Second-hand thinkpad x301 owner's thread.

Taking a lead from 600X, I ordered an AFFS screen (in a x301 lid) at the same supplier. I was able to install it yesterday - and it's even better than I had expected!



To complete my setup, I decided to update my x300 as much as possible, following the advice at http://x300.mcdonnelltech.com/

So I installed Middleton BIOS, got a new 6 cell and bay battery, installed an Samsung 850 EVO 250GB mSATA, an Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Plus Bluetooth, and did a clean install of Windows 10.

Battery life with both batteries installed is now about 5 hours (browsing, word processing, some coding, continuous RDP connection in the background).

Network speed over AC WiFi is up to 200 Mbps:



SSD speeds after install of Samsung's SSD magician are quite good:



I guess that makes this my new preferred laptop for working on the move - light, reasonable battery life, super screen, light, great keyboard, a TrackPoint. What more is there to wish for

 

Which supplier?

 

Very nice job. The display looks great.

 

Hi all, so I thought I was the only who might have bought an X301 in the last 3 years until I found this thread!

I bought a cheap X301 recently on EBay to use as a Cloudready Chromebook, and it is working very well so far (main purpose is a very portable productivity machine.) The nav pointer works (middle button to scroll even works), most of the blue function keys work too (as well as the web browsing forward and back buttons, volume buttons.) I have a 3-cell battery at 70% health that gives me about 2 hours of battery life, doesn't seem to be a big increase over Windows? But that's okay.

I love the build quality and keyboard on this thing, and it is an excellent Chromebook. I think the overall performance and user experience is about as good as the ~$300 Chromebooks (with exception of lower battery life.) Funny thing is mine has a 128GB SSD, which is really overkill for Chrome OS.

I had 2 questions after reading the last few pages of this mega-thread-

1.) Where is Middleton BIOS for X301? I see a X300 only on the Middleton BIOS Thinkwiki page. I would love to swap the CTRL and FN keys, the FN key is easier to reach.

2.) I read above that I shouldn't buy the aftermarket bay battery on EBay? I bought it 2 days ago from the eBay seller discountbatt for $30. Wondering if I made a mistake...

 

I got the 3rd party bay battery today, and have been using both together to test. I think my X301 just did the handoff! The Chromebook system meter was being confused and only reporting the primary battery percentage (100%) and time remaining while I was on the bay battery. I used the Thinkpad for about 1.5 hours, and now the meter reads 96%, I think it is now discharging the main battery. Hopefully this works out, the bay battery was only around $30 shipped.

I think I'm going to pass on the BIOS firmware, and not risk mucking things up with the battery...

 

That is the first I have heard of an aftermarket battery handing off to the main.

 

Congratulations on the display! It's good to see that people are still willing to invest a lot of time and money into these wonderful machines.

How did you get such high speeds? I thought the X300 and X301 was limited to SATA II?

There is none.

 

I will do some more detailed testing, but I used it yesterday on battery and appeared to get the handoff again. It will run for awhile showing 100% the whole time, and after 1.5-2 hours the battery meter will finally start going down.

I'll see if I get a full 3.5-4 hours next time, which would provide actual proof. I can also take one battery out, reboot and check the meter, then repeat with the other battery.

I don't know if running Chrome OS is making the difference, I wiped Vista off the HD so can't go back and check that.

 

RAPID mode.

 

Does anyone know whether Lenovo makes blanking covers for the integrated DVD drive? I don't need to use it most of the time so I might as well take it out.

 

Yes. They did make one for the OD drive. You see them on ebay from time to time.

 

Thanks. Do you know what that part number is? i.e. what do I search for on eBay?

 

Lenovo officially calls the part a "travel cover." The part number for the one that fits in the X300 and X301 is 42X5137.

 

Thank you sir!

 

Mine won't power up this morning. It has a little body damage so I think I'll move along to a new machine. Any suggestions? I'm thinking T460 or X1.

add - I'm thinking Thinkpad 13 is the best bang for the buck.

 

If you want the same level of quality as the X301, you'll have to go with the T460s or X1 Carbon. Avoid the T460. The 13 is pretty nice as well, but you need to keep in mind that it is a budget machine.

 

Lenovo still has a bunch of new T450S machines in their outlet store. I've been looking at those as well. The 13 is backlogged a month so that is out of the running. I'm also considering a refurb P50S with 24GB and the 256GB SSD for $767. I'm not sure I'd be happy with that large a laptop but it has other features I like and I really don't take it out of the house much.

 

The T450s is a bit thicker and heavier than the T460s but that would be a great portable. Doesn't the T460s have that split battery? Maybe the T450s is a better option anyway.

 

Just ordered . . . . . none of the above. I'm typing this on my ten year old Dell XPS M1330 and I just ordered the XPS 13 with 8GB RAM and 256GB PCIe SSD refurb for $818. I went for small and the only real compromise is giving up the Lenovo keyboard. I'll need to get the proper case to use the X301 SSD as a USB hard drive. As for the rest, anyone want it? At least the two power adaptors and two batteries at least may be of use to someone.

 

The XPS 13 is a decent notebook. The infinity display makes for a small footprint. Good luck with it.

 

Hi guys!
I am new to this forum and the X301. I have purchased it just recently with Win7 installed. I wanted the Wín 10 (dont ask me why), so I tried the upgrade, which went ok until automatically installing either the Intel graphics or the Intel managment engine after first boot, which led to a non working display. After not being able to stop it from reinstalling automatically I tried the Windows safeboot and its resetfactory defaults, which broke the Win 10 altogether. So I installed Win 10 from scratch and now face different problems. I have spend many hours, trying to resolve them, but no succes. So here they are:

1) There is a PCI serial port driver missing - I cant find any driver for that and I dont know what device it might be (its not the Intel managment engine, asi I installed that one ok now)
2) I cant install the touchpad drivers correctly, so the touchpad works but no scrolling, no multiple fingers, no nothing. It is listed as a PS 2 mouse pointing device and thats all. I tried installing some ultranav drivers, but it still shows only as a ps2 pointing device
3) I flashed the modded bios just fine and installed Throttlestop to overlock my U9400. Do I need to start the app every time and keep it running? And It just goes to some ca 1520 MHz, not the 1600MHz it should be.

Does anyone have any clue on how to solve my problems? Thank you very much guys, I am desperate and maybe installing Win 7 would be a better option

 

1) Is the missing PCI serial port driver possibly the fingerprint reader? If so, you can install the Windows 7 drivers available here. Just run the installer in Windows 7 compatibility mode.
2) Windows 10 will normally install its own drivers for the touchpad on the X301. Try uninstalling any Lenovo versions of the Ultranav drivers and then let Windows download and install it's own drivers. This has worked for me with the Synaptics version of the touchpad.
3) I believe you do need to run ThrottleStop after each restart in order to enable overclocking. There's a guide here with a lot of good information about using ThrottleStop.

Hope this helps. You've may have already seen it, but I've compiled a few other X301 resources that you might find useful here: x301.mcdonnelltech.com

 

Hi and thanks! The fingerprint reader is already installed. Can you tell me as what device Windows recognizes your touchpad? Mine still only as a PS2 device. Can I somehow tell if I have a synaptics touchpad or another one? And thanks for the link to the page, I followed its instrucitons before. But there is no mention about problems with the serial port device or the touchpad problém.

 

The touchpad shows in the Device Manager as "Synaptics Pointing Device" with the drivers that installed automatically with a clean install of Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. Here's a screenshot of the Device Manager.

Perhaps the easiest way to confirm which touchpad you have is to boot from a live Linux USB and see if two-finger scrolling is possible - it will work with a Synaptics model but not with Alps.

Not sure what the missing PCI serial port is.

 

To DonGrinch

I have Windows 10 running on my X301 U9400 and have no known problems. I did a clean install and it went very smoothly. I am fairly sure on my install it installed the Intel "Display Adapter" automatically and there has been no problems. As a side note I have a spinning drive a 500 Gig WD Blue in my Ultra Bay so I run in Compatible Mode.

Your Issues

1) I have "PCI Serial Port" driver missing also but I haven't worried about it. I read somewhere that the Lenovo Update Software corrects this but the less Lenovo software I have installed the better IMO.

2) I have the touchpad disabled in bios and I get "Thinkpad UltraNav" come up under Mice and other pointing devices in Device Manager. I don't use the Finger Print Reader so I get "Unknown device" also.

3) I have Throttle Stop installed in Windows 10 as I do on my Windows 7 SSD. In Windows 7 I had it running on startup but I decided to just park it in the Task Bar and run it as needed and I do the same in W 10.
Mine runs at 1596 MHz which is 8 x 199.5 MHz obviously. On my Main Throttle Stop Display I only have "BD PROCHOT" ticked other than the"Set Multiplier".

Goodluck with your install and I would recommend Windows 10 on the X301. Especially with basically everything switched off inc Cortana and all the Privacy settings. Windows 10 is currently using only 16.1 Gig of my SSD.

 

Hi guys ! I am new to this forum and the X301. I want to upgrade my wirelles network card Intel 5300AGN with N6300. For this need install mod BIOS. I want install this Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1 but make mistake and install this Dual-IDA (Intel Dynamic Acceleration) support + Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1.Please somebody help me to uninstall this mod and back to stock BIOS 3.16

 

If I'm understanding you correctly you:
1. Want to install Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300
2. Intended to install the Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1 BIOS
3. Instead installed the Dual-IDA support + Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1 BIOS
4. Now want to revert back to the stock BIOS

Is there a reason you want the Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1 BIOS instead of the Dual-IDA support + Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1 BIOS?

Either one will allow you to install the Ultimate-N 6300 card. There is no disadvantage to using the BIOS with Dual-IDA support - you don't need to use these additional features if you don't want to.

 

I want to install only Whitelist removed+SLIC2.1 BIOS , but download and install wrong file , install Dual -IDA support +Whitelist removed +SLIC2.1 BIOS . My X301 is hot ,need to change termal paste and use TrottleStop .I dont want this ! I want to unninstall this , back to stock BIOS ,and after this install Whitelist removed +SLIC 2.1

 

The Dual-IDA supported BIOS should not result in higher temperatures unless you actively set both cores of the CPU to run simultaneously with ThrottleStop.

But if you prefer to just have the basic Whitelist removed + SLIC 2.1 BIOS, you can just run the installer for that. This will completely remove the Dual-IDA version and replace it with the basic version. There is no need to revert back to the stock BIOS first since you have already installed a version of the 3.16 BIOS.

 

I run installer and install , my U 9400 CPU core speed is 1595,33 MHz its normal ?

 

Is ThrottleStop running? Try removing ThrottleStop entirely, restart and then check the CPU speed with a utility like CPU-Z. I believe the U9400 should top out at 1400 MHz when the multiplier isn't being manipulated.

 

If you have Throttle Stop installed you can set the multiplier to 7 which will limit the CPU to 1400 MHZ.

I use Throttle Stop and undervolt my U9400 to VID .8875 and it runs cool.

IDA only works if you have minimum and maximum CPU speeds set to 100% through your power manager.

 

Hi Everybody!

I made the pinmod on the motherboard with rotating the resistor. The frequency with my su9400 is now 1.86GHz. The problem is, that my windows is not booting up. Fails with blue screen. What should I do?

Thanks for your help!

 

How did you go with this? Maybe your memory is causing it to fail to boot.

 

Can you shed some more light on this? I just bought 3 aftermarket batteries from Battdepot.
http://www.battdepot.com/us/model/notebook+battery/ibm/thinkpad+x301+4182/lln213.aspx

Hoping Windows 10 is smart enough to figure this out.

 

I seem to recall people having trouble, more than usual, with third party batteries on the X301. In my experience, you're usually better off buying a larger main battery if that's an option. Bay batteries are small and always discharge first, so they tend to wear really fast. I had an OEM Lenovo battery for my R60 and I think it was at 50% capacity in six months.

 

BattDepot bay batteries seem to be working just fine. The Bay battery discharged first and then it went immediately to the regular battery. No strange behavior, or delayed percentage drops.

 

Good to hear that. The aftermarket bay batteries did not do this before,. Only the OEM bay batteries discharged in sequence. Glad to hear that this issue is resolved. I haven't used my old X301 for years. It's still soldering on in my family though.

 

Hello to all forum members.

I have been a user of X301 for 2 years (U9400, 8GB Ram, 128 GB SSD). During this time ... I bought two more X301 :-D (just in case) ;-) I had before buying this model some other HP laptops, Dell, older Thinkpad models (T43p, T61p, X61s) but this X301 is for me the perfect machine for work. Like Bronsky (best regards) I use a laptop for writing texts (legal letters) and browsing the internet.

Recently, I was thinking about changing my laptop. I was looking for information on the internet and it turns out that this model did not have its successor. It's a pity Lenovo. I was thinking about buying the X1 or X1 Carbon model but ... I do not know.

Later, I seriously thought about what I needed a laptop for and I realized that I did not need a new unit. Battery life (about 2 hours) is enough for me, X301 keyboard is great, screen is not IPS but it is enough for normal work (THANK YOU for the link to change the color palette - makes an incredible difference !!! Thanks X600 for working with this color palette !!!). I have work on Windows 7, MS Office 2010 and ... I realized that I do not need anything more to write.

All the time I can not believe that this ultrabook from 2009, has so perfectly overcome the test of time. I hope that it will serve me for a few more years, and if it falls ... I have two in stock ;-)

Greetings to all users of the X300 / X301 model

P.S
Best regards the creator of the site http://x301.mcdonnelltech.com/ - great knowledge for the holder of the X301.

 

Yes I am also still using mine despite that I have Arandale and Sandy Bridge laptops. Great to hear the X301 is still working for you also.

 

Leo Kim posts on the Chinese computer website, 51nb, as well as on the Korean ThinkPad forum. He's a reclusive, elusive fellow, and is credited as being somewhat of a genius in modding.