T42 won't boot from hard disk

[drfrag]

Hi, i've been given a thinkpad t42. The original hard drive had died and they replaced it with an ibm 10 gb hard drive.
Now i've swapped another hard drive from a toshiba laptop, a 60 gb hitachi travelstar drive. I've put another 20 gb fujitsu drive from a hp compaq in the satellite a20.
The t42 won't boot win xp now. I know that's to be expected but instead of getting the usual stop blue screen after windows starts loading i just get a black screen with a blinking cursor. Ctrl+Alt+Del works. The data in the drive can be accessed from a mini xp boot cd, also it passes hitachi drive fitness test but it won't boot.
The same thing happens on the toshiba, i've tried paragon adaptive restore there first without luck. I use that when i move hard disks to a different machine and motherboard. I've tried the boot repair option as well (besides adjusting the os) but it didn't help.
I don't want to erase the hard drive, i want to repair the windows installation. I don't know what's going on. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

[dr_st]

Welcome to the forum.

So the drive now does not boot anywhere, including in the system where it previously worked?

Do you have a Windows XP installation CD? You can load up the recovery console and try to repair the boot sector / boot loader from there.

[drfrag]

Thanks, in the old system i guess it would boot but i'm not going to move the drive again.
I tried repairing the mbr from paragon (fixmbr now warns about non standard mbr) and then fixboot from the recovery console, even repairing the windows installation by reinstalling but still the same.
I'm not even sure that formatting the drive would work. The data is still fine. Is this some kind of bios limitation?

[ajkula66]

Is this some kind of bios limitation?

No.

It's just that ThinkPads have a non-standard MBR, and conventional fixes in this respect will fail 9 out of 10 times.

You need either an XP install disk, or a set of recovery media. Even if you were to fix the current installation, the system would never be running in a stable manner and/or with its full potential.

[GomJabbar]

I believe you have run into a hard drive geometry issue since the hard drive came from a Toshiba. See the following for an explanation:

http://radified.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB. ... 9708/14#14

[drfrag]

Thanks, i think that's the problem. It it was the custom mbr (not sure yet) i think i could use the master boot record repair kit.

I've been experimenting with the toshiba first (non valuable data on that hdd). Seems that hp and ibm use 240 heads and toshiba 255. Paragon gives the following output (it's messy and they don't even know where they are, they killed themselves with the fix boot on all drives option and had to write the paragon iso to the flash drive again):

BIOS parameters:
Cyls: 2432
Heads: 255
TrkSect: 63
Final parameters:
Cyls: 2432
Heads: 255
TrkSect: 63
TotSect: 39070080
EBIOSf: 0
Quaternary Controller - Master drive
Drive 128 is an ATAPI device
CHS: 16383(16383), 16(16), 63(63)
Total Sectors: 16514064(39070080)
Model number : FUJITSU MHN2200AT
Firmware rev : 7255
Serial number: NH10T1A15RPY
Drive Type : Fixed

FDISK>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
FDISK> raw info, type : 0x07
FDISK> raw info, bootable : Yes
FDISK> raw info, start cylinder : 0 (0x0000)
FDISK> raw info, start side : 1 (0x0001)
FDISK> raw info, start sector : 1 (0x0001)
FDISK> raw info, end cylinder : 1023 (0x03FF)
FDISK> raw info, end side : 254 (0x00FE)
FDISK> raw info, end sector : 63 (0x003F)
FDISK> raw info, relative sectors: 63 (0x0000003F)
FDISK> raw info, size : 39054897 (0x0253EE31)
FDISK> primary : Yes
FDISK> parent start : 0 (0x00000000)
FDISK> parent end : 39070079 (0x0254297F)
FDISK> use CHS : No
FDISK> use EBIOS : No
FDISK> unpacked start : 63 (0x0000003F)
FDISK> unpacked end : 39054959 (0x0253EE6F)
FDISK> unpacked start cylinder: 0 (0x0000)
FDISK> unpacked start side : 1 (0x0001)
FDISK> unpacked start sector : 1 (0x0001)
FDISK> unpacked end cylinder : 2431 (0x097F)
FDISK> unpacked end side : 14 (0x000E)
FDISK> unpacked end sector : 63 (0x003F)
MBR sector log: Drive - 0X80, sector - 0 (0)
Boot FSys BCyl BHd BS FCyl FHd FS AbsSect TotSect
1. Yes 0X7 0 1 1 1023 254 63 63 39054897
0 1 1 3FF FE 3F 3F 253EE31
2. No 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
3. No 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
4. No 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

OEM ID: NTFS
SectSz: 512
ClstSz: 8
ResSect: 0
FatCnt: 0
RootEnts: 0 0
WTotSect: 0 0
Media: 0XF8
FatSect: 0 0
TrkSect: 63
HeadCnt: 240
HidSect: 63 0X3F
LTotSect: 0 0
DriveN: 0X80
ExtSig: 0X80
BSign: 0XAA55
NTFS BPB:
TotSect: 39054896 0X000000000253EE30
FstFRec: 786432 0X00000000000C0000
MFTDbl: 2440931 0X0000000000253EE3
FRcClst: 246

Drive name: C:
FS version: 0X00000301
OS found: Windows 2000

I find surprising that i can access the data in the partition fine from mini xp.
So i guess i need to reformat the drive right? And a standard win xp installation disk will do. I used the same xp disk on the compaq and the toshiba. Perhaps i should install win 7 instead.
I've found this but it's a bit confusing and seems wrong:
viewtopic.php?t=91802#p601129

[shawross]

So i guess i need to reformat the drive right? And a standard win xp installation disk will do. I used the same xp disk on the compaq and the toshiba. Perhaps i should install win 7 instead.

It depends on what you want out of the T42. To run Windows 7 you should have 2GB of ram and a GPU better than the ATI 7500.

The T42 was designed to run XP and it's a perfect fit but if you want to access the internet maybe a light Linux distro might suit.

[drfrag]

I've checked the thinkpad with diskinfo and the bios says the hitachi drive has 240 heads, according to partinfo the partition has 255 heads.
I think paragon tried to fix the partition in the toshiba and failed.
Now i guess i need to format the drive and install the os from scratch, i can't think of another solution.

I've upgraded the ram to 1.5 gb and that would be acceptable for win 7. I could use the xp driver for the ati 7500. The main problem here is the hard disk capacity. I originally planned to use the existing xp installation.
The laptop is in good shape, battery wear is @80% however.