Thinkpads Forum

I replaced my CMOS battery. I have a supervisor password, so after replacing it and powering on, it asked for the password, which I entered, set the clock and clicked OK.

Now the machine won't boot. It powers on, shows the memory count, IBM logo, ThinkPad logo, beeps and shows a blinky cursor, just like it always did.

But then there's a higher-pitched beep, the screen turns off, there's a wait and another high beep, and the machine starts over.

Holding F1 at power-on does nothing. Removing all devices (RAM, batteries, optical drive, hard disk, PC cards) has no effect. Pressing the reset button has no effect.

Removing the CMOS battery gave the 163, 173 errors and let me set the clock, but still no attempts at booting. Replacing that battery let me set the clock again, and still no booting.

This was on my 600X, but if you've gotten around this on any ThinkPad, I'd like to know how.

Many thanks,
Chris

Looks like it's booting OK but there maybe problems with the operating system or memory? Is the hard disk OK? Can you boot off a floppy or some other device? Not sure what the sequence is for alternate boot devices on a 600X but F12 works on other systems. Reseat memory as well just in case.

It does NOT look like it's booting OK. The hard drive never powers up. I removed all the devices and that normally gives the error that says there are no bootable devices... but it didn't help.

I removed the two memory sticks, so just the 64MB soldered in was present.

Changing the boot order requires access to EZSetup, which I don't have, or holding F12, which I will give a try to, along with trying a floppy and CD boot.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I'm not hopeful.

So hard drive light is not on at all and/or not spinning up? Are any of the other devices being checked (try holding down a key and see if it beeps while its trying to boot).

The beeps are suggesting some sort of problem which then leads to a: (1) reset of the boot sequence, or (2) rebooting (after completing boot sequence). In the case of (1) why would the boot sequence reset itself even if it finds a hardware problem. Normally it just beeps and hangs? In the case of (2), something outside the boot sequence is making the system jump back to the start sequence. Let's hope it's (2) otherwise if none of the devices are active you're in trouble. Even a zombie bios is supposed to return a CRC error. What was that Donald Rumsfeld comment: " I know that there are things I don't know that I should know"

The fact you can set the date/time after draining cmos charge suggests that the eeprom boot program is at least able to check keyboard and interact with it plus get the LCD going. Have you tried draining the cmos charge and then trying the F1 on boot trick? There is something really odd about being able to drain the cmos and being able to get the date/time prompt. A totally cactus bios wouldn't allow you to do that? The problem is probably in refreshing the volatile bios which may be getting into strife when checking the hardware/OS?? This is beyond me...sorry....