about what to do next for my workbench needs. Need to do some research on which other #Lenovo #thinkpads have #eSATA ports which would have faster processors than this W510.

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#vintagecomputing #vintagecomputint #vintagecomputer #vintagecomputers #vintagecomputalk
#vintagehardware #computerHistory #retro #VCF #vintageComputerFestival
#retrocomputing #retroComputers #WallOfRetro #retroTech #retroTechnology
#nerdsOfVintage #happyNerding
#computer #tech #computerHardware #laptop #laptops
#IBM #thinkpad #thinkpads #VintageThinkPad #X86 #WindowsVista #IBMhardware #lenovoHardware #Thinkpadnium
#upcycle #restore #TechnologyRepair #ThinkPadRepair #WasteNotWantNot

Part 3/4
I did some research online; most are telling to boot into safe mode but M$ removed the capability. So, I am a little lost on where to go next in getting Win10 or Win11 running on this.

Thoughts/insights are much appreciated. #lazyweb

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#vintagecomputing #vintagecomputint #vintagecomputer #vintagecomputers #vintagecomputalk
#vintagehardware #computerHistory #retro #VCF #vintageComputerFestival
#retrocomputing #retroComputers #WallOfRetro #retroTech #retroTechnology
#nerdsOfVintage #happyNerding
#computer #tech #computerHardware #laptop #laptops
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#upcycle #restore #TechnologyRepair #ThinkPadRepair #WasteNotWantNot

Part 2/4
Though this has a 64-bit processor, let me try the Win10 x86 32-bit LTSP installer from 2019: and it worked! The install went fine, but it ran dog slow. I used the native browser to download and then upgraded the #BIOS to the latest for the W510 and everything was noticeably slow. Unfortunately, most of the tools I want to use are 64-bit so this version of Win10 is not really an option.
To test & try to troubleshoot, I installed the latest version of #Debian #Linux. The install went fine, and the user experience was much better than the 32-bit Win10 – no real noticeable slowness. Ok, Linux is an option – but not what I had planned for this laptop. Let me wipe the drive (getting rid of #GRUB) and retry installing Win11 or Win10 LTSP.
Now when I boot with either Win11 or Win10 LTSP #USBs the windows logo flashes and the dreaded black screen with blinking cursor appears. We don’t even get the option to install…. (Ugh!)
Currently I booted into #ShredOS and am wiping the drive as a load test.

#siliconValley #SillyValley #sanfrancisco #sanfran #sanfranciscocomputers #sanfrancomputers #sanfranciscovintagecomputers #sanfranvintagecomputers #sanfranciscovintagehardware #sanfranvintagehardware
#vintagecomputing #vintagecomputint #vintagecomputer #vintagecomputers #vintagecomputalk
#vintagehardware #computerHistory #retro #VCF #vintageComputerFestival
#retrocomputing #retroComputers #WallOfRetro #retroTech #retroTechnology
#nerdsOfVintage #happyNerding
#computer #tech #computerHardware #laptop #laptops
#IBM #thinkpad #thinkpads #VintageThinkPad #X86 #WindowsVista #IBMhardware #lenovoHardware #Thinkpadnium
#upcycle #restore #TechnologyRepair #ThinkPadRepair #WasteNotWantNot