Thinkpads Forum

if you remember my earlier post lower down the page, you'll remember i killed my 380xd by foolishly running a startup disk from another machine in it and killing it.
i bought an incomplete machine off e bay without a hard drive for £1/$0.60!, put my hard drive in, and it works, up to a point - the same point where i should have walked away 2 weeks ago!

it starts up, goes through all it's checks, puts the wallpaper up, plays the little windaz startup tune, then gives me a box saying 'illegal operation'.
the details are something about an error in windows.exe, and something about stackdumps???

so, where do i go from here?
i don't really want to reformat it, because of the stuff that's on the hard drive. a guy at work who knows more than i do about computers said make a boot disk [from any machine] and start it with that in to see if it fixes it. i can do this, but will it work?
if not, what?

help!

You really need to be getting your important stuff off before you go any further. It's a very good sign that it gets as far as it does, means your data is probably still there. Now we need to figure a way to copy it before something else happens.

Can you get it to boot in Safe Mode by pressing F8 at startup?

Do you have another drive (USB, Ultrabay, network, etc.) where you can copy your stuff?

Ed Gibbs

yes, it will go into safe mode.
this machine is actually a 380 ED, the original one was an XD, the ED unfortunately doesn't have a USB port.
how do you copy stuff off a machine that isn't fully going anyway?

i'd really like to get it going in the set-up it had before, not only do i want to save the few pictures, i'd like to save my e mail addressbook, zone alarm, pdf reader etc.

someone else at work [ i know, i know....] said start it with the windows 98 cd in and ask it to fix the problem, and it will.
oh yes?

It's been a while since I ran 98, but I think it had a repair install option when booted from the CD. That might well fix it, or it might hose it even worse. I would really find a way to back up the important stuff before I did anything else.

No USB port - you could get a PCMCIA USB or Firewire card (hopefully the drivers will load in safe mode) and an external drive, boot in safe mode and copy what you want to the external drive.

If you can find an Ultrabay 2nd HDD adapter and another laptop drive you could put that in and copy the files to the second drive in safe mode.

Or you could get a laptop to desktop IDE adapter on ebay (10 bucks or so) and install the drive as a secondary drive in a desktop if you have one. Then boot the desktop normally with the primary drive, and you should be able to access the secondary drive to copy stuff off.

I also don't remember if 98 has the option of safe mode with networking support, but if it does and you have or can get a network card you could copy the files to another machine that way. Even if you don't have a network you can set up a simple peer-to-peer network with two computers and a crossover network cable.

Or you could just cross your fingers and try the repair install.

Ed Gibbs

The USB and UltraBay options mentioned above are ruled out for the 380 as the 380ED does not have CardBus support and the 380 series doesn't support UltraBay parts.

If you want to boot from the CD, you'll need to configure your computer to do so from the BIOS setup. Hold down F1 as you power on your computer and keep it held down until you see the EasySetup screen. From there go to Start Up then select the 4 main boot devices you want to use in the order you want the computer to detect them.

You can always go with LapLink from a floppy drive, or attempt to install a network card...

But I would try putting the drive in a desktop machine using an adapter, then copy the files off. Put the drive back in the laptop and format it.

Just about all the local computer stores will carry 2.5" laptop IDE to USB and/or 2.5" laptop IDE to 3.5" desktop IDE converters so If you decide to take whizkid's desktop suggestion, you should have no trouble finding the right tools.

well it seems i owe a few guys a beer, including you guys for your help.
it lives again!
i didn't read the last replies until just now, so i tried what Neil from work advised me [i owe Neil a double beer!]. i made a startup disk on my other pc and fired up the mongrel machine, it whirred and clicked for a bit, then asked me for a command line. Neil told me to type A//:D something or other [i have it written down, don't worry!] then D/: setup blahdeblah. it asked for the win 98 CD which i put in, and then all sorts of berserk stuff came up on the screen about finding drivers for this/that/t'other.
nett result was it came back to life 99.9% as it was before, i have the pictures back of my 2 sons on my classic motorcycle and 2 dogs etc so i'm absolutely over the moon.

there is just one small thing, and i'm not going to mess with it until i've saved the pics, but i can't access the internet. i plugged the modem out of the donor machine in, it dialled up one ISP, but then disconnected several times. i tried a backup ISP i sometimes use and it hooked up but wouldn't open any pages. just giving me the 'cannot find server' crap. i disconnected and tried to hook up again but it gave me the same 'error 629' stuff. so i switched it off and am using my spare toshiba.
any ideas on this problem my friends?

Update the driver for the modem card?

(I realize this may present a bit of a challenge, the diskette drive will probably be involved.)

no, it's working, i tried it again a couple of nights ago, it dialled up, worked fine.
happy days.
thanks everyone.