X40 Cant Boot....says missing ntoskrnl.exe

[N79KL]

Hi all,

I got an old X40 that suddenly wont boot up anymore. Says its missing a file name - ntoskrnl.exe.
Pressing the blue Access IBM button I get a "Disk Error - Press any key to restart", so I cant reinstall at all. I do not have a build-in floppy or an external unit. At this point Im not sure if my HDD is dead, corrupted or if its just missing a file. Cant boot up Safe Mode either.

My BIOS is version 1.21. I can get in a look around the BIOS. I wonder if I can get it to boot from a thumbdrive? But when I press F12 to select from the list, it only gave me two options - the HDD and some LAN thingy. I tried to select and deselect the option list from BIOS but it doesnt do anything.

I dont care about losing data, but I would like to get it running again if possible. Oh one more thing, I set it to boot Diagnostic, and it seems to die when it was doing the drive test. It took me to the Boot to Safe Mode etc selection screen.

Any help would be most appreciated - TIA

[topmahof]

http://puppylinux.com/flash-puppy.htm

some thumbdrives aren't bootable. i use a sandisk cruzer 8gb that is.

sounds like your hard drive is toast. you can use linux off of a thumbdrive to try to recover data. you have to find a thumbdrive that's bootable, though.

[mediasponge]

The fact that it is giving an ntoskrnl.exe error probably indicates that the MBR is OK, but the Windows partition is unreadable. You might try something like Partition Magic, or one of the other boot-CD (UBCD4WIN)programs that can fix a damaged partition table. UBCD4WIN is free, but you have to have Windows install media to build it. It's an expensive option ($90USD), but in cases like this, I use Spinrite to examine the HDD to see if it's salvageable. There is a disk test in the UBCD, but it can't recover a drive as well as Spinrite. Spinrite is expensive if you only use it once, but I have enough computers that it has saved my bacon more than once.

[N79KL]

im not even sure if my x40 is bootable off of thumbdrive.

how do i run spinrite? from a thumbdrive?

[N79KL]

ok i managed to make a bootable thumbdrive and boot off that but once it tries to format my hdd, it failed. So i guess my HDD is shot. Now the question - where to get a cheap 1.8inch drive?

I have seen one external Transcend HDD that uses a 1.8in, -
http://www.transcendusa.com/products/Mo ... =&Func2No=

I wonder if I can dissect it and use it for my x40?

[topmahof]

that's a zif drive. you would have to get a zif to ide adapter to fit in the laptop. or, you could put a wanted to buy ad in the marketplace here in the forum. i would probably trust getting one from here sooner than anyplace else. and the price will be right. the stock drive is 1.8 ide interface, 4200 rpm and they come in 20, 40, and 60 gb. i've seen 30's once in a great while. you can get a bigger drive with a zif adapter on ebay. sometimes i've seen them on here for sale.

some zif drives will give you a 2010 error at startup. you can boot past that but you have to do it every time you boot up.

[sjthinkpader]

... where to get a cheap 1.8inch drive? ...

Take a look at these:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=90243

[N79KL]

Thanks UGPM