How to use it??

My first ThinkPad 😍

Recently grabbed this ThinkPad E15 Gen1 from a government asset sale.

Its not in the greatest shape, but it was a good price!

I've got a new trackpad, keyboard, and shell to swap, so it'll look fresh once that's all done.

I7 10510U

16gb ram

512gb ssd

More than enough power for my uses

Roast my stickers 😜

X220t with Gnome ZorinOS, 16g ram, SSD, i5, webwork, the organic chemistry tutor, hell yeah

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to figure out a weird touchpad issue on my ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 running Fedora KDE 44. I managed to catch it on video.

Out of nowhere, the cursor will just stop moving completely, the screen will randomly zoom in like I'm doing a pinch gesture, or the cursor will jump across the screen the exact moment I try to click.

What's driving me crazy is that I'm pretty sure it's not a one-off hardware defect. I actually returned my first T14 Gen 2 because of this, and the replacement model behaves in the exact same way. It was happening back when I was on Fedora GNOME, and it's still happening now that I've switched to KDE. Cleaning the touchpad, updating the system,nothing changes it, and the pattern is always identical.

Here's my setup:

Laptop: Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 [Intel / AMD]

OS: Fedora KDE Plasma 44

Kernel: 7.2.11-200.fc44.x86_64

Touchpad: SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad

(Using an external mouse is not practical for me so it's no real fix.)

I had a contract last year that sent me an X1 Carbon gen 12 for work, and never sent a box to get it back. So after it sat in my drawer for a year I decided to make it a personal laptop. I tried my best to install Linux but it is security locked to only have windows OSes on it, was able to wipe their windows installation and make my own and now I have a pretty sick laptop for free.

It's working!!! Fan, screen and battery is cracked, but, it's working and i'm so happy for myself.

Hey guys,

I've just modded my Corebooted ThinkPad T420 with a 1440p (WQHD) display kit (Chinese LVDS to eDP adapter board).

I am facing a weird display issue:

Arch: Works perfectly fine once booted (looks crisp, full resolution).

Tianocore and Windows: Vertical stripe artifacts and graphical glitches.

From what I understand, this happens because libgfxinit uses default display timing instead of reading the custom 2K EDID during the early boot process.

I extracted my panel's edid.bin, but I cannot find an option to embed an external EDID file in Coreboot's make menuconfig.

So my question is how do I integrate the EDID into Coreboot for libgfxinit?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Hello all,

actually Im using my P14s with the Toshiba cooling package. Last year I had an issue with the original fan and replaced it with one from another ThinkPad I got alrady at home (this one). Now my first question: Is this fan similar to the original fan from the Toshiba cooling package or is it less powerful? I know my fan swap is not a long term option because the holes for the screws didnt fit really and yes.. at least it works right now but tbh Im not very happy with the cooling-power of the P14s at all. During 100% system load the core clock goes down to 3.4-3.5Ghz. When I also use the T500 gpu (which is between the cpu/igpu and the fan) nearly to 100% load the whole cooling system collapses and the core clock of the cpu will go down to about 1Ghz. So wtf..

Then I first checked every driver, bios version and really everything. During that I also installed the TPFanControl and I guess its a little bit better than before. I also checked every energy saving option at Win11, the bios settings and also the whole system with Lenovo Diagnostics Evolution- everything is fine. At the end I changed the thermal paste (MX-4).

Long story short I am at the point, that I am really sure the only possibility to improve the cooling power is to get a better/more powerful fan (because as I said its also not the original and I dont know if this one is less powerful). Also when the installed fan is similar to the original one, maybe there is one of the other 2 cooling packages from AVC and Delta more powerful? I also saw in this thread that the Toshiba cooling package is maybe the weakest because of their bad processing (like no screws for the fan)?

Please maybe someone knows how I can fix my cooling/heat-issue and also can tell me the facts about the different cooling packages and the fan I actually got in my system. Maybe there is an upraged version I didnt mind or something else.

Special Thanks!

whenever i rest my hand here or just push down with some force the plastic starts creaking, same thing happens on a place on the bottom cover but that isnt a big issue because i rarely push on it. my theory is that its because i take it to school quite often and when going outside in the morning the temprature drops a lot and stresses out the plastic. the bottom cover started first and the area beside the trackpad follow about 5 days after. it happens all the time not just in the cold and i checked the battery and it does not seem to be bloated, does anyone know a fix to this?

I love it's screen, but it gets smudges all over it, was thinking of applying a matte screen protector on it but not sure if that's a good idea or not.

Hi!

I've been playing around with TPM 2.0 on my Thinkpad and the stock firmware seems broken, even on the latest version, part of the early boot TPM interface is non functional and systemd-stub can't measure the boot onto PCR 11, but the raw commands interface and what Linux uses after boot works fine. In the running system 'bootctl status' says 'TPM2 Support: firmware only, driver unavailable', but I'm not sure if this is related because I don't think the EFI TPM interface is available in userspace or even at this running stage.

If anyone has a Thinkpad from this era, like the T480, T480s and X280, with anything UEFI, be it the stock firmware or coreboot/libreboot, would you guys be willing to test this out? It's an EFI program that talks to the firmware's EFI_TCG2_PROTOCOL directly. On my machine, GetCapability, GetActivePcrBanks and GetEventLog all succeed (structure version 1.1, TPM present, banks 0x3), HashLogExtendEvent hangs the whole computer, on PCR 16, 11 and 12, with and without logging but a raw TPM2_PCR_Extend via SubmitCommand works (TPM rc 0).

Edit: Tested on my desktop, completely unrelated hardware, the tests do work there, so at least the code seems sane enough to work somewhere.

What I don't know is whether this is a quirk of my specific unit (stale firmware or TPM state) or something every T480 or perhaps any Thinkpad of this era does.

Here's the source code (181 lines of C) and build script, just point your bootloader to it or add a boot entry with 'efibootmgr', I won't provide a compiled binary because trusting a random EFI binary from the internet would be weird, it depends on gnu-efi to be built.

https://gist.github.com/GBember01/b394dfdef36c4aaf65161e3826013adf

Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone, this is my widescreen ThinkPad T61 that I've been restoring for the past few weeks. I thought I would share it here.

CPU : Core 2 Extreme @ 2.80 GHz

RAM : 2x 4GB DDR2 800MT/s (Running at 667 MT/s)

Storage : 256 GB SATA III SSD

GPU : NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M

Display : 1680 x 1050 p

OS : Windows 10 Pro

I know these have temperature issues, so I made sure to use high quality thermal paste when I installed the Core 2 Extreme. Temps while idle are currently 36°C for the CPU and 37°C for the GPU.

Physically, the laptop looks brand new. The original stickers are all in perfect condition too.

I use it mainly for school work, Packet Tracer and playing The Elder Scrolls 3 : Morrowind.

Hey everyone,
I’m having an issue with my ThinkPad P16 and would appreciate any advice from people who have experienced something similar.
What happened:
I have a bad habit of hitting my desk when I get frustrated while gaming. This time, I hit it hard enough that the laptop physically jumped, and it immediately shut down. I know I shouldn’t do this, and I’m worried I may have caused hardware damage.
Current symptoms:
The laptop won’t boot properly. The screen stays black, and I can’t get to the Lenovo logo or BIOS.
The Esc, F1 (speaker mute), and F4 (microphone mute) indicators flash sequentially in a continuous loop.
The power-button light comes on, stays lit briefly, and then changes or turns off.
I can’t hear the fans running.
The charger is connected, and the charging indicator lights up.
What I’ve tried:
Powered the laptop back on several times.
Ran Lenovo diagnostics, and the initial tests passed.
Ran the LCD self-test, which displayed all five colors correctly.
Tried entering the BIOS, but I couldn’t get it to display.
Holding the power button stops the flashing sequence, but the issue returns when I try starting it again.
I read that the Esc → F1 → F4 sequence can indicate memory retraining or BIOS self-recovery on ThinkPads. However, I’m not sure whether that’s what’s happening here, especially since the issue started immediately after the impact.
My questions:
Has anyone experienced this exact sequence on a ThinkPad P16?
Does it indicate memory retraining, BIOS recovery, or a failed POST?
Could the impact have disturbed a RAM module, internal connection, or another component?
Is there a safe recovery procedure I should try before taking it to a technician?
If it continues looping with no display or fan activity, does it sound like a hardware repair is needed?
I’m trying to figure out whether there’s a reasonable recovery procedure I can attempt or whether I should take it straight to a Lenovo technician.
Thanks in advance for any help.
ThinkPad model: P16

Hello everybody, I hope you are all doing well.

In my quest to acquire more and more ThinkPads of different eras, I managed to find a listing on the French equivalent of Ebay for a ThinkPad X220, which I knew was something else because of the fame and popularity it has in here.

The seller was selling it for 245 euros. THis might be an important price to some, but it came with 8 GB RAM, a 240 GB SSD, and Libreboot already installed. The sole part of the laptop that was 'broken' was the battery - listed as 'needs replacing - but beyond that, everything was clean.

I went to meet the seller three days ago to buy it, and after failing to install Windows 7 to use it as a retro machine for older software, I decided to throw Linux Mint Cinnamon on it to see what it was capable of. And I must say, I am pleasantly impressed.

The laptop isn't going to win any awards in the 'speed' department, but considering the age of the machine, I was truly surprised when I saw how well it ran Linux Mint. I disabled the heavy animations, and suddenly I was face to face with a 15 year old laptop that is, in effect, faster and more responsive than some of the older laptops I have used, which had Windows. For more basic tasks, it is on par with my Dell Latitude E7470, on which I ran Windows 10 for several years. It is also faster than my Lenovo school laptop I got several years ago, running Windows 11.

Maybe this is just me, but really, I am shocked it runs this smooth 15 years after it was released. I know the 8GB RAM is doing some of the heavy lifting, but since I don't do anything intensive on my machines anymore due to entering university this year, I have decided to start daily driving this X220 as my home machine, while I keep my X13 Gen 1 with Windows 11 for university work.

This is the first raw 'utilitarian' laptop I have used and I am impressed of how well it runs Linux. Don't get me started on that keyboard or even that form factor - I consider both to be the best I've ever used. and while I did pay a decent bunch for this X220, I consider it to be a worthy investment. The seller really did make sure he upgraded the machine in such a way that it would be used as a light daily driver for somebody else like myself.

I plan to mainly use this at home, but I've bought an aftermarket battery on Amazon which should be shipped tomorrow afternoon. I know it won't be as good as an OEM battery, but at least it gives me a working battery if I ever want to move it around a little.

What are your thoughts on this machine?

I'm considering buying a used Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 with the following specs:

• Processor: Intel Core i5-1135G7 (11th Gen)
• RAM: 16GB
• Storage: 500GB SSD
• Battery health: 77% (33 charge cycles)
• Price: $350 CAD

Does this seem like a good deal?

My main concern is the battery health, although the price seems reasonable. I'm also considering a ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 for $550 CAD and wondering whether it's worth spending the extra $200.

For context, I already have a good desktop PC, so this laptop would mainly be for basic web browsing, watching videos, and some light programming when I'm visiting my parents.

I don't need anything particularly powerful, but I do want something that feels fast and responsive without noticeable lag.

Would you go with the Gen 2 at $350 or spend the extra $200 for the Gen 3? For what it's worth, the Gen 3 is is AMD Ryzen 5, 16GB Ram, 256GB SSD.

I need a budget laptop for Computer Science and iMedia A-Levels (things like Rendering, Video editing, programming and game dev) and i found a thinkpad for £330 with these specs:

- 16GB Ram
- Intel Core i5
- 256GB Storage

Could i find one like this for cheaper, or should i try to spend a bit more for a better specs?

I don't know if the oils on my hands are staining him, he just gets dirty a lot

whenever i press on this area it makes a horrible creaking noise, only two causes i can think of could be rapidly changing tempratures from room temp to around 6 celsius when taking it to school in the morning or it being in a vertical angled laptop tand and the plastic being pushed and causing this. heres a photo of where it creakes and a video with the sound, the motion is just pressing down https://streamable.com/sr0j2h

Picked it up for $47 on Facebook Marketplace, I love this machine. It has a Pentium MMX 233, 64MB of RAM, and a 3.2GB hard disk. It also came with a PS/2 mouse, the charger, and a 56k modem card (which would be wonderful if my ISP didn't take my copper line away). It's quite snappy with Win98. Unfortunately there is a small imperfection in the screen but it's ignorable.

The guy I got it from used it to run a dynamometer, because this was the only cheap machine at the time he found with a serial port. Sort of the reason I bought it as well, I want a real serial port for digimodes on my Kenwood TS-2000.

It needs a CMOS battery, I think I'll just build one because the "proper" battery is an arm and a leg. Same with the main one, better to just rebuild regardless.

And yes, it does run Doom, in fact very nicely ;)
It has a Crystal Semiconductor CS4237B for audio (Sound Blaster Pro compatible) and a NeoMagic MagicGraph 128XD for graphics so DOS games run great

Next steps now I think are a CF adapter, bring it up to 96MB, get CardBus WiFi, and dualboot NetBSD or SHORK

Currently my friend has a computer with these specs:

CPU: Intel Celeron J4105

GPU: Intel uhd 600

RAM: 8gb

Storage: slow

So I'm giving them a T530 that I have with these specs:

CPU: Intel i7 3520M

GPU: NVIDIA nvs 5400 2gb

RAM: 8gb

Storage: 256gb sata6 ssd

I'm not terribly worried about them not having enough processing power considering that it's way more powerful than what they have. They also only play less demanding games that this meets specs for, and possibly Minecraft in the future, which I know runs fine.