Cyker

Slight tangent: My brother has also been having RAM issues, but we have discovered that it seems to be due to the Zalman heatsink! Have you heard of this before?! I stumbled over a single forum post while googling that mentioned loosening the heatsink screws by half a turn can fix RAM errors when using Zalman coolers with custom brackets on CPUs with integrated memory controllers... and it seems to have worked!

Well, I confess I didn't go as far as taking a dremel to the contacts

Yeah, that was the first thing I did; Didn't make any difference at all - Same errors in the same place, which was why I figured the RAM was bad. Also why I found it so utterly bizarre that it went away Anyway, we replaced both modules (RAM is so cheap these days!) just to be sure, but that's gotta be one for the books! Had a few possible theories; Most plausible one so far is that some moisture somewhere was causing the intermittent fault, and the 2 days of hammering evaporated it

Sure!

Summary: Bad RAM suddenly 'healed' after long memtest; Theories?! Okay, so a friend was complaining their laptop kept crashing; They'd be doing something then weird lines would appear on the screen, then crash. Classic bad RAM symptoms on systems that use integrated graphics. So to be sure, ran memtest and yup many errors. I think I had a phone call or something then as, for some reason, I went away and forgot about it. 2 days later I remember to check it - It's been running for near enough 2 days at this point and despite racking up 90,000 errors and many fails, I noticed with interest that it had 7 passes. WTF? So I power-cycle the machine and run memtest again - No errors!!! Waaaaaaaat?! Has this happened to anyone before? I had already done the usual stuff of cleaning the contacts with switch cleaner, reseating the modules etc. The only thing that currently springs to mind is if there were some tin whiskers or something on the BGA that were creating a teeny tiny short which have been fried by the RAM being hammered for 2 days straight. I am now not sure whether to bother replacing the RAM or not...! I've left it off to cool down for a while now just to see if it starts failing again, but this is pretty weird; Never seen this happen before! Edit: Fixed linefeeds...

Update for anyone who wanted some closure: It seems, unlikely as it may be, that the problem lies with this XP disc after all! We did a fresh install onto the spare HDD from an activation-less VLK disc and safemode works properly! Annoyingly performing a rebuild install on his existing disk didn't have the same effect, so it looks like he's got the long painful process of a full rebuild ahead of him if he wants it fixed... Props to jaclaz for the hind about the media; Didn't even occur to me the install media might be the cause!

Annoyingly but predictably, my X121e's F5521gw wouldn't work in the X230; Damned BIOS lock wouldn't even let the lappy boot (Why do they do this!?) However, was able to manually download an older driver from http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/g1wo07ww.exe and that has at least stopped the WWAN from crashing when I access the Lenovo Wireless Connection Status or Access Connections' "Mobile Broadband Settings" tab. Everything still appears as Unknown or Unnamed Network but it works so I'll take it! Edit: Linefeeds! Omnomnom

Yeah, the text modes work okay, you can even see the Windows logo during boot up - It's just when it switches graphics mode for Safe Mode then BLAM "Out of Range" Really bizarre and totally nonsensical! If I hadn't seen it for myself I'd never have believed it! I have no idea how to fix it as we can't duplicate it in e.g. Linux, but we plugged in a new HDD and tried installing XP onto it and the same thing happened - After the first reboot where you have to start clicking Next a lot, the screen just goes into the Out of Range mode. Might try swapping PSU and RAM out, see if that makes any difference but the system is one of those tiny AIO systems that are a PITA to change things in. Since Safe Mode isn't a regularly used thing, I think he'll just have to put up with not using it or buy a new computer! Maybe XP initializes the video system in a weird way which is triggering some odd bug in the video chip caused by bit rot?!

Recently got my hands on a cheap Thinkpad X230 to replace my X121e - Very cool system and so much more powerful! However I'm having trouble with the WWAN module; Does anyone else here have one? The problem I'm having is this: The GPS and card appear fine until you put a SIM in. With the SIM inserted, you can connect, but instead of showing EE or T-Mobile it displays Unnamed Network. More annoyingly, if you open Access Connections or any kind of Status utility to check signal strength etc. the card stops working and actually disappears from Device Manager and Network Connections, where it keeps reappearing and disappearing until you close the offending utility, at which point it reappears and stays! Would you lean more towards driver/firmware issue (Both are latest) or some odd hardware fault? It's just weird that it doesn't recognize the cell network it's connected too, and very annoying that it dies when the signal status etc. is queried, yet is able to connect just fine if these things are avoided! I'm going to pull the WWAN module from my X121e and see if that works this evening, but I have a feeling the Thinkpad BIOS block may stop it working...

Hey all, Got a bizarre problem here; Got a friend who's running XP but they can't get into safe mode because the screen just displays "Out of Range" when you boot into it. Tried it on a few other LCD monitors, all have the same problem. Now, Out of Range usually means the refresh rate or resolution is too high for the monitor, which isn't hard since LCDs have a pitiful range compared to CRTs, but even so all LCDs should be able to handle safe mode's VGA! Anyway, dragged out an ancient 17" CTX CRT behemoth just to be thorough and lo and behold, the Safe Mode screen! But instantly you can see things are not right - First of all, Safe Mode is deffo NOT running in VGA - At a guess it looks like 1280x1024. Even more weird is that the big ol' CRT reports that it's running at 640x480@87Hz!!! This should not be possible in safe mode!! Did a Repair install, started off okay until the first reboot, then even Windows Setup was afflicted with the same problem. Don't want to do anything too drastic as the system works just fine in non-safe mode, but has anyone come across this before?! Any suggestions on fixes??

I was wondering what the feasibility of having it hosted/mirrored here or on people's webspace? I'd be willing to run it on mine! (Albeit with lots of instruction!!)

THANK YOU! I thought it had died again, esp. when the URL went to some domain hijacker advert site Is this just temporary? I'm worried they might fall foul of something stupid like what happened when it was on site90...

Hehe, yeah, it does look a bit odd but it's so comfortable to hold! The metal casing has such a beautiful finish to it too. It's a very well made bit of kit (Too well made apparently ) Alas the instructions have the same problem as the ones I had found; It doesn't say how to release the clips! I lifted that part but it is held rather firmly in place by the clips still and, as you say, I don't want to break them! (Zod2s are rare as heck now so I can't replace it if I break it!) Annoyingly I can't even see where the clips would be in the open pic in step 3! I think I will have to study and probe it a bit more when I have more time on the weekend to see if I can release the clips safely. They must be pretty strong for me to bend the metal slightly when I tried to brute force it! But major thanks for taking the time to search around! I really appreciate it

This is a bit of a long shot since I suspect there aren't many PalmOS users here but if anyone knows how to open up a Tapwave Zodiac 2, please give hints! I unscrewed the back but it's still held in by something and I put enough force on it to slightly bend the metal back cover but it still didn't budge! It's amazing the battery has lasted this long...!

Yeah, I find I sometimes have to restrict it as it seems it can't handle mixed environments very well at all; Microwave ot 11b device comes on and BAM WiFi down the toilet I'd love an X220 (esp. if it had a better graphics chip) as it's a 'proper' Thinkpad unlike the x121e, but it's just too darn expensive

Well a few months on and the lappy is still doing well! Have had to make one call to tech support tho; The 5/% key fell off! I was just typing and it just popped off! :eek: I was expecting this to be a pain but they just sent me out a new keyboard, no questions asked! Was a surprisingly pleasant experience after reading about the horror stories on the forums. It's a bit of a pain getting in touch initially as the only contact point is by phone it seems, but there wasn't the huge amount of back-and-forth-ing I'm used to from other companies (e.g. saying it was accidental damage and refusing to replace etc.) The keyboard is nowhere near as solid as a 'real' Thinkpad keyboard, but it's still pretty good. Despite repeated use the battery is holding up well; I am using the Lenovo Power Manager to limit the maximum charge to 85% to extend the battery's life and still get 4-5 hours out of it which is nice Trackpad still sucks a**; Can't get used to it. I've actually disabled it completely and am using a Logitech trackball instead. One thing I'm running up against is the unbalanced performance of the GPU vs the CPU. Things that can leverage the GPU run great but if any significant CPU load is required it quickly bogs down. I'd love to stick an E450 into this thing; Supposedly it has TurboCore which could boost one of the core's performance on demand? (Actually, does anyone know if it is possible to stick an E450 into here? The chip appears to be socketed with one of those twist-lock ZIFs but I don't know if it's electrically compatible, or even if the BIOS would recognise it!)

It works perfectly on every other machine we've tried it on, just not hers! I tried doing a repair install but even that hasn't fixed it (If anything it's made it worse! USB devices no longer ask for security confirmation to install, but now the Orange software for the dongle crash on install! ) We've basically given up and told her to return it and swap it for a MiFi dongle or something instead...

Yeah, but compared to my other option (a full backup-rebuild-restore op...! ) it would be a lot less painful!

Thanks for the reply I hadn't heard of them either but it seems they're quite prolific; They appear to make the mobile broadband dongles for almost every cell company in the UK I had been scouring google and other boards and forums for this problem which is where I got the regsvr32 thing above, but haven't found anything specific. I have a feeling the problem isn't the actual broadband dongle but some problem with Windows XP itself on that machine. A friend of mine has suggested I boot to Linux, backup the system32\config\system. file and replace it with the one in the repair folder to see if that sorts out the device drivers, otherwise it's looking like a rebuild is the most straightforward (If insanely time consuming) fix...

Hey all, got a weird problem, hoping someone's had something similar before and managed to fix it! A friend has a Huawei e1752 mobile broadband dongle which just won't install on their laptop. When you plug it in, Windows detects a USB composite device but instead of installing automatically, it brings up the driver install dialog. If you click through it, it then says the drivers are not Windows Logo certified and do you want to continue or stop installation (i.e. it does the same thing that would happen when you try to install unsigned drivers). It'll then continue, installing drivers for Mass Storage etc. asking each time and I can get to the install screen of the emulated CD-ROM and install the software, but the software can't enable the modem-mode of the dongle :/ So what the heck has happened to this laptop? I had a similar problem with a normal USB stick in the past but fixed it by running: regsvr32 Softpub.dll regsvr32 Wintrust.dll regsvr32 Initpki.dll regsvr32 Dssenh.dll regsvr32 Rsaenh.dll regsvr32 Gpkcsp.dll regsvr32 Sccbase.dll regsvr32 Slbcsp.dll regsvr32 Mssip32.dll regsvr32 Cryptdlg.dll but that didn't work here. I tried sfc /scannow and that found a bunch of corrupted files and repaired them, but still I get the USB driver requests and the dongle doesn't work. Short of rebuilding the whole laptop (We're not that good friends...), what the heck else can I do?! I don't know what else is corrupted or how to fix it :S Has anyone else dragged themselves out of a similar situation?

Never figured why this was happening; Even tried locking them down in group policy but they were still getting enabled and my attempts at tracking the offending program that's restoring the services have been pretty fruitless. Whatever is doing it seems to actually be recreating the service registry keys as I added a bunch of extra key+value marks inside the service keys and changed the recovery action on failure but on reboot all was reset and my extra keys were removed! I have now bodged it because it was annoying me so much; Made a batch file: @echo off echo Attempting to disable Windows Search and Offline Files services... sc config cscservice start= disabled sc config wsearch start= disabled net stop wsearch net stop cscservice but because Win7 apparently won't let me run a batch file with administrative rights on start up via the startup folders (Tried runas, tried the shortcut launch-with-admin rights trick; Both cases the batch file wasn't even executed) I had to add it as a scheduled task, triggered to run 30s after login and system startup. Seems to have worked.... so farrr....

Actually a good trick for that is just goto Device Manager and View Devices by Connection and then drill down to the USB controllers to find your device. If it's connected to an Enhanced Controller then it's USB2, but if it's on an Open or Universal (OHCI or UHCI) controller then its USB1 Another sure way to tell is if the device can transfer faster than ~1MB/s, it's deffo USB2 as USB1 can't transfer faster than that. (Usually it tops out closer to 900KB/s!)

Well I can still boot off a suitably setup USB stick or hard disk Alas Knoppix 6.7.1 doesn't work on this laptop (Doesn't matter if I boot into X or runlevel 2 textmode; It's the Random Dot Stereogram Screen of Doom (Or at least an incompatible graphics driver ) For now it's gone back to the too-lazy-to-fix pile

Yeah, I was reading up on it and apparently it's one of these rare ones that's wired into the PCIe instead of USB so booting from it is impossible It doesn't even appear in the BIOS as a bootable option!

It's deffo not USB1 mode; USB1 can't transfer faster than ~900KB/s, certainly not the 1-3MB/s I was seeing. I'm going to try and pinch a USB DVD drive off a friend and see what happens if I try it using Knoppix; If it's okay, that'll at least eliminate a hardware problem and narrow it down to drivers or Win7 bugs... (Sadly it appears the x121e CAN'T boot off SD cards despite having a built-in SD card slot )