T42 doesn't recognize hard drive

[arabianights]

hi,

i purchased a used t42 on ebay to replace my broken t42. http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=116666

it does not have hard drive and but does boot into bios according to the seller. so i took the hard drive with winXP out from original laptop and inserted into the one i just bought. but it doesn't seem to recognize the hard drive.

am i missing something here? or is it having hard drive booting issue?

[RealBlackStuff]

Buying a machine of which the seller only claims "it boots into BIOS", is asking for trouble!
With 99% certainty that machine is suffering from a loose Southbridge.
Enough postings in the forum about this to fill a book or two...

[ajkula66]

Two things here, apart from RBS has already stated...

1) Do you have the hard drive in its caddy secured by all four screws, inserted face down and locked into its spot with the HDD cover and its retaining screw?

2) Are both machines of the same size? If the old one is 14" and the new one 15", you need a different HDD cover for the drive to actually reach the connection point on the 15" model...

Good luck and let us know.

[arabianights]

Two things here, apart from RBS has already stated...

1) Do you have the hard drive in its caddy secured by all four screws, inserted face down and locked into its spot with the HDD cover and its retaining screw?

2) Are both machines of the same size? If the old one is 14" and the new one 15", you need a different HDD cover for the drive to actually reach the connection point on the 15" model...

Good luck and let us know.

The model no. is T42 2378fzu, and it's got a 15" screen, my old laptop has a 14" screen, I didn't know that hard drives of these two aren't interchangeable. maybe I should take out the moB and install on the old machine to see if that work. should I be aware any other security concerns with thinkpads moB and hard drives?

[MisterB]

You just need need the right drive cover that has the extension for a 15" T42.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-IBM-Thinkpa ... 2339fd155b

Less than $5 and about 5 minutes and you should be good to go.

[ajkula66]

^^^^^^^

Exactly. MisterB has given you the correct advice.

[arabianights]

You just need need the right drive cover that has the extension for a 15" T42.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-IBM-Thinkpa ... 2339fd155b

Less than $5 and about 5 minutes and you should be good to go.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I purchased the cover from the link and tried again:
this time the hard drive was recognized by the bios but I still can't boot the os. it throws 'incorrect time/date, checksum error' as well as blank screen afterwards at me.

the 80G hard drive has winXP installed and I verified it's good and can boot into OS in my T23.

any ideas?

[ajkula66]

Two things here:

1) Go into BIOS (press F1 on boot), set the correct time/date, press F10 to save and exit. Your CMOS battery might be bad, but that's like $5 on feebay.

2) The hardware between T23 and any T4x is different enough to stop XP from booting. Once you set everything up in regards to time and date, you may want to do a fresh install with the HDD in T42.

Good luck.

[arabianights]

Two things here:

1) Go into BIOS (press F1 on boot), set the correct time/date, press F10 to save and exit. Your CMOS battery might be bad, but that's like $5 on feebay.

2) The hardware between T23 and any T4x is different enough to stop XP from booting. Once you set everything up in regards to time and date, you may want to do a fresh install with the HDD in T42.

the hard drive was from my broken T42, as I mentioned in the first post, it's not from t23.

I already tried setting time/date, as well as booting different OS from cd/dvd media, it takes forever for the cd/dvd drive to read the installation cd, tried both windows as well as Linux boot cd with no luck.

[ajkula66]

the hard drive was from my broken T42, as I mentioned in the first post, it's not from t23.

Well, you also wrote:

the 80G hard drive has winXP installed and I verified it's good and can boot into OS in my T23.

Which is why I wrote what I did. Once again, I'd be skeptical about a HDD that boots in a T23 booting in a T4x.

I already tried setting time/date, as well as booting different OS from cd/dvd media, it takes forever for the cd/dvd drive to read the installation cd, tried both windows as well as Linux boot cd with no luck.

Swap the CMOS battery and try again. The next step would be to try a different media drive. How much RAM do you have in that system, BTW?