Thinkpads Forum

A friend of mine has a 600 and the hd died he replace it but we cannot find a way to boot from the internal cd drive. We are trying to install xp on the machine.

Any suggestions?

Thanks..

You have to boot into the BIOS, by pressing F1 as the system boots.

Once inside the BIOS, choose the icon for "Start Up". Then you can reset the boot order and put the CDrom ahead of the HD.

Wow!!

What a fast responce thanks. I will do it and post back the results,

Thanks again..

You're quite welcome. Yes, please report back.

Question. Can i format the drive in my T40 install the XP on it and when it finish and reboot remove it from the T40 and install it in the 600 and turn the 600 on?

Will it work?

cmarti wrote:Question. Can i format the drive in my T40 install the XP on it and when it finish and reboot remove it from the T40 and install it in the 600 and turn the 600 on?

Will it work?

I doubt it...If you were going from a series 600 to your 600,then it might work...But from a T40 to a 600 there is a BIG difference in hardware,so I doubt it would work..

You need to find out why that thing won't boot from a CD

Is the CD a burned copy or a Microsoft genuine? Some CD drives won't read a burned copy. I had this trouble with my old 380XD.

There are several things that must be in place for a CD to boot.

One The cd itself must be a bootable version. If your copy of XP is an improperly burned copy, it may not be bootable. Test in another machine.

The bios must support booting, and the bios "boot order" must have the CD selected before the hard drive. 600 series Thinkpads should meet this, but YOU must set the boot order.

The CDROM drive must support booting, which should be the case, but the CDROM must be clean and properly working.


You CAN launche XP's setup from DOS. You can download the set of 4 or 5 floppys from Microsoft


Heres what you CAN do. Try partitioning and formatting the drive, either in the 600--you DO have a floppy?

Partition the drive using a '98 bootdisk, and format in FAT32.

Use "format C:/s" which transfers the system files and makes the drive bootable. If you have a floppy, boot with that from a '98 series bootdisk, and make a directory (folder) on the hard drive called \I386. Copy the contents of the \I386 directory from your XP cd to the directory on your hard drive.

Boot to the hard drive. You do NOT run setup from a DOS mode installation. You run winnt.exe from a DOS launched install, from the \I386 folder. Smartdrv should be configured as well

BillD is correct. I doubt it will work. Everything about the T2x series is a little sensitive.

I have used a 600 to start the installation of Win98SE on several older machines.

Were you able to change the boot process?

Do you have the latest BIOS?

EDIT: As I was typing, I guess 440roadrunner replied as well. (I'm taking care of a sick child, while browsing the forum) Please forgive me if some of my info is redundant.

Sorry->

I haven't seen my buddy as soon he gets me the laptop i will try the suggestions provided here.

Thanks for the help and support!!

Install a copy of dos onto the harddrive from the working computer, then it will boot anywhere (if you still have problems, type fdisk /mbr)

Just copy the installation files from the working computer. (these are the files in i386 - for windows 2000 and xp. You can run Xp and 2k setup from dos by changing to the i386 directoy, and typing WINNT).

Swap the harddrive to the non-booting computer, and it should boot to dos. Then start installing win xp/ 2k.

Ok i install a 40gb drive in the 600 and do a quick format and now the xp is installing let's see how it goes.

When im finished i will come back and post the results.

Thanks for all the help provided !!

Its alive!!!!

Thanks the lappy is working excelent now it is running a 40 IBM travelstar drive and has a PC133 256 ram.

Wow what a difference!!