Thinkpads Forum

So my buddy has a chinese version x60 and after trying everything to change the language with no luck I figure it is best to just reformat. The only thing is we have no cd drive. Is there a way to boot windows install files from usb?

I will lose every driver and all the thinkvantage stuff so i am very cautious about reformating. I can not read the regional language settings in the control panel so is there a way to find out which language is the correct one to use? They are all in chinese.

Any help would be excellent.

Is it asian model of X60 or version of Windows?

Model will have different keyboard along with the oem asian version of Windows from lenovo. In any case refer to this thread.

Following links will help you:

Thinkvantage tools.

Drivers Thinkpad X60.

it has an american keyboard but an oem chinese windows xp I believe. What makes me say this is the windows screen is some chinese letters and the black safe mode screen is also in chinese. I suppose I will format and stick an american version of xp but I am struggling with doing it via usb memory.

ok so here is what I have figured out. I found a way that is supposed to work to load xp via usb. It uses windows xp 2003 sp1 and a program called PEBuilder.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/09/ ... age13.html

That is the link for the explanation. I got all the way to the making of the bootable usb and the x60 will find it in the boot menu but when it loads it says Operating System not found.

I am at a loss, HELP PLEASE! Thanks

Please make sure in the BIOS you've set the HDD settings from SATA to Compatibility mode, regardless of how you intend to install the OS on your machine.

ok done, no help but i left it changed.

any other suggestions?

What about a usb bootable version of linux to somehow get american xp back on. Any ideas?

If you have another pc, one option would be to do a network install.

http://tftpd32.jounin.net/tftpd32.html
This one installed on the pc would permit to a configured (and connected) thinkpad to boot from an image (that will set up a network connectivity to a shared folder)

The image can be made following these instructions
http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/

On the shared folder you have to copy the /i386 directory of the XP cd, then run winnt.exe from the thinkpad (once booted).

This theorically should work, but I don't know if you have to prepare/format the destination hd in advance.

NB. Personally I've never tried it

You can use an external CD drive to install XP from. It might come in handy in the future if you ever need a CD/DVD drive for other things.

Borrow one from a friend.