Thinkpads Forum

A neighbor brought over a TP 760XL with a damaged Win 95 OS that won't boot. The 760XL has a CD drive but no 3.5" drive. I am trying to install a fresh copy of Win 98 SE onto it. It has been quite a few years since I have done a 98 installation, especially on a Thinkpad.
The 760's BIOS hardware test screen shows a CD drive that tests OK, but when I try to set the boot sequence it does not offer a CD drive as a bootable device. It just shows 4 HD drives, 2 FD drives, network, etc.
Any suggestions on how to get the 760 to boot off of the CD and get Win 98 SE installed?
Thanks in advance for your help.

You cannot get the 760XL to boot from the CD if the BIOS doesn't offer the option. You have several options:

Start by somehow partitioning the drive in the 760XL. Get a floppy drive for the machine if you have to. Or see if you can make do with the partition(s) that exist(s). If you partition the drive in another machine, the 760XL BIOS may not recognize the partitions and then would fail to boot.

Once that's done, you can boot from a floppy with a CD driver and run setup from the CD... or, you can put the drive in another machine, put DOS on it along with the i386 folder from the Win98 CD, put it back in the 760XL and go from there.

But if your hard drive won't boot... the only other way to boot that machine is with the floppy drive. A very handy thing to have with older laptops.

I'm not familiar with a 760XL, but a few general comments:


IF IF the CDROM drive and the computer won't support a cold boot:


There is only one version of Whanhozed98/ orSE that I'm aware of that will boot from a cold start, and that is the so called "OEM" version which says on the Cd something like "to be supplied only with a new PC"

Either "upgrade" CD's, or a "full" version so called "RETAIL" store bought in the blue box (Cd comes in a cardboard blue case) will NOT boot. I've heard arguement on this, but I've got several copies over the years, and of the 6 or so copies of RETAIL '98, NONE of thos CD's are bootable.


There's a couple of alternatives

One, of course, is scaring up a floppy drive.

Anothe is buying one of those handy little hard drive adaptors that allow hooking the Thinkpad HDD to a desktop case. They're cheap, here's one just for the pix:

(I don't endorse or not, this outfit, just for the info)

http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?c ... adapter%29


that would allow you to install the hdd temporarily in your desktop, and partition/ format the drive, "sys" it and install basic DOS CDROM drivers.

Still another approach, assuming the hard drive will boot OK, is to find and download the 'ol "Laplink 3" (ll3.exe), a one-file transfer program that will run from a floppy--on your desktop. You would build a boot floppy for your desktop that can read the desktop CDROM, and run laplink3, and you can REMOTE INSTALL it right over the cable to the laptop, and then trasnfer the \Win98 folder to the laptop

You'll need either a "null modem" serial or parallel cable, known variously as a "Laplink", "PCanywhere", "Direct Connect" or "Data Transfer" cable. There's probably a few other names. Any good computer store should have a "Direct Connection" cable.

Not to answer your question, but here's some interesting stuff on 760series:


http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/~przemy ... l#Netzteil

Download Smart Bootmanager here:

http://btmgr.webframe.org/

Connect a floppy and CD to your ThinkPad 760XL (either use the external floppy or use the Dock I or II to have both floppy and CD-ROM at the same time). Boot from the Smart Bootmanager floppy; select CD-ROM from the menu; say No when asked if you want to save the changes - and the system then boots from the CD. Just tested it - works perfectly.

Uh, Edward, I don't think he's got all that equipment. If he had a floppy drive, there probably would be no problem

Um... you're right. I messed up on that one. External floppies for the 760 series run about 10-15 dollars total on eBay, for example:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 6837414464

There are others at buy-it-now prices that are similar.