Need help installing XP Pro on an old ThinkPad

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28. update on this situation

The good the bad and the ugly I suppose.

Well, the night I last posted on the DU, I became highly frustrated trying to run this old laptop (with 1 GB of RAM installed in it mind you).

So, I have another I'd deemed useless (an A31p). It would not read both RAM chips ever. It was a nightmare and it constantly ran, grinding away all of the time. I had given up on it but was keeping it for parts (as they swap into the A31).

I decided upon managing to get it on line, to some how d/l Microsoft Security Suite as someone in an above link in the pinned topic to the top of this forum had suggested. It managed to download it some how (with only 1/4th of the RAM that was on the other one) and installed it and it began a complete disk check that took 15 hrs.! My god!

After that, it finally said to reboot (still grinding away) which I did, fearing the worst. It kept this up and updating Windows for another few hrs.

When I was finally able to shut it down, I snatched 1/2 GB RAM out of the one that I bought for $38.00 and installed that on it and rebooted again and it seemed to be running a lot better.

I decided to try again with the 1 GB installation and opened up the wrong panel on the back of it and found a rather large chunk of matted up dust inside of it. I blew this out with canned air (my secret weapon). It rebooted again and wow, its running fast and fine now and yep, I got myself a working laptop again with 1 GB of RAM running on it!! YEAH!

As for the other one, the reason it crashed out is because the battery is about gone on it and I had the AC adapter plugged into this one here (also a decrepit battery) and the alarms went off and I could not stop! It was plugged in again to another adapter that came w/it and the whole thing made a nasty sound and down she went and I saw that blue screen.

So, that is what happened -- seems the AC adapter the guy sold to me w/it was not the right one and it semi-fried that system board. I'll wait until I get the CDs I bought to reinstall XP Pro on it anyway and hope for these best.

This is a bad story turned worse that got better because of frugal me and the fact I hoard things admittedly. In this case, it paid off big time.

It is said that this particular laptop, the A31p is, "The best ThinkPad ever made". It is a good one alright when it is working right.

So, YES, I did it!!

Thanks for everyone's help and advice here. I really appreciate it so much I cannot tell you!!

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