PepperonI

I got the idea for this blog having read David Hill’s blog with the same title, What’s In My Backpack, in the Lenovo Blogs, it’s just taken me a little longer to get around to actually writing something. And as David does I like to carry what I can in a backpack because it definitely leaves my hands free, there’s nothing worse than trying to eat a sandwich or burger whilst underway with one hand and a bag of sorts in your other hand.

The above is probably the only thing we have in common as far as a backpack is concerned; looking at the picture above will show that the contents of mine do somewhat differ to David’s contents, not only do I not have a shorty mechanical pencil - I don’t even have a pen, guess I need to fix that.

Just for fun I called in to the local Deutsche Post Office on the way to work one day and asked them if I could pop the backpack on their scales, which they gracefully allowed. It turned out I’m wandering around the whole time with 10.2 Kg, (22lb), hanging on my shoulders.

The camera which was used to take the picture isn’t in the picture, hopefully I’ve not forgotten anything.

I have to say I was pretty surprised at the weight of the backpack and have been looking for ideas to lighten it. Obviously I could swap the T61p out for another lighter notebook, but can’t think of anything else I could dispense with when visiting a customer to fix their notebook, Ideas?

I've been playing around with the idea of starting a Photoblog for some time and decided that it was about time to do it.  The hardest part was deciding how it should look; should it be different theme to my main blog or, should it be similar and some of the features trimmed down?  I also needed to have an excuse to post something in this Blog.

b2evolution, the open-source software I use, does actually offer a skin and all the tools necessary making the creation of a working Photoblog to be almost child's play. I decided not to use the skin they offer, rather to stick to the theme I was already using and tweak some of the settings.  Sticking with the same theme allows for visitors to be able to comment on, ask questions about, individual entries which the b2evolution skin as far as I could see doesn't cater for.

The content of the Photoblog is a collection of just some of the photos I've taken of different notebooks, in various states of disassembly, over the last year or so.  Initially I've started with just over a dozen pictures to get the "Blog rolling" which aren't featured in my other articles.  Whilst choosing the pictures I realised that I'm going to need to improve my photographic skills somewhat.

Now I've got you curious I can tell you how to find my Photoblog; under the Blog Calendar is where to find the link to it.  As always suggestions and constructive criticism is more than welcome, enjoy!

Nothing's worse than when you're pretty sure you need to use Windows System Restore function to do a rollback to get your XP system up and running again, but it just refuses to boot into either normal or safe modes.

If that's the case you currently find yourself in, hopefully the following may be of help and work for you.

N.B. This isn't something I claim to have discovered myself but rather something I unintentionally found out one day whilst surfing the web looking for a solution to another problem. I feel it worthy of posting as it's definitely something which could help someone in difficulty.

I normally do this booting from a live Linux or WinPE disc, but it also works with the drive attached to another windows system which is the method I'm going to describe.

On the system you have the drive attached to you will need to make system and hidden files visible;

 

Thanks to Pete for creating the picture for me, as I didn't have an English XP system at hand.

In Control Panel select Folder options and then the View tab. In the Advanced setting you need to ensure that "Show hidden files, folders and drives" is selected. You also need to remove the tick from "Hide protected operating system files"; expect to get a warning message from windows and click to accept the change.

Once you've done this, the fun starts. :smileyhappy:

It is imperative that the following changes are only applied to the hard drive which you're trying to fix and NOT to the drive of the system you have the drive attached to.

Access the drive through My Computer or Windows explorer. There should be a folder called "System Volume Information". When you open it you need to navigate to:

[drive letter]:\System Volume Information\_restore{017226FB-C5FE-..........}.

You should then hopefully have a buch of folders beginning with "RP"; select and open an RP folder created on a date prior to when the problem started. To find out when it was created you can right click on it, select properties and this will show the creation date.

Open the RP folder you selected and then open the folder called Snapshot. Copy the following two files;

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SOFTWARE

_REGISTRY_MACHINE_SYSTEM

Navigate to:

[drive letter]:\WINDOWS\system32\config - and paste the files you copied into it.

You then need to re-name another two files in that folder, (without file endings), called "software" and "system" to something like "softwarex" and "systemx".

Once that's been done you need to re-name the two files you previously copied in to; "software" and "system" respectively.

Task completed.

When you then reinstall the drive into your system it should hopefully boot normally. I can't be 100% certain, but I think the idea is always certainly worth a try.

Good luck

How it happened, I don’t exactly know, but someone managed to somehow damage their Lenovo ThinkPad T500 which was going to require some serious major plastic surgery in order to return it to it’s previous intact state.

As you can see in the above pictures the T500 had taken a pretty hard hit on the front left corner damaging the base unit, display cover, display bezel and the left lid closure hook. Most often when I see notebooks with this sort of damage it usually turns out to be terminal; the hard drive has been killed and the system board has been cracked, or the display has been damaged. In this case there were no other signs of damage and everything worked normally; the hard drive had passed two different intensive tests and the display was intact.

Why had this T500 faired better than would normally be expected? Was it down to plain old good luck or something else?

Luck can never be ruled out, but; the base unit is made of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic which on it’s own is difficult to break and is also used by a lot of notebook manufacturers. My belief is that in this case something else was probably responsible for preventing further damage. That something else is the magnesium alloy rollcage built into the base and cover of the system.

The picture above left shows the T500 with it’s keyboard and palmrest removed, probably not an uncommon sight for ownwers as both are CRUs (Customer Replaceable Units) which can be removed by the customer to upgrade memory or add a WWAN card without invalidating the warranty. The picture above right shows the base unit with all of the upper plastics removed and the screen, laying screen down, with it’s cover removed.

The rollcage was first introduced in 2006 with the Lenovo ThinkPad *60 series systems, but only in the base, the rollcage behind the screen was introduced in 2007 with the ThinkPad T & R61 series systems. My guess is that it was introduced due to the problem with flexing experienced in some ThinkPad T4* and R5* series systems; due to flexing of the mainboard the graphic chips solder points were weakened eventually resulting in a non-functional system. In other words it was introduced to add stability and streangth to the systems. More information on this subject can be found by googling “ThinkPad T4 R5 GPU problem” or “ThinkPad flexing", but save yourself the trouble; visiting and searching the forum.thinkpads.com or thinkpad-forum.de will probably result in enough reading material for a month.

Now you can see that the screen and base rollcages have been removed. The screen is totally encapsulated by the rollcage which clearly protects it from impacts on all sides except the front. Especially noteworthy is that the mainboard is actually attached to the rollcage and not the base unit clearly illustrating how it protects the mainboard and other components should the plastics take a hefty whack. Only a small board is actually attached to the base unit itself; the board carrying the USB ports on the rear right of the system.

Sorry, but I coudn’t resist adding another picture of the base rollcage. I can’t begin to imagine how many systems this, and the screen rollcage, have prevented from being totalled by some sort of accident or mishap. What I certainly can say is that I can remember sending about a system a month into service to receive a new mainboard due to flexing before the rollcage was introduced. After it was introduced the trend ended.

And last but not least, above right you have the ThinkPad T500 looking as it should do after receiving a new base unit, display cover, display bezel and display rollcage. The only reason for replacing the display rollcage was because the lid closure hooks are attached to it and, to my knowledge, can’t be ordered separately.

Why had this T500 faired better than would normally be expected? Was it down to plain old good luck or the rollcage?

If you plan to totally dissasemble a T500 or W500 you can find full instructions in the Hardware Maintainance Manual or, if you prefer watching videos, go to the Lenovo service training site.

As part of my job I get to see a lot of notebooks with problems of one sort or another, software or hardware. I don't doubt for a second that I've seen all the problems that could arise, but I pretty sure I've seen more than the average notebook owner. What upsets me is seeing notebooks that have already been repaired, for whatever reason, but the poorly carried out repair was the reason for the notebook landing on my desk.

Someone had recently changed the mainboard in one notebook which landed on my desk because the notebook had been showing no signs of life. I received it because the owner was experiencing the following problems; the screen flickered now and again spontaneously, but got worse when you moved it, and the wireless connection was weak and kept breaking connection depending on the notebooks orientation to the router / access point regardless of the network.

	Here's what the auxiliary antenna cable looked like after I had opened up the system. The isolation and some of the cable strands had been damaged. After looking closer it was clear that during the reassembly of the system, after replacing the mainboard, whoever had done it hadn't checked that the cable was routed correctly. They'd left it lying over a hole which was in fact a screw hole; on inserting a screw through the hole to fasten the upper and lower parts of the notebook together it was destined to hit the cable and damage it.
	Something else which I found was that on the base of the system was the the holder for a captive nut had been broken away. You can see a captive nut in the lower left corner of the picture in it's rightful place, in the upper right corner you can see the holder which had totally broken away from the notebook body. The nut is probably still on the screw lying in a vacuum cleaner bag in waste dump somewhere as there were no signs of it's existence when I opened the notebook. How did this happen? Probably due to over tightening of the screw which wrenched the nut and the holder from the housing.
	Here's another damaged cable, in fact it's the main antenna cable. The damage hadn't been caused by a screw this time but rather due to it being wrongly routed during reassembly of the notebook. In order to replace the mainboard on this particular notebook it's easier if you remove the display assembly. On putting everything back together the cable had been routed under a bracket which holds the fan to the base of the system trapping it and preventing it from being able to move / flex freely when the display was opened or closed resulting in the insulation being worn through after a while.
	So far it's possible to state that the owner had problems with wireless connections because the antennae cables were damaged. The flickering display was caused because the display cable had also been wrongly routed. It's not immediately obvious in the picture but there is a nasty kink caused by it being routed under the hinge rather than over the hinge as it should have been. The flickering was, in my opinion, probably caused by broken stands in the cable caused by stress induced by it being wrongly routed.

After replacing the damaged cables the system worked absolutely fine; no flickering or dropping out of wireless connections and that still is 6 months after I carried out my repair of the system. I hope it remains that way.

What was the cause of the problems resulting on that notebook landing on my desk? I don't know 100% for sure, but whoever swapped out the mainboard did a sloppy job.

If you decide to repair your own notebook and haven't done something similar before, I'd like to offer the following tips; have a camera at hand, this can be used to record how cables are routed. Keep a pen and paper at hand to note where and what size screw goes into which hole. And take all necessary ESD precautions.