T21 - originally OK now "Operating Sys NOT found - no b

[g8tzl]

I have recently acquired a T21 which was originally working perfect.

XP Pro was installed together with Symantec Corporate Edition antivirus/firewall. I was able to successfully update the AV/firewall. I was also able to set up a dial up connection which worked great.

Yesterday , I left the T21 on overnight (forgot to power down although I had disconnected from the internet. This morning , the T21 was displaying "Operating System not found - Unable to boot". I guess it should have been still displaying the desktop as it had not been powered down. Anyway , I powered down and rebooted - the IBM post screen came up (I can get into BIOS) but the T21 did not boot into XP[see below - it DID boot into XP] - instead I got a blue screen for a fraction of a second (not enough time to read what was on the blue screen) and then back to the IBM post screen - the T21 seems to be in a loop - IBM post screen - blue screen - back to IBM post screen. I needed to power down to stop the process.

Any thoughts on the problem? Virus , CMOS battery (no 017*error), duff RAM , duff HDD ??

UPDATE : T21 DOES start to boot into XP (white bar across screen) but then you get the blue screen for a fraction of a second and IBM Post loop starts.

I managed to read a few lines of the blue screen which said "unmountable boot-volume".

I've done an internet search and there are various possible causes. Perhaps a likely one is a damaged BOOT.INI file.

Has anybody else come across this with a T21. Any idea why it should happen when the T21 is just sitting for a few hours doing nothing? Any best fixes?

Hopefully its possible to do a repair? The T21 has XP Pro SP1 installed. Will an XP Pro SP0 disk work OK to try and do a repair. If so , will the SP1 updates be lost?

Thanks

[Harryc]

Remove the battery, remove the hard drive, and reseat it. If that doesn't fix anything, run a diagnostic on the drive downloaded from the manufacturers website. (Make note of the manufacturer and model when you remove the drive). You'll need a floppy or CDROM drive to boot the diagnostic, and another machine to create the boot media on.

[g8tzl]

Thanks Harryc.

I updated my original posting after managing to read "unmountable boot volume" on the blue screen. Windows XP also does start to boot (white bar across screen and Windows logo) but within a few seconds you get the blue screen for a fraction of a second before the loop back to IBM Post screen.

I've search on "unmountable boot volume" which could be a damaged boot.ini file. It can be repaired using XP Setup disk and running chkdsk.exe/r (I think).

Is it worth reseating the HDD before I try a boot.ini repair ie can you get "unmountable boot volume" with poor HDD contacts?

Thanks

[Harryc]

If you have a way to repair it, go for it. It's definitely worth a shot. My take on errors corrupting the boot sector or anything on a hard drive for that matter is that it doesn't happen by itself. I'd still want to verify the hard drive with a diagnostic. You can use PC-Doctor as well if you can get it to boot.

[g8tzl]

Thanks Harryc

I noticed that the battery indicator was flashing green (rather than steady green/orange/flashing orange). I need to check what "flashing green" indicates.

Anyway , I tried reseating the battery a couple of times and then rebooted. The battery indicator was still flashing green but the boot process advanced a bit further to the desktop but then hung - but no blue error screen - simply no icons loaded on the desktop. The battery indicator was still flashing green. SO I removed the PSU and the boot process then continued!!! It was slow but eventually I got all the icons on the desktop using battery power.

I am typing this message using the T21. Battery indicator is "steady green" using the battery. The PSU was working OK with my T30 so I think its not a duff PSU (but I will measure the voltage just to check).

Also there are NO IBM utilities installed. The T21 is just using Windows XP drivers. Is this Ok or should I install all the IBM drivers. Maybe the T21 is missing the IBM Power Management utility?? (although I think this is part of the BIOS). Or maybe I need to update the BIOS ??

In general , with a HDD reformat and loading XP from an "non-IBM" XP disk , should you ALWAYS install all the IBM drivers/updates?

Any thoughts?

Thanks

[Harryc]

Verify the hard drive with a diagnostic. PC-Doctor can be run from DOS as well. Last I ran it on a T21 that is how I did it.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... YZM3F.html

[ErikD]

I would give it a shot. Making sure that everything is seated properly is easy and quick, very little to no chance of making things worse. Once you start messing with OS critical files there is a chance you get it really screwed up.

Also doing the check on the HD from a bootable CD or floppy is a good idea. If the drive is bad or has bad sectors better to find out sooner than later.

[jamerslong]

i get this error every now and then, i turn the computer off and then back on and it boots and runs fine there after. i even Imaged the Drive onto a different drive and i still get the error.

mine i think is caused by the wireless card in the mini PCI slot.

i think that the blinking battery indicator says that the battery isn't fully charged but it will not charge it because the charge is too high.
i believe the system will not charge the battery unless the charge is below 93% (don't quote me on this though).

[g8tzl]

I think its a duff hard drive.

I ran chkdsk /r from the XP CD

The 1st time I ran chkdsk /r , it got to 43% complete and then reported "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems". There was also a "ticking/clunking" noise sometimes coming from the HDD.

I decided to try running the recovery disk again. This time instead of defaulting to C: , it defaulted to C:/WINDOWS (not sure why). After a long time , it reported that chkdsk found AND FIXED one or more errors on the volume. It reported 19.52 MB of total disk space and 16.34 KB available.

Although it said "found and FIXED" , my T21 is still playing up with the clunking noise coming from the HDD.

Any thoughts? Is the HDD completely duff. Is it worth doing a Fdsik / reformat? I did an internet search and I can across a "Data Recovery" firm which listed common faults with IBM Travelstar HDD's and said full recovery was possible - I presume this means full covery of data on the HDD rather than actually fixing the HDD. My T21 HDD contains no valuable data at all so I'm happy to experiment.

Thanks

[tfflivemb2]

If the hard drive is giving you those errors AND making loud noises, it is most likely toast.

I would recommend running the Hitachi Drive Fitness tool. I personally keep a copy of the Ultimate Book Disk on hand, so that I can run any of these functions without having to download each program everytime I need it.

[losmeme]

It reported 19.52 MB of total disk space and 16.34 KB available.

Is 16.34KB correct? Your hard drive is completely full, try deleting some files.

[g8tzl]

Sorry , I meant 16.34MB of space available

Thanks , I will try out the Hitachi Drive Fitness tool.

Does anybody have any views on whether you should install all the IBM updates/drivers after you have done a fresh install of XP on a replacement HDD? Or does XP have all the correct drivers built in anyway?

Thanks