HDD Will Not Boot

[john1in2]

I am posting this a coupld of places, but I think this is the best place for a good answer. I have a windows XP IBM T30 laptop, and had a hard drive issue so tried a number of things to fix it. One thing was downloading a "repair" image (from a web site) burning it to CD and booting from it. I put the drive into an enclosure and could not read from it, got 'getdataback' and got only a small amount of (junk) back. So no biggie, I bought a new drive, formatted it NTFS (vista) and restored my backup copy of the original Hard Drive (13 CDs) onto it. I can put this drive into an enclosure and every computer I have reads all of it without a problem. It is 240 MB, has a 100 MB partition, a 50 MB partition and an 89 MB partition.

It still will not boot, the Intel Boot agent fails on boot.

Text (other post here) is-

================================================
Intel(R) Boot Agent Version 4.1.07
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation

Intel Base-Code, PXE-2.1 (Build 083)
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
Operating System Not found
=================================================
I am told these errors are network errors that the PC is trying to boot from a network. Never had that before.

How do I get this back to the form it was in when this shipped?

[rkawakami]

Taking your last question first... You can get the latest copy of the BIOS and Embedded Controller updates from here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-42720 (BIOS boot diskette)
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-42725 (Embedded Controller boot diskette)

Both of these files are downloaded and when executed (they are .EXE files), will create a boot floppy. Boot the system with the BIOS diskette first and follow the README instructions (links are on each download page). Once that update is finished, do the Embedded Controller update. Two words of warning: 1) you must have a fully charged battery pack in the system, along with connecting an AC adapter. This is to ensure that power will be maintained throughout the update process. Losing power in the middle of an update can result in a "bricked" system. 2) There's a loud beep that sounds when the BIOS update is finished and the system powers off. This is normal. I don't believe that the EC update beeps but it's been a long time since I've done one.

As far as the Intel Boot Agent is concerned: that should have been in your system already. You will see messages like what you have posted when the hard drive is removed (or rendered non-bootable). The boot agent is looking for another source for the operating system; any USB device, the Ultrabay optical drive and via ethernet. You can go into the BIOS and change/disable these boot sources.

And finally... are you serious that you are using a 240MB drive??? Can't remember when I've used a system that had anything less than a couple of GBs.

[RealBlackStuff]

Where did you FORMAT this HD, was it attached to a PC?
If so, it won't work. IBM formats its HDs slightly different with a different MBR.
You could try booting from an XP CD, then go into the Repair Console and issue the DOS commands FIXBOOT and FIXMBR.

[john1in2]

Thanks for the info.

- I did see and have already tried the IBM bios boot diskette and embedded controller boot diskette links in the first post, but I don't have a floppy drive. I downloaded them to CD (disk and non disk versions) and it would not boot from the CD. I suppose it needs to be on a floppy drive right? And in the instructions, the "non disk" version of the bios must execute after XP has started; the floppy disk version appears to work on bootup. Is there anyway to boot the "diskette" bios and controller from a memory stick (usb) or PCMCIA card or cd?

- The HDD is 240 GB not MB (sorry!). It was formatted in an enclosure attached to an HP desktop running Vista. If it is not correctly formatted, how did it write my recovery CDs to the disk? It must have been able to read/write correct?

- I do not have a repair console; that is what got me into trouble already. How do I boot and get a dos prompt to run those commands?

Where did you FORMAT this HD, was it attached to a PC?
If so, it won't work. IBM formats its HDs slightly different with a different MBR.
You could try booting from an XP CD, then go into the Repair Console and issue the DOS commands FIXBOOT and FIXMBR.

OK, I did NOT format with the IBM computer so the Disk would not be expected to work, thanks.

[RealBlackStuff]

Repair Console: see this http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articl ... rcons.html

[john1in2]

Repair Console: see this http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articl ... rcons.html

Yes but the T30 did not come with any CDs, there is no repair console.

[RealBlackStuff]

Borrow an XP-Pro CD from someone...