T43-2686-DGU BIOS Not Consistently Seeing HD

[andrej770]

I have a Thinkpad t43 - 2686-DGU with a Hitachi 60GB HD (HTS726060M9AT00). The laptop is less than a year old and still under warranty.

The problem I am having is recently, when the laptop is powered on, the BIOS occasionally does not see the HD. I will get the "Operating System Not Found" error. I go into BIOS, set everything back to defaults (although I have never been in there to change anything in the first place), then save (F10) and exit. Sometimes the BIOS finds the HD, sometimes it does not. It may take me 5-6 times for the BIOS to finally see the HD. When it does it boots fine. I updated the BIOS to 1.27 and updated the embedded controller also, thinking a reflash of the BIOS might help. Nothing! It still takes 4-5 times or more to get it going again. I have a complete backup of the HD so my data is safe. I was thinking it might be a MBR issue. But even a MBR corruption would not prevent the BIOS from seeing the HD. I am now thinking either the laptop is faulty or the HD is faulty.

Has anyone else experienced anything similar to this? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

[draco2527]

I would start by installing another HD and see if you can recreate the problem there!

If you are still having problems with the HD then you know it is a motherboard issue!!

On the plus side if you need to contact IBM/Lenovo then you have most steps completed and you can tell the "tech" that....save you some time on the phone.