Braindead T42 (New owner not much better)

[barryb001]

Hi,

Thank you for allowing me onto your forum.
I have inheritted a thinkpad T42 from work. It had no hard drive or hard drive caddy.
So I bought a hard drive and shoved it in (no caddy). The hard drive light comes on which I take to be a good sign.
I also bought a new copy of Windows 7 on DVD, and was hoping that I could just put it in the DVD tray and it would boot up from there.
I'm not very knowledgable about these things but I know that you can set the bios startup settings to check the DVD drive, floppy drive, USB etc.
I think that this is all correct.

so what happens is that it says no operating system found. (No surprise there) I press a key and then the screen goes black with a small prompt. And that's it.
It doesn't appear to be bothering with what's in the DVD drive.
I thought maybe there were no drivers for the DVD drive so I've tried plugging an external drive in. But I'm getting out of my depth here too.
So far I've got as far as downloading a tool from HP that is supposed to create make the drive bootable, but after that I get lost. It still says no operating system found, and then goes to the black screen with the flashing prompt in the corner.

So in summary, I have one thinkpad 42, not sure what bits work and what bits don't. I have one Windows DVD, one new hard drive (unformatted), one other laptop that works, and one large headache.

Can you give me any pointers? Maybe I need to start right at the beginning with a diagnostic or something? (Acronis?)

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
Bazza

[Harryc]

Go into BIOS on the startup tab, go into boot devices, and make the CD drive 1st in boot order. You arrange the order by selecting the drive and hitting F5 or F6 to move it up and down in order. Once it's on top, save, exit, reboot.

[Neil]

And/Or while the IBM splash screen is showing press F12 to bring up a menu of boot devices. Select the optical drive and your CD/DVD should boot. BTW, it's very easy to not have all the pins on the HDD hit the right sockets without a caddy. I've had some success going without a caddy, but I've had several failures also.

[rkawakami]

Also, just to make sure, the hard drive in the T42 should be installed "upside down". The label side of the drive needs to be facing downward.

[barryb001]

Many thanks for your replies.
I have ensured that the CD/DVD is the first thing that it looks at.
The drive is upside down, the green HD light came on which I took to be a good sign.

Could it be that the CD/DVD has no drivers? (I mean, this is a brand new unformatted HD that I've put in)
If so, is it possible to boot up from my external usb HDD?

Thanks.

[Temetka]

You don't need drivers for the CD/DVD Drive.

Try this.

Turn the machine on.

Press the F12 key while the IBM screen is displayed.

Tell the system to boot from the optical (CD/DVD) drive.

If that doesn't work, turn the machine off then plug in your external CD/DVD drive and put your Windows 7 DVD in there.

Then power the machine on, press F12 during boot. This will present with a list of devices to boot from. There should be an entry for your external CD/DVD drive there. Select it.

Install windows.

[rkawakami]

The optical drive needs no "drivers" at all in order to boot a CD; as long as the disk itself is "bootable". I believe that the T42 is able to boot from an USB-connected hard drive, but don't quote me on that .

From the sound of it, you may have one (or more) of the following problems:

- a defective DVD drive
- a defective Windows boot disk
- a problem with the T42's Ultrabay interface

You could try one of these things to narrow down the problem:

- borrow another Ultrabay Slim optical drive
- use another known good bootable disk
- install your drive in another T4x (or other system with an Ultrabay Slim)

If you have the capability to burn an .ISO format file, then you can download PC Doctor for DOS or memtest86+ or use any Linux "live" CD to see if your drive recognizes those disks. Note that you cannot simply "copy" the .ISO file onto a blank CD; it needs to be written with by a program in a specific format which enables it to be used as a boot disk.

ref: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-56222 (PC Doctor for DOS for the T4x system)
ref: http://www.memtest.org/#downiso (memtest86+ memory diagnostic)
ref: http://cdburnerxp.se/ (program which can burn an .ISO image file)

[barryb001]

Hi there,

I have limited resources - I don't have another thinkpad to swap parts with.
But after a long evening trawling through the internet, I've done the following.
1. Download a program to create me a virtual floppy drive
2. download a DOS6 floppy image from bootdisk.com
3. Use the famous HP tool to reformat my giant external HDD into a tiny floppy drive using the bootdisk image.

This I have tested on my working laptop by doing a "dir on the drive. It's the same size as a floppy and contains all the the from the good old days like CD1.sys, command.com etc etc.

I've plugged this into the T42 and started up. Same thing - operating system not found.

Any other ideas? I'm starting to think that I've spent money on a rather an ornament.

Cheers,
Barry

[Harryc]

Does the Windows 7 DVD boot in your other laptop?

[poshgeordie]

If the HDD light is on all the time this indicates two things:

1. The HDD is not in correctly - it could be that it's only connected with the top row of HDD pins in the bottom row on the motherboard.

2. That it's got an unsoldered southbridge chip or some other component problem.

I'd say it's more likely to be 1. Remove the HDD using a tiny screwdriver or similar to lever it out of the slot. It's easier to do it from the underside of the laptop with the lid slightly open.
Once the HDD is removed, fix a couple of lengths of sticky tape to the end of the HDD and then stick the ends together so you can then use the two bits of tape to pull the HDD easily out of the laptop in future.
Turn the laptop upside down with the screen lid slightly open.
Make sure the HDD goes in upside down and push it into the slot so it connects properly to the motherboard connector pins. This always works for me when using an HDD which is not in a caddy.
To remove the HDD pull gently of the pieces of tape to pull the HDD out.

[barryb001]

HarryC, no the windows 7 DVD does not start. The last time I played with these sort of things you needed to get your PC to a dos prompt with a bootup disk and reload the drivers for it. I'm probably out of date by a decade or so, hence my post here.

Poshgeordie, excellent advice. Now that I know that the HDD light should not be on all the time I will follow your advice to the letter. Maybe because it can't find the HDD it's not botering with the DVD?

Thanks.

[poshgeordie]

No, you don't even need an HDD in the laptop for the CD/DVD drive to work.
A simple check on whether the laptop sees the HDD (assume no HDD light permanently on), on the first (Welcome) screen press F12 which will:

1. List the available drives.
2. Allow you to select the drive you want to boot from.

If the HDD doesn't appear in the list then there's something wrong with it.

To sum up all the posts, the other things for you to try.

1. Is the HDD light on all the time? If it is you probably have a seating problem with the HDD. Remove the HDD and add some tape to help remove in future.
2. Make sure it's fitted upside down - ie with the label downwards and the circuit board upwards. Refit it with the laptop upside down.
3. Download PC Doctor onto a CD and run the full set of tests.
4. Hopefully your HDD is now properly fitted and the laptop has passed all the tests. Having removed PC Doc CD and replaced it with Win7, reboot, press F12, select CD and you should now be able to install Win7.
5. Don't beat yourself up - Go and have a stiff whiskey

[barryb001]

Thanks for your help Poshgeordie,
I think I've made a little progress. I've put tape on the HDD and installed it upside down. The light does not display all the time anymore, but it does list when I press F12. Bonus!

Second problem. I don't think that the Windows 7 DVD is being read. I get a blank screen with the cursor blinking. It doesn't 'sound' like anything is working. The green light flashes slowly (I'm not sure whether the flashing speeds up when the DVD is reading something). So I'm assuming that the DVD is broken. I took the DVD out of the bay, gave it a funny look, brushed off the connections and plugged it back in. Still no good.

So I wondering whether I can install from an external HDD. I've seen an netbook article on how to copy the windows 7 DVD to an external HDD. Do you think that this is worth a try, or is it a hopeless cause having an unformatted HDD and broken DVD?

Thanks in advance.

[katar83]

Get yourself a different boot CD with a linux or other windows. You can ge Ubuntu from internet or any magazine.
Try it, if it wont work - then your drive is dead(it happens on thinkpads) and You need to replace it.
If it works then You've got a bad windows disc or your optical drive is not a DVD, take it out and check it on the sticker.

[poshgeordie]

At the switch-on (welcome) screen, press F12 and check the CD is also listed.

+1 for katar83's suggestions.

An external USB CD/DVD drive should also be on the F12 list when connected though I've not tried booting from it, but have noticed in the past USB memory sticks listed there when left in.

[barryb001]

Hi,

I've learn't a few things:
1. Poshgeordie knows his stuff when it comes to installing HDD on a T42. You picked up straight away that a solid green light is NOT a good thing. Your instructions were excellent. Thank you.
2. I have a borken DVD drive, and the BIOS doesn't know it.
3. You can install windows 7 on a T42 without an OS or a DVD player, and , contrary to most opinions on the internet (I think I've tried all of them this weekend), you don't need any software to do it, you just need a USB drive with enough capacity to take your windows 7 dvd and a spare laptop.

"From a chap named Arnie on http://www.withinwindows.com/2009/11/01 ... stom-isos/"

Format the drive from a Vista/W7 machine (I skipped this first bit and did it in windows):
CMD
FORMAT F: /FS NTFS (where F: is of course your USB drive)

Activate the first partition on tht drive:
Start DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK x (where x is the drivenumber shown from the previous command)
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
EXIT

Mount your newly downloaded ISO from Microsoft with Daemon tools or other mount-tool
Place a W7 bootsector on the drive:
Z: (where Z: is your cdrom drive where the ISO is mounted)
CD \BOOT
BOOTSECT /NT60 F:

Now copy all of the files of the mounted cdrom to the USB drive
XCOPY Z:\ F:\ /S/E

Now change the BIOS settings to boot from USB CD, and hey presto, no more braindead T42!

Many thanks to all for you help, especially poshgeordie, and thanks to the admin for allowing me in.

Cheers,
Bazza

[poshgeordie]

Bazza

Glad to be of help and also very useful information about installing Win7 via a USB stick.

Not sure if it would be seen as double posting, but I could see your last reply as being a very useful HowTo topic in the Win7 thread - maybe a quick ask to one of the mods?

I did a quick check to see the price of sending a replacement DVD drive to you in Switz but carriage is nearly £20 so you could probably get one cheaper via eBay Germany or similar.

Cheers

Nick