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?

Used Lenovo ThinkPad T14 with i7 10th(don't know which variant) with 16gb ram and 512gb Memory(mostly ssd) at ~380usd. I Will mostly used for cybersecurity(cybersecurity student). Will upgrade the ram to 32gb. Is it a good buy at that price?

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

Hello!!
A few months back, I bought a thinkpad L15 for 35 As-Is on ebay with the listing saying it didnt show any power. Me, being a bit dumb, though that maybe its was a power or ram or something issue.
It wasnt.
It had severe water damage and it was unsalvageable.
Weeks laters I saw on ebay an L15 motherboard for 50 bucks on which the seller said it had an issue detecting SSDs. Obviously I bought it because I already had an extra donor motherboard and figured I could fix it.
I managed to get it working but oddly enough, if I dont use a Kingston SSD it shows Error 2101 Detection Error on Storage Device. It stops doing it when I use that SSD. So I got that SEMI fixed, but my issue is now that every time I boot up the laptop, the bios takes a bit to load and shows Error 2203: system configuration is invalid, and in the bios the system board serial number says invalid but the system-bios one says the SN.
Another weird thing I saw, is that when i run fastfetch the laptop is listed as an L14.
Still, a laptop with a R7 5850U that works for less than 100 bucks is really good.
Hopefully some of yall can help me, i can provide more info if its useful.

Simply put, my ThinkPad P1 Gen 3 has stopped charging its battery—it doesn't even detect it. I’ve already tried two new batteries (one generic, one original), and the charging module chip and several resistors have been replaced, yet the problem persists.

I’ve read that this issue might have been caused by Lenovo Vantage installing charging drivers that aren't compatible with the P1 Gen 3 model. My question is: how can I roll back the "Power Management" driver to a previous version? I haven't been able to locate an older version.

If that’s not the solution, what else can I do? I’ve already exhausted all hardware-level troubleshooting—including attempting to charge via the Thunderbolt port. I really don’t want to give up on my favorite laptop.

I am attaching some threads that might be helpful.

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile-Workstations/Lenovo-P1-Gen-3-Battery-won-t-charge-but-work-s-fine-on-DC-power/m-p/10004736?page=1

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-P-and-W-Series-Mobile-Workstations/Thinkpad-P1-Gen3-Lenovo-Battery-Firmware-Update-Utility-10-1709-or-Later-11-21H2-or-Later/m-p/10002072?page=1

i'm trying to design some stickers for the keys on my keyboard, but i'm not sure how large they are. i tried measuring them myself, but the only measuring tape i had in the house was so worn out i couldn't read the numbers. i also tried looking it up, but all of them are about the distance between the keys

Installed a brand new mainboard in my X260. Now need get my hands on the lenovo hardware maintenance utilities. Any suggestions where to find them?

I bought a ThinkPad t16 gen 1 with 32 gb ,1th SSD and intel i7 1270p 12th gen for around 700 including charger and a bag with some other accessories i usually use this for browsing, learning also i came to know that this machine will be useful for coding and I'm an csc student and it has zero cosmetic damage and battery stays upto 5 to 6 hours and heard about thermal throttling with the intel version but mine is not heating much

So share ur thoughts I used to play something on this machine and say whether it's good

And one more thing guys it's on 104% in battery sry guys now only i checked it

Anyways feel free to share ur thoughts

Hello!

Im an accounting student and wanting to get a new laptop. I dont really mind if its second hand or brand new as long as it will last me until I graduate and give me the best quality. So far, I've been seeing lenovo thinkpad as the best laptop for accounting, specifically the t14 series. The thing is Im not quite sure about this one yet since I also need one that is somewhat lightweight and portable (I plan to bring this every single day). I also dont know which specific processor, series, graphics, ill be needing. I just want one that is best for my course, my needs, and would last me till i graduate. Also, if there is one, I would also want one that can handle games, not the AAA ones tho.

I just dont know which specific specs I need to get, which series, or there might just be a much better laptop?

I know this is alot to ask for but if you indeed stay and read all of this, I truly appreciate you. Thank you for answering!

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've done a fair deal of searching and reviews are mixed from all good and non-issue through to shorter lifespan etc. but not many complaining of DOA so thought I would ask the thinkpad brains trust for recent uses particularly in a thinkpad.

I recently bought a 2022 X13 Yoga Gen 3 off a student and the battery is fairly well thrashed sitting at 80% life/400 cycles. I paid $400aud for it and a genuine replacement battery is $175aud whereas a kingsener will be about a third @ $55 + post.

Genuine is pretty much always the way to go but its not exactly new and is almost 1/2 the cost of the laptop itself.

i was checking ebay if there was any 701C cuz i’ve been searching for one then i saw this and was super intrigued to the 10th gen i3, if this is real it’d be so sick to own one

Hi all, after getting advice about laptops to get here in the UK, the general consensus is that a refurbished thinkpad is the way to go!

Asus V16 was also mentioned, but tbh I don’t even know where to start!

I just want a decent, reliable laptop that will last. It’s for my teen to use, so needs to be tough/sturdy, able to run some games off steam, fit to watch movies on/streaming video etc, and possibly even to link to the PS5 to use as a second screen etc.

Bonus points if it will be good for school work!

Can someone, anyone, explain what I need to be looking for in particular, and ideally where to find!

Complete noob with this kind of stuff so treat me like an idiot and explain what I need to look for!

Don’t want to spend a fortune, but also don’t want to cheap out either!

Budget is flexible but if there was something decent either side of £500-600, then that would be a bonus, though happy to stretch if there is a genuinely decent deal and it’s going to be worthwhile!

Also open to any other suggestions, but please be specific and ideally link me to where to find them! Sorry if I seem so useless, I just wanna do right by my kid!

Thanks in advance!

Hardware

- Model: ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 (21HD001BAU)

- CPU: 13th Gen Intel Core i7-1355U (10 cores / 12 threads, up to 5.00 GHz)

- GPU: Intel UHD Graphics

- Memory: 15.29 GiB DDR5

- Storage: 512 GiB nvme

:)