Thinkpads Forum

Hello All,
First time post here. I am supporting a wide array of desktops and laptops in a work environment. I didn't know we had any Lenovo notebooks until yesterday. One was sent to me and they are asking me if I can recover it/getting it working again.
It is a T61 notebook running Windows XP Pro sp2. Here is what is going on.
It tries to boot, and blue screens. I try to start in Safe mode (any type) it hangs for a moment and then quickly restarts.

I have booted into Rescue and Recovery but I can't find an option to run Chkdsk. The PC Doctor program did not detect any errors on the hard drive, but I believe the machine was shut down hard and it needs to run Chkdsk before it can load the OS properly.

I do have a Windows XP disk, and I did use that to load Windows Recovery, but it appears that IBM software hides the C drive or encrypts it so that it cannot be seen by the Windows Recovery program.

How can I get out of this loop so that I can either run Windows Recovery normally, Disable Rescue and Recovery, or use Rescue and Recovery to fix the startup issue?
Cheers!

I went into the Bios, and went to the SATA option and changed the value for the driver so that the WindowsXP disk would see the drive. This is what was preventing the Windows Repair from seeing the system drive.

Now I was able to get it loaded and it was able to see the C drive. It is currently running chkdsk /r and hopefully this will resolve the issue!

For XP to detect your HDD, startup your ThinkPad, press F1 to enter the BIOS -> Config -> SATA -> Change AHCI to Compatibility -> Hit F10 to save -> exit the BIOS, XP's setup will now detect your HDD.




This is because retail XP doesn't have SATA driver.

Welcome to thinkpads.com slj333!

As you have already seen, there isn't much activity on these boards on Friday afternoons. What you have discovered on your own is something that has been asked and answered here several times. But, the speed with which you were able to figure this out without our help tells me you already know your stuff, and can be a useful member of the forum. Hope you stick around. Too bad you only have one ThinkPad to support.

A better solution would be to add SATA drivers to your windows disc, you can do it with a freeware app called nLite, or if you want a disc with SATA integrated as well as SP3 and most of the critical updates, you can send me a Pm and I'll figure out a way to get it to you.

Thank you for getting back to me. Yes, I would certainly stick around more if I had more Thinkpads to support, but it is kind of a "one off" for us. They are well built units though and thank you for the kind response.

Get a free "Hiren's BootCD" ... Google will help you find it.

It will allow you to run chkdsk on the drive, edit it's Registry, etc.

It's a very useful CD with lots of 'tools' on it .... it will come in handy for numerous brands of PCs that you will work on in the future.