Problem with a laptop which hungs up

Hello,

I have just bought an old IBM ThinkPad A20m.
There is a problem with this laptop - it hangs up during
installation of Windows XP or Fedora Core (sometimes when
Fedora's installer initializes from DVD). There is no special
moment, when it hungs up - sometimes during files copying, sometimes
during installation (in different moments) both in Win XP, Fedora and Red
Hat.
Sometimes the power turns off during installation
- especially after I press a button (e.g. "F8"
for accepting license agrement or "F" for formating a partition in Win XP
installer, etc.).
Sometimes, when I boot from Win95 diskette, it hangs or shows "Overflow
during division by zero" several times and then hangs up.

I run memtest86 to see if the memory is correct - and it is correct (the
program
didn't report any errors).

The person I bought the laptop from has said, it is possible that CMOS
(backup) battery
is exhausted.
I checked the battery. Without load it has 2.84 V, and with 500 kOhm
resistor it
also has 2.84 V. ThinkPad's manual says that correct voltage of backup
battery is from
2.5 V to 3.2 V.

What could be the reason, the laptop hangs up?

Thanks in advance for answers.

Robot.

Robot wrote

I have just bought an old IBM ThinkPad A20m.
There is a problem with this laptop - it hangs up during
installation of Windows XP or Fedora Core (sometimes when
Fedora's installer initializes from DVD). There is no special
moment, when it hungs up - sometimes during files copying, sometimes
during installation (in different moments) both in Win XP, Fedora and Red Hat.

Sometimes the power turns off during installation - especially after I press a button
(e.g. "F8" for accepting license agrement or "F" for formating a partition in Win XP
installer, etc.).

Sometimes, when I boot from Win95 diskette, it hangs or shows
"Overflow during division by zero" several times and then hangs up.

I run memtest86 to see if the memory is correct - and it is correct (the program didn't
report any errors).

The person I bought the laptop from has said, it is possible that CMOS (backup) battery
is exhausted.

Shouldnt produce that particular symptom.

I checked the battery. Without load it has 2.84 V, and with 500 kOhm resistor it also
has 2.84 V. ThinkPad's manual says that correct voltage of backup battery is from 2.5 V
to 3.2 V.

What could be the reason, the laptop hangs up?

Can be a lot of things, everything from a dry joint or
cracked trace to a bad connection to the power supply etc.

Does it ever do that when just sitting at say the
setup screen after having booted the XP CD etc ?

Very likely a bad joint or cracked trace etc and the seller knows
damned well its flakey and thats why he was selling it.

From what I've seen, Hanging on install usually means RAM or HDD
issues. Since you have tested the RAM and everything shows ok, that
would leave the HDD.

Have you tried to completely erase the HDD and start from scratch?

Myrrapen wrote:
From what I've seen, Hanging on install usually means RAM or HDD
issues. Since you have tested the RAM and everything shows ok, that
would leave the HDD.

Have you tried to completely erase the HDD and start from scratch?

That shouldnt produce the variable hang points with two different OS installs.

Its much more likely to be something flakey hardware wise on the power side.