Major improvements !!!
I took the hard disc out of the Thinkpad laptop and put an old 250GB hard drive in a powered USB gismo and lo... the install went just fine !
I think the Thinkpad has issues unique to itself for the internal drive, but I could be wrong. About to try and install on an SD card.
There are some APP for the thinkpad but not yet investigated what they do.
I found this 250GB hard drive would run just fine on any PC I had laying about which didn't have a hard disc in ! That opens up its uses even more !
Many thanks to all who have helped me !!!!!
Tim