Thinkpads Forum

What if you don't have a floppy drive? Can you run it from a CD? Flash drive? Other? Not that I have a problem that requires me to run the "HMD", but in the event that I do . . .

I am a bit rusty on my DOS, but I wonder if you put the following line in an Autoexec.bat file, would it execute on bootup? I certainly don't have a 'Spare ThinkPad' to try it on.

start cfgupt.exe

GomJabbar wrote:I am a bit rusty on my DOS, but I wonder if you put the following line in an Autoexec.bat file, would it execute on bootup? I certainly don't have a 'Spare ThinkPad' to try it on.

start cfgupt.exe

I don't think it'll work as COMMAND.COM runs the menu, it never goes into "DOS." If you put in the disk after you bootup on an MSDOS disk you will get an error saying something like, "this program cannot be run from DOS." (I'm taking that from memory of when I tried running the other programs like that before.) I haven't tried booting to DR DOS, the system the maintenance disk uses, and trying that method. I might just try it though as I just found a DR DOS boot image on the web today.

CFGUPDT.EXE will run from a DOS command prompt. However, there are required parameters. The screen displays this message:

Configuration Information Area Update Utility V1.01
Copyright(C) IBM Corporation 2003, 2004. All rights reserved.
Usage: CFGUPDT W [/ECA=ECAnn|PERnn|OTHnn] [/BLDDATE=RTC|mm-dd-yyyy]
..............................[/BRANDNAME=["Brand Name String"]] [PRDID=nn]
...........................R [/ECA] [/BLDDATE] [/BRANDMANE] [/PRDID] [/ALL]
...........................D [/ECA=ECAnn|PERnn|OTHnn] [/BLDDATE] [/BRANDMANE] [/PROID]
...........................V [/BRANDNAME=["Brand Name String"]] [PRDID=nn]
...........................N [/ECA] [/BRANDMANE] [/PRDID]

The items on the disk regarding the hard drive don't seem to work at all on my laptop but I also have a disk overlay installed to fool the BIOS and allow the drive to work in my old machine so I tink that's why.

I actually have an older disk that came with a used 755CD I bought some time back which I found to be real useful a few months ago when I decided to use a video card from a 760XD and a motherboard from an XGA 760E to convert my SVGA model 760ED to an XGA model. I used the disk to make the motherboards serial number match the case and I also was able to change the motherboards internal ID code so it would be that of a 760ED XGA (9546-u9a) instead of a 760E (9546-u9b.)

I am not even sure that 'start' is a legal command for an autoexec.bat file. But if it is, I think you could add an autoexec.bat file to the disk, and it would be executed on bootup. AFAIK, config.sys and autoexec.bat are always executed on bootup if present. I don't have any of my DOS references at my present location to check on the 'start' command.