Problems installing OS on a blank Hard Drive

[Les Langhus]

I just received a used 10G hard drive. and put it in my Thinkpad 600.
I have tried to boot from the Windows 98SE & Windows XP CD. Also a
Windows 95 Floppy. When it starts, I get the following "IBM Secure Data Disposal Utility 2.0, IBM Remote Deployment Manager 4.1, Date and Time of execution 12/11/04, Command Executed ......... R: \HDWIPE\
SCRUB3.EXE /D=ALL /L=2"
I even tried the boot floppy I downloaded from Nero. I can not get
to the C: prompt.
Both the CD/ROM and remote floppy drive blink during start-up but
I just get the above message with ( _ ) blinking

[tfflivemb2]

Try reading through this thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... highlight=

[GomJabbar]

First go into the BIOS EZ Setup menu by pressing F1 at the beginning of the boot sequence. Choose boot from CD as the first boot device, or you could probably choose the following boot order: 1st A: drive floppy, 2nd CD drive & 3rd hard disc drive.

I believe you will need to partition, then format your hard drive before you can install Windows. The Windows installation CD should direct you to do this as you boot up from either one of them.

EDIT: I meant to give you the links for Secure Data Disposal. Secure Data Disposal overview | Secure Date Disposal download site

[Les Langhus]

When I performed Fdisk. At the step that shows the Primary DOS partition, I selected to delete it. I was prompted for the Volume Label for that partition, I had none So I just hit enter. It would not except that and asked for the Label again and would not continue with Fdisk

I was able to format the HD However it is a 10.1 gig HD but it only
formatted at 2 gig. I installed the latest BIOS for the Thinkpad 600.
IBET54WWW which should support hard drives up to 40 gig.

[GomJabbar]

You can see if the following will work. First boot up from the Windows CD, then go to the command prompt. You might have to be in the directory where the following commands are on the CD for them to be seen and work.

Type> vol C:
Is a volume label displayed? If so, use this with fdisk.

Type> label C:
This should delete the existing label

If the above don't work for you, I suggest you go over to the Linux forum and ask what tools they use to partition a disk for Windows. I am not really familiar with the Linux tools.