unpleasant experience with dual-core T60p. Any Ideas?

My T60p (2007-93U) arrived today. The laptop is solid built. However I was troubled when I tried to install the MS VS.net 2003. It halted during the installation process. I don't know what caused it. It might be due to the dual-core, or the windows XP OS. I am sure the software is not broken because the MS VS.net had been installed on my other computers.
It also halted when I installed other applications.

It was supposed to be a happy day, but

Has anyone experienced the same thing?

The other issue is that the harddrive seems a little noisy to me. I can hear it when data is written to the disk. (My previous T43 doesn't have this problem). I don't know it is normal, or it is just bad lack.

Is it possible that the harddisk is defected and it caused the process frozen?

 

It is definitely possible that the hard disk is having an issue. Any loud clicks or a sudden shutdown of the system? Both are indications of a bad HDD.

What do you mean by halt? Is it a BSOD? Do you get an actual error message? Look for error messages in your application event viewer also.

 

Excuse my poor English. What I meant was that the computer stopped there during the installation process, no error message, no CPU usage, doing nothing.

 

You can run HD Tune to see if there is a hard drive problem.

 

Something like this happened to me when I got my T43. It just didn't seem to want to install anything, so I just assumed that something had gone wrong with the initial Windows setup, and did a factory reinstall from the recovery partition. Everything worked fine after that.

 

Did the notebook freeze or just stall the installation? Freeze meaning did you needed to restart it without any other option like using Ctrl+Alt+Del?

 

Everytime I got a new laptop I always format the hardrive and setup the OS by myself, no recovery cd/partition, fresh install. Then put the drivers and sofware needed and thats it. It's guaranteed to work better and you have better idea whats going on if something isn't working.

 

To Zazonz & TrippyTiger :
I am running the IBM diagnostics tool (DOS version) now. It is 98% done. I will do the factory recovery if the tool finds no problem.

To aer0sense :
It stalled during the installation, even during the Windows Update and Thinkvantage Update. The laptop was not frozen as I could do other things such as web surfing at the same time. I had to open the task manager (by Ctrl+Alt+Del) to kill the frozen process.

The Thinkvantage responded after I killed the process it invoked. It is hard to tell what caused it. It might becasue of the OS and dual-core. I don't know. I called IBM this morning, the representative asked me to do the full system test, and then the revovery. I am still working on it.



One question, how much space does this Hidden rescue and recovery PD use? What is the actual available size for a 100G HDD?

Thanks for the reply.


Thanks for the reply.

 

Rather than a hardware problem, I'm tempted to think this is more likely some crazy software conflict that the Visual Studio installation CD has difficulty resolving--different .NET frameworks or some other such garbage.

 

To SpacemanSpiff:

I intend to agree because of MS's reputation . However, the installation of VS.NET was successful on my other two computers.


I have just finished the test. Here is the result
Controller PASSED
Hi-Low Seek -----
Funnel Seek -----
Track To Track Seek -----
Random Seek -----
Linear Verify PASSED
Random Verify PASSED


Does those "-----" mean it didn't test them? (or error?) I think it didn't test them, but I just want to make sure. Thanks

 

It turns out to be the pre-installed Norton firewall and antivirus software caused the problem.

After done some researches on the internet, I tried a clean Windows Bootup, and VS.net installation finished in a few minutes.

Thanks anyway

 

Glad you found the method.