Thinkpads Forum

G'Day Everyone

I need a bit of help. I have a 770ED without an OS and need a bit of help installing one.
My problem is that it does not have an "A" drive it does have an DVD.
It will not boot the Win disk but if I burn a boot disk it boots just fine.
I know it can't be this hard.
I have Win95 and Win ME both are full versions and a "Notebook Utilities & Drivers" that came with the 770 I belive .
What do I need to do to get this up and running?
I have done most everything I can think of and i am at a total loss, that is not a nice place to be.

Thank you for your time
Russ

Consider getting a floppy drive....

But, since your machine will boot CD's that you burn (assuming I read your post correctly), it should boot pressed CD's too.

The Win95 CD will not boot. They never did. You need to make a diskette and boot that.

I've never used WinME, but the W98SE CD's do boot, so I would hope the WinME discs do too. That is, the OEM and retail versions boot. I don't know if the upgrade CD's boot or not.

What version do you have?

Hay whizkid
I wish I was one

I have a full retail versions of both win 95 and Win ME
the win me boots fine in my all of PC's it just will not in the 770.

getting a floppy drive....
I have been to every PC shop in 2 town and no one has one, I tried a USB drive but the 770 would not read from it and there was no place in the BIOS to change it.
I have looked around on ebay for an A drive
but then there is the cable-ing for it.

I think the 770 floppy is the same as the one I have, but I'm not sure. I have a 600X, and I have use its external floppy on a 600E, a 570 and a 560E. I think it will work on a lot of other ThinkPads too. So you might check the HMM's for those machines and get a list of FRU's and a list of which machines you can use the external floppy drives for.

There are usually a number of 600-series drives and enclosures on eBay.

thanks whizkid
I guess I am off to ebay to see what I can dig up

If you are picking a floppy drive up off of eBay, then I would recommend looking specifically for the 770/E/ED/X/Z model if possible. I have both 770 series and 600 series machines and you can use either model of floppy with either series of laptops externally -- using the proprietary IBM floppy cable connector -- but only the 770 floppy will actually fit in the UltraBay II, internal drive bay on the 770 series. As a result, you can actually use the 770 floppy drive without any cables at all internally, or you can attach a cable to the same drive and use it externally. The 600 series floppy can only be used externally on a 770 machine. There is no enclosure for the 770 floppy - you use the same case whether you put it into your internal drive bay or leave it external and attach a cable.

You should also be able to boot from a 600 series floppy drive attached externally, it just won't offer quite as much flexibility. And I don't think the 600 floppy is any lighter or easier to carry either, in fact I find it somewhat awkward to pack since the cable is always attached to the external enclosure, whereas the 770 floppy is exactly the same size as your other 770 peripherals (battery, CD-ROM, 2nd HDD Adapter, if you have them) because you can detach the cable and pack it separately with any other wires/cables you've got to carry.

Phil.

While I haven't tried this, would it be possible to make a bootable CD in Nero that appears as a floppy disk? There is 1.44Mb Floppy disk emulation option in Nero when you make a bootable CD. Maybe you could use the Windows 95 startup disk for the files.

I used a bootable CD to install on my 600 E. As I recall, Windows XP can boot from cd byself.

http://www.bootdisk.com

Has some bootable CDs. I ended up going to another website to download it. If I can remember the link or find it, I'll post it up. The website had bootable CDs for DOS 6, Win 95/98/ME, Win 2k, Win XP.

Regarding the original post. I recently ran into a simular problem on a desktop computer that had two CD drives. The newer drive was a Lite-On 24X CD-RW, and the older drive was a 4X Mitsumi CD/R. I could read a factory CD on the Mitsumi drive, but a copy that I burned of the same factory CD was unusable on the Mitsumi drive. It read the data CD as a music CD and I could not open the files on it (which was read as music files).

My theory is that the old technology Mitsumi drive could not handle the newer CD writing versions (ie. ISO 9660, Joliet, Mode 1, Mode 2, Red book, Yellow book, etc. {I don't remember what all these terms represent})

I say all the above because perhaps your CD drive is too old of technology to boot up the Win disk.

Go to ebay, They have tons of them for very cheap. and Yes XP boots just great.

Just an update

Thank everyone for the support it all helped.
I got an Internal / external "A" drive from e-bay ($15.00) not a bad deal.
hooked it up and installed win95 without a problem, very cool.
I ended up installing win ME, the program (astronomy software) I got the lap top for would not run under win 95.
It did take 3 or 4 days of hunting for all of the drivers but I have it all up and running.
Very sweet.
Thanks again for the help

Russ