Thinkpads Forum

After deleting several unused bookmarks from favorites, did the recycle bin/delete & closed down. Next time i attempted normal boot up, an 'explorer' message said 'illegal operation' and would shut down. also got similar message in msoffice toolbar box.
Noted a message during boot-up attempt that a file related to system.ini was missing and needed to run scandisk. Ran scandisk numerous times, due to statement that there was a problem with one of the drives. At one point, I inadvertantly hit the Fn F12 keys while trying a boot disk. Now at startup menu, (which will not allow me to get to the dos prompt), I get the message, "The hibernation file cannot be created on the external hard disk (secondary disk) or the hard disk with the disk compression system".
When I run the 'easy setup program', and perform 'test', The FDD-1, and Disp. are not shown as ok, as are all other items on the test.Have a new generic win95 program disk, which I attempted to load at one point, only to have it reject because of key code, (it was brand new, but not ibm specific.) Have boot disk.
Have none of the original utility setup diskettes. Have the original thinkpad manual.
Feel recovery could be possible if could get to dos prompt, but am blocked at this point, with fast blinking cursor at upper left when I try to go via startup menu, but cursor will not accept command.
About ready to surrender, but wanted to post for possible suggestions. Hope am in the right forum. thanks. bk

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

For the sounds of it, you may have a dead (or mostly dead) hard drive. I recently worked on a 365XD for my wife's friend. She wanted to know what it would take to get it running again. When turned on, there was a clicking and surging noise from the hard drive and then an error message. It somehow started working again after I had removed and re-installed the drive. You may have a similar problem. Are there any error messages/number being displayed at any time during the boot process?

Thank you--only message now is re: hibernation shown in my original post. prior to the 'starting windows 95' , a line shows :
"024192 kb ok". thats all..

Prior to this, when I got the explorer message, the statement as follows displayed:
Explorer caused an exception c0000006H in module WININET.DLL at 013F: 70214250
Registers: CS=013f eip=702214250 etc, etc, etc------
(it listed 10 or more lines of (binary?) code-like numerals. )

this is all I 'm getting---now: A flashing cursor - after the hibernation message. Oh, I did pull the bios battery to try to re-set, but that didn't seem to do anything.
thanks. bk