My T23 BIOS won't detect HD

[mistamoni]

Please help, because I'm clueless as to how to solve this. So I recently found a T23 thinkpad, and snagged it up because I got a really good deal. I have a photography business, so I need a laptop to just show clients pictures and what not, instead of give them cd's each time.

When I got the laptop, the guy informed me that he couldn't install his windows xp on it. When I got it home, I saw that if you turned it on, it was in the middle of installing windows, but would give an error and shut down. Since I was busy, I let my friend borrow it trying to fix it. He formated the harddrive using I think a maxtor boot floppy disk and gave it back to me for a fresh install of windows.

Problem is, when I start the machine, I get 2 choices: Press F1 for BIOS setup, or F11 to choose loading location. The BIOS does not detect the installed hard drive. When I press F1 and look at the startup boot option, I see that all it's detecting are the floppy drive, and my USB drive if I put it in, but no primary HD. It doesn't seem to load MS DOS, and any kind of floppy I put in, it says "non system disk, please replace and press any key". I read some of the other posts here, and tried to put in IBM's PC doctor for dos, or the BIOS update through floppies, but it would keep giving me that same message and not read any disks.

I don't have a cd-rom for this laptop, so I'm limited to floppy and my usb drive. I tried to see if I can load linux from my usb, but even though the BIOS detects the USB (Sandisk U3 cruzer), It doesn't load anything from it. I think the reason may be because this flash drive in particular comes with an annoying partition in it which has the usb menu program (which I just can't get rid of for some reason) and it may be detecting only that 5 meg partition instead of the rest with actual programs.

So someone please help, as I want to really use this laptop. I have my desktop, I have my xp cd, my usb, and many floppies... but I don't know how to go about detecting my Hard drive, or reviving this computer.

*** PS: I took out the harddrive one time and placed it back in, and it did show up on the BIOS for that time, but after it didn't load anything, and restarted, it was gone again.

[tfflivemb2]

It sounds like the drive might be dying...if not already dead. I have had this problem in the past with a few hard drives.

[mistamoni]

So what do you think would be my solution? Just get another hard drive? Or is there another way around it?

[rkawakami]

If PC Doctor does not "see" the hard drive in the fixed disk diagnostics, then about the only thing you can do is to try another hard drive as tfflivemb2 implies.

Two other possible solutions to try before throwing more money at the problem:

1) Try removing all of the extra peripherals in the system and then see if the laptop recognizes the HD. In your case, this would be the MiniPCI and ethernet cards (both located under the panel to the left of the IBM label on the bottom). I have seen systems which had POST problems with a bad MiniPCI modem card.

2) Remove everything (except one memory module), boot into BIOS and perform the "load setup defaults" operation. It's possible that something in BIOS has been corrupted. Re-install the hard drive and see if that helped.

[Robbyrobot]

This sounds to me like the hard disk has been "nulled", i.e. all partition and formatting information removed by overwriting with zeros. The other possibility is, of course, that it's defective, but your comment:

When I got it home, I saw that if you turned it on, it was in the middle of installing windows,

seems to indicate this is not the case.

I'd either try booting a HD utility like OnTrack or one of the HD-specific versions that only work with one brand of HD to see if they recognized the HD - or I'd download XFDISK (xfd093en.zip) at:

http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/xfdisk/en/install/

unpack it to a DOS boot disk, boot and type: XFDISK. If you see any free space, that will mean you have an installed HD. Then you can re-partition (or partition) the HD as you like and should then have no problem installing any of the newer Windoes versions (2000 on up).

If neither the HD utility nor XFDISK show you any hard disk or free space, your HD is most likely defective. Even then, you might, just for fun, tap it with your fingernail several times and try again. Sometimes the heads get a bit stuck when the HD wasn't used for a while and this will free them up.

Naturally, all of the above will erase anything you have on the HD, but if it isn't reacting at the moment anyway, that shouldn't be a great disadvantage.

[mistamoni]

Ok, so I took out the harddrive, and placed it back in like you suggested. And the system seems to detect it. However, even if I manage to run DOS, it doesn't detect it as a drive... as in I can't type c: and get it to come up. I'm guessing this is because there's nothing on it to declare it as a drive yet. It's showing up in the BIOS at least. The code for it is IC25N020ATDA04-0-. If I put in a USB flash drive, I can access that usb as a C:\ drive. So I'm hoping the HD can still be used, so I want to try to install an OS somehow.

Like I said, I don't have a cd/dvd drive, just a floppy and my trusty USB flash drive. Is there anyway to install any sorta OS from a usb stick? I tried to load windows xp using a program called PE builder, and it seemed to load it somewhat, but then it said that "program can't run on DOS".

Anyone have installed anything using just an USB stick? I do have my windows cd, but can't figure out how to transfer it properly, run it through USB, and get it to actually work. I'm open to linux or anything, just so I can run the setup for xp later through it.