T61 BIOS update - how serious is the "brick" risk?

[philburton]

Tuus,

Thanks for this information.  Before I say anything else, I have to say that my first encounter with computing was on an IBM 7040, with $IBSYS, using punch cards of course. When the school upgraded to a 360/50 and 029 card punches, I thought we were really advanced!

I couldn't locate any info on the middleton BIOS on notebookreview.com until I did this Google search:  site: "notebookreivew.com  middleton"  Then it was obvious that middleton is not a company but a user.

Upgrading to SATA 2 for my SSD sounds like worthy thing to do.  I'll have to read those posts in detail to see how this upgrade works.  Nothing rash. 

I have to say that this thread has been very helpful to me.  Obiously it's the people on the forum who make this good.

Thanks.

[philburton]

George

THIS is the kind of information I was looking for:  a known good solution.  Other people have pointed out the risk from using a CD. 

I know that for Windows install software, there are procedures to make a USB flash drive bootable.  It may be possible to apply this approach so that instead of booting the system from a CD, I could boot it from a much more reliable USB flash drive.

This will take some research.  WHEN I get to it, I'll post my results. 

Phil

[TuuS]

It won't be as difficult as you think, you can even run the files directly off your harddrive, you just need to boot a 32bit OS, be it The WinPE grapical enviornment, or just a commandline startup disc,it doesn't matter, the main advantage I see in this is you'll be able to confirm your systems not "busy" when the flash begins.  

If you want a more reliable answer as to what boot OS you can use, goto middletons topic and post a question for him. If you use his bios and like it, send the guy a few $ to his paypal, doesn't have to be a lot, if everyone who likesit paid just a dollar or two I'm sure he'd be very happy, and it would be wellearnned.

[bradtb]

I presently have a T61 (for wife) with a 100GB Hitachi along with another T61 (for me) with a 500GB Seagate - both running WinXP (SP3).

On the wife's machine  -  my plan is to install a Samsung 830 128GB SSD, then do a clean install of Win 7 64 bit.  The drive is SATA 3, but without doing a Middleton BIOS update, I'd be held to SATA 1 speed to the best of my knowledge.

Will Lenovo ever develop T61 BIOS updates that will work in the Win 64 bit arena and open up SATA 2/3 speeds?

I could do the Middleton update in the present WinXP (32) configuration - then do the above upgrade.

Is there any downside to doing a Middleton BIOS update with regard to future T61 BIOS support from Lenovo?

Are there any other concerns I may not have mentioned ?  Do I appear to be on the right course of action to maximize my T61 performance for a couple years ?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide !

>Brad B

[Mornsgrans]

T61 is withdrawn since may 2009. Lenovo won't release any T61 driver- or BIOS updates anymore.

[TuuS]

I've installed the middleton bios on over 100 T61/T61p systems and I haven't had any problem at all. The only real risk is if the machine crashes before the update finishes, in which case your computer won't be able to boot, but this risk is equal with any bios you use. I'd recommend installing the bios before you update as long as your current OS is stable. If it's not, then don't do the update imediately after installing your new drive, use the system for a few days and make sure it's stable first.

As far as updates from lenovo, I don't think it's likely, but if there ever was a new bios update from lenovo, it would disable sata2 support, so I wouldn't use it unless it was to fix or enable something important.