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Thinkpad T21 boot problems.

Denithor

Denithor

Diamond Member
This is a fresh install on an older IBM Thinkpad T21. It occasionally hangs during Windows startup, during the swoosh screen. The swoosh freezes and it goes no further. If I power it down and restart it the system normally loads fine and everything works, but the next time I go to restart it does it again (almost every time the laptop is restarted this occurs).

I have tried a different hard drive also with a fresh install of XP Pro, same problem occurs in exactly the same manner. I have swapped out the memory as well, also with no effect.

In my experience this is normally indicative of an improperly loading driver or startup item, however this is (as mentioned) a fresh install of WinXP and the device manager is not showing any errors/conflicts.

Any suggestions/recommendations are appreciated.
 
I'm not familiar with that particular model, but here's some things you can try:

If the unit has a removable CD/DVD-ROM drive, try removing it and then boot. If that solves it, your optical drive is flaky/failing and causing the system hang.

If that doesn't fix it, one at a time remove and reseat the DIMM modules (remove AC power and battery before removing.) Do this also with the modem and ethernet daughter cards.

alzan
 
Ok, an update.

I have swapped the DVD player for a different drive and changed the RAM for two different sets (pair of 128MB and a single 256MB tried in both slots). The other suggestions I am not comfortable doing, I don't want to open up this laptop completely.

However, I have noticed something really unusual. When Windows is "Shut down" and then the laptop is turned back on, everything runs fine, Windows loads normally and everything is good (did this five times in a row without any failures). The freeze only occurs when I try to "Reboot" from the Windows shutdown options, then (each and every time) the system locks up while it is loading back into Windows. I then have to power it down manually and restart, then everything is good again.

Now I'm really confused, what could be causing this problem?
 
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