Thinkpads Forum

hiho,

i got a old thinkpad 600 with 266mhz and 160mb ram.
yesterday i played a bit in the windows2k hardware manager and disabled the standard primary and standard secondary IDE chanel/controler because there was a yellow exclamation mark in front of it.

after a reboot my thinkpad didn't recognize the cd-rom and hdd anymore.
it's like there is no hdd in it... i downloaded the ps2 tool and got my cd-rom drive work again with "ps2 IDE2 Enable Ultrabay".
but this didn't help for my harddisk. in the bios test-menu i can't select HDD1. and even the "initialize" button does not work, because it is disabled, too.
i don't know whether there is a relation between my windows configuration and the hdd, or it was just a hazard that my hdd crashed in this moment.

please help me!


sorry for my poor english, but i tried my best

You need to use that initialize button.

It's greyed out because you aren't entering the proper supervisor password.

You could try ps2 ide1 enable, dunno if that would work.

mh that's strange.i got that notebook second-hand and i thought the password is "" none. i could update the bios with this password too, so i thought it has to be the right one.

do you see any connection in disabling the ide channels and my problem?

thank you very much,

andi

What about trying the reset button in the hole between the power switch and the USB connector? Push it with a pen.

Thanks guys for your help! i got the "real" bios-password form the previous owner and tried the initialize button. now it works again!

carbon_unit, you helped me too. i thought this notebook has no reset button, so i always used the regular power on/off switch.


thank you very much!!!

Andi

Glad you're all straightened out.

Yes, disabling the ide controller is the reason for your troubles. You disabled them in the OS, which in turn shut them off in the bios. Those controllers are what runs your hard drive and cd drive.