Unrecognized Harddrive in IBM Thinkpad600x

[duff8402]

Recently bought an IBM thinkpad 600x for a friend as a gift. Granted it's not the best piece of machinery in the world, but it will get her by for what she wants. Came without an operating system on it, so I tried to load XP Pro. CDROM was not bootable, so I took the hard drive out and put it in my Dell laptop and loaded XP Pro on it like that. Everything installed fine and everything works fine. Moved the hard drive back to the IBM, will not boot. Shows the "IBM THINKPAD" screen then it just goes to a flashing cursor. Not even a prompt, just a cursor. Took the hard drive back out, put it back in the Dell, started up fine... Swapped it back again, same thing. Tried to get into BIOS to see if it was even recognizing the hard drive. BIOS errored out, can't get into BIOS... That's all the further I've gotten with it. Any suggestions from anyone?

[Ritchie]

I think the issue is that XP is not transferrable by simply moving the hard drive between computers.

With Windows 9x, you could take a HDD from one PC, put it in another, and Windows would redetect all the 'new' hardware, and then in many cases run fine.

With Windows 2000 and XP, it does not seem to transfer in this manner, and an O/S re-install is required.

Sorry I cannot be of further help.

[KachiWachi]

Did you try using the floppy boot disk set for XP to get things started for the OS install on the IBM?

[duff8402]

The IBM doesn't have a floppy on it unfortunately. But Ritchie, I've heard that from a few different people. That's beginning to sound like the problem. I appreciate your input, both of you.

[T0SH]

This is how it is done

Press and hold the F1 key while you switch on the Thinkpad ,this will get you to the BIOS setup screen, click the Startup icon ,then the Power-on icon,check the boot sequence is set to
1 FDD, 2 CDROM, 3 HDD-1
if not click the Reset Icon and make it so
next click OK, Exit, Restart then OK

With the XP CD in the drive (as soon as you switch on or restart) keep tapping on the spacebar about once a second (you should see a prompt to press any key to boot to CD but it is easy to miss) XP setup will start

on the subsequent reboots you may see the "boot to CD prompt" ignore this

Cheers HC

[buckeye669]

Here is my problem. My thinkpad 600 will not go to Easy Setup pushing F1 when turning it on. I have repeatedly disconnected and reconnected the good new cmos battery. Infrequently, I get to the set date and time screen. When I enter the date and time and press OK, I go to a weird screen with ON | OFF on it and no cursor. Most times the laptop just tries to power up and does nothing but "click" the floppy drive.. Hard drive is OK--I hooked it to another machine to see.

I have tied tricking the machine--removing CD drive, a memory card, etc. No tricks have worked to get to the setup menu.

[T0SH]

When you get to this screen ("I go to a weird screen with ON | OFF ") Switch off the Thinkpad by holding the on slider switch until it shuts down , this action saves the setting changes to the CMOS memory, then press hold the F1 key while you switch on the Thinkpad it should take you into the BIOS easy setup , if this does not work it must be the TP has other faults

Cheers HC

[buckeye669]

The On | Off screen appears right after I put in the date and time and click OK with the bird-mounse cursor. As I said, there is no way of clicking anything at that point. And the computer is frozen then and I have to remove the ac cord and the battery. I cannot recall if I have immediately tried the power on with the F!.

If the computer is freezing, maybe the changes don't get into the BIOS?

[T0SH]

Try this ,

Power on the Thinkpad, let it boot to the screen where you can set the time using the bird cursor, at this point do not try to change anything just push back and hold (the momentary action push button type) power switch (on the left side just behind the modem connector) until it shuts down , this is what the unclickable screen with the I / O icon is prompting you to do , (if at this point you unplug the power cord and remove the battery any changes you have made will not be saved) , only after saving of the correct time and date settings, will you be allowed into easy BIOS setup by holding down F1 while you switch on

Here is a link to where you can download the user guide for the TP 600 series this details the layout of the user controls

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... JJR-3SUKTX

Cheers HC