R51 freezes on OS

[Shadenone]

A friend of mine asked me to take a look at his Thinkpad R51 and I'm at a loss now. Every time the OS starts up, it freezes. Nothing works to unfreeze it and the only way to reboot it is to shut it down and restart it. Bios is just fine though and it works fine until you hit the OS. He doesn't have anything on it he wanting to save, so I figured I'd just reinstall Windows on it and reformat the drive. That froze up too. I tried to do a recovery from the ThinkVantage (F11) and even IT froze up. Is there some way to wipe the HD before it gets to that point? I've looked for a bootable DOS disk, but haven't been able to find one for this old comp. I've got everything I need to reinstall the OS, but I need to be able to get to that point first. Help!

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

The problem is most likely hardware, not software.

Try pulling out the RAM sticks and running the machine with one only at the time, swapping the DIMMs and slots in the process.

There's a sticker on the bottom of the laptop that contains the serial number, production date and the 7-character model number, most likely something like 183x-xxx or 288x-xxx. What is the full 7-character model number of that R51?

[Shadenone]

Type 2889-gku S/n L3-bn227 05/12

Figured I'd get you that while I take the darn thing apart to get to the RAM. Thanks for the help! I've been all over the net and this is the first place that's even tried!

[ajkula66]

Well, the good news is that the machine has more reliable Intel graphics.

While you have it out, pull the wireless card as well.

Leave the keyboard loosely connected, let it run with no palmrest since you're going to be in and out of it...

[Shadenone]

Wow, you hit the nail on the head first time out the gate! Pulled the RAM, I'm in the OS!
It only has the one stick, so it's slow as a turtle but I'm in!
I'm not nearly as good on the hardware side (especially laptops), does that mean his RAM is fried or is it the connectors that's causing the problem? Am I entirely off base?

[ajkula66]

You're not off base.

Blow some compressed air in the DIMM slots.

If you have a "live" Linux CD, boot from it and test the RAM, one stick/slot at the time.

You can download and burn a CD from here:

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=92

Good luck.

[Shadenone]

On it. Thanks so much! I've been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what was going on!

[Shadenone]

Just wanted to let you know, after running everything and installing everything (including an antivirus since he didn't have one!) I was able to narrow it down to only one of the sticks of RAM! A roughly $20.00 fix at the worst! Couldn't have done it without you, so thank you again, Ajkula66!