Tech News and Tips

This repair came from a new customer who found me on Google Maps when she googled local computer repair in Gurnee, Illinois. The Google Business listing has a contact link for Facebook Messenger which was my point of contact with this customer.

A little history on the problem

• Blue screen (BSOD) with error code: 0xc00000e9 indicating the “PC needs to be repaired.”
• The system registry file was missing or contains errors.
• The system registry file was missing or contains errors.
• 7-year old is the primary user (plays Roblox) and may have dropped it.
  
• Did hard reset a few times but started to get disk read errors.
• The battery does not hold charge therefore always connected to wall outlet.
• The computer is a refurb and customer thinks it may be lost cause.
  
  

Quick Wiki on the Lenovo ThinkPad T540p laptop

IBM introduced the T series as part of their ThinkPad brand in 2000. The laptop was meant to cater to users working with multiple networks and in different environments. This resulted in the development of the IBM Embedded Security Subsystem. From the time of its inception, the series was designed to balance speed and mobility. Despite a 14.1-inch screen, similar to desktops at the time, the titanium composite body on the laptop was designed to keep the weight as low as possible. Users were also given options to swap components for mobility, like a DVD player, writeable CD drive or numeric keypads.

ThinkPad T series (2000-2008)
The naming convention for the T Series was changed by Lenovo following the release of the ThinkPad T400 and T500 in July 2008. The Txxp models (like the T61p) were replaced by Lenovo’s ThinkPad W Series laptops. Designed as mobile workstations, the W series grew to become Lenovo’s line of performance-oriented laptops. The T series remains Lenovo’s premier line of laptops, aimed at corporate and enterprise users and is praised by users for its outstanding Linux compatibility. The T-p lineup later returned as an irregular T##0p line with only T440p, T460p, T470p and T540p models.

 ThinkPad T series (2008-2020)
The Lenovo ThinkPad 25th anniversary edition was released on Oct. 5, 2017. It was based on the ThinkPad T470, but brought back the classic 7-row keyboard. In 2018, Lenovo introduced the ThinkPad A485, which officially isn’t part of the T Series, but it uses the same housing and has the same build quality as the T480. It offers a 2nd generation AMD Ryzen Pro processor (namely the 2500U), and because of the AMD platform, it lacks Thunderbolt 3 support, but has USB-C support. The A475 had been similarly released in 2017 as a variation of the T470, but with AMD Carrizo or Bristol Ridge. In 2019 Lenovo officially introduced the AMD CPU in the T Series, and differentiated it with the digit 5 at the end of the model number (i.e. T495). From 2020 onwards, the naming scheme changed again, after the letter “T” comes the screen size in inches, then a Generation number (i.e. T14 Gen 1), just like with the X1 series. There is no more differentiation in model number for the AMD processors.