Error When Booting

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John Sanders · #1 Post by **John Sanders** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 11:31 am

I have a 760XD. It locked on me so I had to shut it off manually without doing a start, shut down. Now when I turn on the power I get "Invalid Partition Table". I tried booting with a floppy but it just hangs there with a blinking cursor after reading the floppy drive, I can't start it in safe mode either. I ordered one of those ide adapters so I can hopefully recover my data. Is the whole machine trash or do you think the hard drive is bad? Thanks for any help you can give me!

G-Man · #2 Post by **G-Man** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:29 pm

You get this message if more than one partition is set active or bootable (only one partition should be set). Run fdisk and set only one main partition.

Regards,
G-Man

John Sanders · #3 Post by **John Sanders** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:33 pm

I did some searching and read the same thing about the active partitions. Any idea as to how I can get to a dos prompt? The darn thing won't boot with a '98 startup disk, I also tried hitting f8 when booting to start it in safe mode but no luck their either?

G-Man · #4 Post by **G-Man** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 1:39 pm

The Windows 98 boot disk should work. Try to reseat the floppy drive (if it's the usual 760 internal one), I used to have trouble with it. Also if you have a chance, try the boot disk on another computer, and see if you can get to the DOS prompt.

Regards,
G-Man

John Sanders · #5 Post by **John Sanders** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 8:50 pm

Tried a different boot disk that worked on my desktop and still hangs. Does anyone know what key strokes get me into the bios? I would like to see if the machine is finding the hard drive. Thanks

G-Man · #6 Post by **G-Man** » Thu Jul 08, 2004 10:12 pm

Press and hold F1 key while powering-up your ThinkPad.

Regards,
G-Man

John Sanders · #7 Post by **John Sanders** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 3:14 pm

A couple of new things. I tried holding the f1 key and a few odd numbers came up and I got this funky screen that said "error" in a real big font. It showed the correct time and date and when I hit ok it re-booted and I got the same error as before "Invalid partition table".

Second, I bought an adapter from Tiger Direct so I could retreive my data but it doesn't fit? I tried the adapter on a hard drive I had from a dead Winbook and it fit perfectly. Anybody know where I can get an IDE adapter for a Thinkpad?

This is really weird, is there some type of internal battery I need to replace? Please help!

Bruce Guttman · #8 Post by **Bruce Guttman** » Sat Jul 17, 2004 4:17 pm

The Thinkpad 760 hard drive is located inside a "caddy" which must be opened and the drive extracted to fit the IDE adapter.

The standard IBM caddy has two screws at one end, and the black surface is a "tape" that overhangs the sides to hold the two halves together. You need to remove the two screws and lift the tape so the two halves of the caddy come apart. The drive is inside, attached to a special cable (which you also must remove).

Caddies from other sources may not have the tape around the edges, or may have more or less screws.

Hope this helps.

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