Swap boot drive T60 T60p?

[noetus]

I would like to try swapping the Windows C: drive from a T60 into a T60p and vice versa. It would be a quick and easy way of swapping my wife's laptop for mine, while keeping our existing windows installations. Would it work? Will the Windows installation see somewhat different hardware and readjust (installing new drivers, etc) or will it barf?

[rkawakami]

Windows will definitely see the different hardware. I'd say depending upon how different the graphic systems are between the two, you could get a BSOD or the systems will start up in Safe Mode and allow you to update the drivers. I don't think that you'll permanently "damage" either software installation but if it were me, I'd take an image of both systems before attempting the swap.

[slpin]

too true
do a back up just in case - you never know what kind of weird errors it would throw at you.

[ajkula66]

As long as your T60 has ATi graphics you should be fine - the driver is the same for X1300/1400 and V5200/5250.

[Cigarguy]

I did something similar last week. Swapped drives between a T61 and X201. Normally I hate doing this as I'm a firm believer of a fresh install. But I didn't have the time and both computer was fully backed up so there was nothing to lose. I was also curious. Was pleasantly surprise how well it turned out.

[BKthink]

As long as your T60 has ATi graphics you should be fine - the driver is the same for X1300/1400 and V5200/5250.

I recently swapped boards (from T60/X1400 to T60p/V5250) and I definitley needed to reinstall the WinXP video driver. All else was good. Very unstable until I resolved the video driver. Just one datapoint....

BK

[noetus]

So actually all I need to do is swap the boards? That would actually be a much better solution for me - my wife's T60p goes into my T60 case, screen and keyboard, and my T60 board goes into her T60p. The OS sees new board and CPU and GPU some other components in each laptop, the screen stays the same. Will that work?

[TuuS]

I don't understand why you'd want to switch boards if you can switch harddrives instead, 5min job compared to 2 hours...

[noetus]

Mainly because my wife is used to the much better display of the T60p (more pixels, IPS) and I have no need of this display because I am using the T60 as a server and HTPC. It would be better if we could keep our respective cases/displays.

[ajkula66]

So just swap the drives...she keeps her IPS unit with whatever drive she prefers and you use the leftovers as a server...I see no point in swapping anything else, but maybe I'm misunderstanding the big picture...

[TuuS]

I agree with george, unless we are missing something, just give her the T60p, if she wants her harddrive with her data in it, it will take all of 2mins to install it.

You may have to update some drivers if they have different hardware in them, but that's certainly a lot easier then doing major surgery on two laptops.

[noetus]

The deal is that she is already the user of the T60p, with her Windows installation and data on it. It runs great. However, the T60 that I use as a home server and HTPC has developed an issue where it shuts down with no warning (no Windows logs) once every couple of days, which is obviously no good as a server especially as it doesn't reboot.

I suspect the temperature sender is bad in some way and sending false intermittent temp readings so the machine shuts down. It is not running too hot, the shutdown is not related to temperature, and I've tried swapping the battery and running with no battery to no avail.

It won't matter to her too much if the machine occasionally shuts down (is unlikely to happen when she's using it considering it happens only once every couple of days on a machine that is on 24/7) so I considered swapping the machines with each other but keeping our own drives (i.e., swapping the drives then swapping the machines with each other) but it means she gets a smaller display (not happy about it) and the nice big IPS panel of the T60p is completely wasted on a server.

So now it makes more sense to me to swap the boards. That way neither of us will notice any external difference. Plus the server will gain the 64 bit CPU of the T60p which could be handy.

How difficult can it be? People on here seem to be doing it all the time.

[ajkula66]

If I were dead certain that it's the T60 mobo that's responsible for the shutdowns, I'd simply replace it altogether and leave everything else as-is, but your ThinkPads - your call...

[noetus]

Thanks to everyone for helpful comments so far... so now I swapped the drives and discovered that the random shutdowns must be related to the Windows installation. It used to be the T60 that was shutting down 2-3 times a week, and the T60p was fine. Now I swapped the drives and it is the T60p that is shutting down a couple of times a week. So it must be related to the installation.

Thing is, there is NOTHING in the windows logs. The machine just stops dead, and power is off. Last windows logs seem normal, and the next one just says "The previous shutdown was unexpected." And it is set to restart automatically if there is a Windows crash, and it doesn't do that, it just switches off dead.

What could be causing this? Any ideas?

[Cigarguy]

Sounds like a driver/software conflict somewhere. Time to make some time and do a fresh install.

[ajkula66]

+1 for the fresh install...hopefully it will chase away the gremlins that are shutting the system down...

[noetus]

Can a driver or software conflict really cause this problem? Complete and sudden power shutdown with no blue screen of death, no clue in the system logs (I've been checking every time), and no restart (even though Windows is set to restart on crash)?

[Cigarguy]

It could depending on the nature of the conflict. That's the mystery of driver conflicts you just don't know where that monkey wrench is thrown.

[noetus]

One reason I initially thought it was hardware related is that there is a correlation between how often it happens and the ambient temperature. It happened frequently (every day or two) during recent heatwaves, but now that the temperature has dropped by a few degrees, it doesn't appear to be happening any more. I noticed this correlation earlier, too.

However when I swapped the boot disk from the T60 to the T60p, the T60p started doing it as well. Is it possible it's still hardware related and has something to do with the disk drive itself?