Thinkpads Forum

Im in a bit of a rut at the moment.

I recentley got a new hard drive for my thinkpad. Its quite a lot larger than my old one.

When I tried to install windows XP I got the "disk error" message. After searching around I learnt it was because of the outdated BIOS.

Now i've found the file with which I need to update it with.

BUT seeing as there is no version of Windows on the laptop I cant upgrade it. I tried to put a version of windows 98 too but that wouldnt work for some reason either.

Is there any way I can upgrade the bios now so I can run XP?

I don't know which file you mean when you say you've got the file you need to upgrade your BIOS. What you need to upgrade your BIOS is a floppy disk with the BIOS upgrade on it. Once you have that floppy disk, you stick it in your floppy drive and it will boot up your machine into a special BIOS upgrade program. You don't ever run the BIOS update from within Windows.

You can create the BIOS Update (Diskette) by running a file that you download from IBM/Lenovo - be sure to check that the BIOS update is the correct one for your 600E model.

Is that the file you mean you have? If so, then borrow someone's computer and run that file in order to create the floppy disk.

Phil.

The BIOS is updated from a floppy drive. Hopefully you have the IBM external floppy drive that is used with the 600E. If not, AFAIK there are a number of them for sale on e-bay. You shouldn't need a hard drive to update the BIOS.

I realised what I was doing wrong. I was reading the instructions on the IBM site wrong.

Got it all sorted now. Just ran the upgrade and fingers crossed XP will install this time.

Cheers though.