Thinkpads Forum

-600E
In my system device drivers the HDD controller allocation had a hardware conflict with the PCI bus master-since I was showing 2 IDE controllers I disabled one of them.
Now my system can't see the HDD on boot up-how do I get the controller working again from a dos prompt-If I could boot with CD-ROM support I
could reinstall Win 98se but my floppy boot doesn't see the CD. IBM diags do see the CD but not the HDD

This problem is discussed in several old threads, including:
Intel 82371ab/eb pci bus master IDE controller conflict

A correct Windows 98SE installation will show two IDE controllers listed in Device Manager on any ThinkPad 600/770 series machine (or sometimes three, if there is a docking station involved).

Phil.

Mmmm...I guess that doesn't help you get your config back if you can't boot into Windows. Can you safe boot? If your drive is not recognized at all, even before you get into Windows, then maybe you've somehow corrupted the boot portion of your hard disk or maybe you've somehow got some kind of broken code in your Autoexec.bat or config.sys files?

I don't really know. What exactly to you mean when you say that your system "can't see the HDD on boot up"? How far do you get when you boot?

Phil.

I actually disabled the master IDE controller hoping to resolve the hardware conflict with the PCI bus master.
I can now boot to a, and d, drives but that doesn't help because I need an HDD to install an operating system. I'm going to search for some HDD fixer up programs.

In certain situations, disabling the controller in Windows will disable the controller in bios. You need to go into the bios, and initialize the machine. If you then boot into Windows, you'll be back up the creek again, because Windows will disable them again. You should instead boot directly into safe mode, and re-enable the controllers there.

Of course, that won't resolve the initial problem, for which you'll probably end up having to reinstall Windows. Check the link for that one.

Sean -I agree with what you're saying- this thing gets funnier as I go along- IBM site said if you have another machine switch drives- well you guessed the bios in the second machine is now modified to SEE NO HDDs- I'm having problems seeing anything in the start-up sequence that gives options to select/deselect disks-I punch up F1 and get what looks like it would lead to a CMOS configurator but it won't give HDD options.

Right. Your HDD isn't disabled. The controller is. As long as that is the case, your machine won't see ANY hard drives.

Sean- I booted up in safe mode- the knowledge that I had disabled the controller was not available to the system-so I got to 98se re-enabled the controller and am in the process of living happily everafter

Thanks for your help