Thinkpads Forum

I bought this on ebay not knowing I needed software for it.

So where do I start? Would it be easier to take it some where and have professionals install everything. It's in great shape, I just want it up and running!

That unit should run Windows 2000 Professional. You need to find the drivers for it. IBM had driver matrices back then for people to convert from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. ... John Hurst

I found the drivers on the ibm website, but I have no idea where to start.

Get a Windows 2000 installation CD. I don't know if Microsoft sells them any more, but you should be able to get one on eBay or from a vendor. IIRC, Windows 2000 CD's are bootable, so set the machine to boot from CD (BIOS setting) and start. If not bootable, locate (at Microsoft) setup diskettes for Windows 2000 and use those. If this doesn't help you, then you may wish to, as you said, get a professional to install the OS. A basic install (leaving you to update and install Office and other apps) shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. A full install, patched, Office, AntiVirus, userids, settings, and personalization, and so on takes the best part of a day. ... JD Hurst

Assuming you want to run Windows... (linux is another matter)

Windows 2000 will be a fine choice. XP may work, but IBM didn't publish many drivers for that OS, and a Pentium MMX (even at 300MHz) could be a little underpowered, depending on your needs. Windows 2000 Pro can be purchased, but can be more expensive than XP Pro. XP Home may be a goot bet.

In any case, get an installation CD. The retail version and the OEM version will both boot. If your machine won't boot a CD, the CD has a program that (when run on another machine) will make boot floppies for you. (I think 5 for w2k, 6 for wxp.)

Once the setup program starts, have it delete all the partitions, create a new one, format it, and install there. You should be able to go from there just reading the instructions on screen.

XP should run fine on your machine just so long as you have ample RAM. 64 is the minimum but I'd put more for XP to help offset the older CPU and any other possible bottlenecks such as hard drive. XP will work if you have it though, or it should, there are other people on this board who got it running on their old P166mmx laptops and they claim it boots faster than 9x. Just expect XP to seem a little limited compared to having it on a newer computer.

2000 Pro would also be a good choice but since Microsofts support for that OS seems to be dwindling by the day for home users and after using XP and 2000, I'd only go with 2000 on a computer that can't run XP as I really don't see much of a speed difference between 2k and XP and what littleI do see would have to be in XP's favor.