Thinkpads Forum

Can one who has successfully installed a bare OS on a 240 list out some steps. I can boot with a Win98(DOS) boot disk with usb drivers that detect my USB CD-ROM drive. But, when I type setup.exe, it says this cannot be run from DOS mode.

I want to install Win 2k Pro. Thanks

you can't direct run setup.exe
if your cd driver is Dirver D
then do the following:
d:/cd i386
and then run winnt.exe

Thanks, running winnt.exe copied everything to the hard drive and rebooted. After it reboots, it gets past the POST and shows a black screen with just "LI" then a blinking cursor

Is there more to it or am I doing something wrong?

Thank you

i am not sure what's wrong with your
is that possible post that screen?

It turns out is was because the partition was not set "active" I ran fdisk and fixed it. Thank you for your assistance

In summary, to install Windows 2000 Professional on an IBM 240:

- have a USB CD-ROM drive(mine was a Plumax USB2.0 with a Cypress Semiconductor USB2 controller and a Pioneer DVR-108 DVD-+RW), the proprietary IBM floppy, and a win98 boot disk
- fdisk the hard drive setting the first partition active, also fdisk /mbr
- download a USB bootable win98 disk from http://www.pocketech.net/downloads/duse_4_4.zip
- boot with disk, recoqnizes cd rom
- cd to e:\I386
- run winnt.exe which will copy needed files then reboot and begin win2k installation. This process should work for WinXP as well. Other different USB bootable win98 disk images are available here: http://www.stefan2000.com/darkehorse/PC ... ivers/USB/

thanks for your USB bootable win98 disk images link
and another easy way to install new OS on 240 is take HD out, install it to a portable USB HD case, copy I386(for winnt, win2k and winxp) or win98 folder to a 240 HD partition(this partition should NOT your OS partition).
put your HD back to your 240, and use FDD boot your 240, find i386 or win98 folder, run setup.exe or winnt.exe
==============================================
if you DO NOT have FDD, you still can do install OS
take HD out, install it on other laptop, install OS like normal, on first time reboot(after copy files), shout down laptop by power button, and take HD out, put it back to your 240, then turn it on. it will go on setup OS on your 240.