Thinkpads Forum

My 600e works just fine, but sometimes from nothing (idle or being used) it stops and powers off. When started again sometimes it just boots normaly, but sometimes shows error code something like (I99????302) and asks to insert boot disk. after shaking 600e a bit and powering again it boots normaly.

One question here. Is my Hdd having its last days, or it is thinkpad's internal problems (short circuit or something). HDD Test (brought from BIOS) goes normaly. Yesterday I've dome low level format and again XP crashed (the same thing with win 2000).

Will I be able to use 10Gb hdd? Bios not upgraded.

Hmmm.. I'd say upgrade the BIOS first, but will the thing power down in the middle of a BIOS upgrade? That wouldn't be a good ting at all!!

Check the CMOS battery. It should test with a volt meter to be at least 3V (it's a 3.3V lithium cell IIRC). If not that could be the problem, marginal CMOS battery. A 10GB HD should work fine with any BIOS IIRC. You might want to check the IBM website. At worst the drive will work, you just won't see the full capacity, only as much as your BIOS wil support.

Once you've done all this test the computer. Even if it seems to run fine UPGRADE THE BIOS!! You never know when you'll need/want the added features, mainly support for bigger HDs (80GB might be the limit, I know that size has been used) and 256MB RAM modules. Even if you are reasonably sure you won't need/want those features upgrade anyway. When it comes time to pass it along or sell it the latest BIOS will be an added selling feature. Probably won't bring any more money, but may be the deciding factor between yours and a similar model without the upgraded BIOS.

this thing is going to live with me till the end of days, because I'm perfectly happy with its performance and my needs (word processing and visual c++:) ).

I've thought of BIOS update, but was slightly frightened away, bacause of risk of messing up whole system- I'm not very deep into technologies of such kind.

Sounds like you have a loose screw. or a dirty motherboard, take it apart, if theirs any free romeing metel get it out, go buy some cans of air and blow it out.

I doubt about it. Usually before passing out, hdd starts to click. I alsready tok it apart some time ago, and didn't notice anything strange.

this problem is so unpredictable, that I'm afraid of buying new hdd- what if it is not hdd?

By the way 600e this week didn't crash yet... Lets hope it will not do it again...

Well, theirs only one way to find out, if the hardrive isen't the problem, then just resale it on ebay.

Go to the IBM site and do the BIOS upgrade. Basically you just make a floppy using the downloaded file (it will automatically prompt you for a floppy disk) then boot with the floppy. The BIOS will automatically be upgraded. It's one of the best, most fool proof BIOS upgrades I've ever seen (though it was quite a while back when I did one before).

Mantas wrote:My 600e works just fine, but sometimes from nothing (idle or being used) it stops and powers off. When started again sometimes it just boots normaly, but sometimes shows error code something like (I99????302) and asks to insert boot disk. after shaking 600e a bit and powering again it boots normaly.

One question here. Is my Hdd having its last days, or it is thinkpad's internal problems (short circuit or something). HDD Test (brought from BIOS) goes normaly. Yesterday I've dome low level format and again XP crashed (the same thing with win 2000).

Will I be able to use 10Gb hdd? Bios not upgraded.

i have the exact same problem on my 600x. The fan stops and it sounds like its powered down. Then mine just locks up and has the picture of inserting a disk and pressing f1. How can i upgrade the bios if i dont have a floppy drive?