T42 IBM restore failed

[kumarr79]

Hi everyone,

I have an IBM T42 laptop that I got in 2005. I tried to do a "restore to factory setting". I'm assuming you guys know what I'm talking about. Basically I pushed the "Access IBM" button during boot and then used the tool to do a system restore. The restore process seemed to go through ok. It restarted and then a number of BATCH files ran to complete the restore process.

The next time it restarted however, Windows complained of errors on the disk. If I didn't let the disk check run then the boot process would abort with the blue screen of death and a message about "IRQ less than or equal" or something like that. If I let the disk check run, it would find a huge number of corrupted files which would try to fix. After this though nothing seemd to work - the mouse, keyboard etc didn't respond. There were no icons on the desktop. It was as if there was nothing on the computer.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

Would it make sense for me to try to buy a copy of Windows XP (the OS that was on the laptop before the restore) and then install it to see if that works? Or is this a hardware related problem?

I have tried to start in safe mode after getting the blue screen of death but I didn't really have an idea of what to fix.

Another factor that may or may not be relevant is that my computer was infected with malware (Trojans and Ad clickers) before I did the restore. Is it possible that somehow my recovery partition got corrupted and so the system restore did not work?

Any ideas would be helpful.
Thanks!
Rajesh

[Harryc]

If it's the original hard drive it is 4 years old at this point. With the problems you've described I'd suspect that first. In safe mode go into device manager and look under 'disk drives'. Google the model given, then go to the manufacturers website and download and run their diagnostic program. You may have to download and create the bootable media on another machine.

[ideal-pc]

Hi Kumarr79,

Have had this a few times. If I remember correctly IBM used to use Hitatchi Travelstar drives? If so the go to this link: http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

About half way down the page on the left hand side you will see a link to create a self booting drive fitness test CD. Create this on another machine if you have one & run the tests, it is worth it as this will tell you not only if your drive is faulty but also if it can be saved, although sadly i doubt that part

[kumarr79]

Thank you guys for the helpful tips.

I did download and create a bootable CD for the drive fitness test tool. I ran the tool and it did not find any errors on the drive which was kind of surprising. The return code was "ox00" which I looked up in the DFT tool help to mean "no errors"

So what else could be going on? I have to say that I was able to start my computer 2 times in the last few days without getting the blue screen of death. Even when it starts up, there were no icons on the desktop which tells me that the computer was not restored to the original state I got it in - the original state would have a lot of IBM utilities installed such as the CD writer software etc.

These two times when the computer booted, I was able to access the internet via the wireless connection so that worked. However I realized the I cannot install some programs - for example I installed Mozilla but when I tried to install the Adobe reader or the Flash player it would download the file but then error out with a messsage saying "XYZ.exe could not be run" or something to that effect.

Of course if I restart the computer almost invariably it does not boot but gives the blue screen of death during boot (except the two times I mentioned)

This thing has left me completely confused. If the hard drive is OK, would it make sense for me to install a fresh copy of windows from scrath and just forget about the IBM installation?

My computer is 4-4.5 yrs old but I used to take care to shut it down or hibernate it when not it use so the hard drive may still have some life left. On an average I used my computer only for 3-5 hrs a day. What do you think?

Rajesh