Thinkpads Forum

Hello, I have a 390x that had been collecting dust. I want to give it to my nephew but when I power on the screen will say press F1 for BIos setup utility. If I do nothing and let it continue to load I get "operating system not found" If I press F1 and go into the utility and then do a save and exit it will load win 2000. The 390x is a pIII 450, 256mb and I think either a 4.3gb or 6.0gb hd. Once windows loads there are no other problems with the laptop. I'm not a tech guy and couldn't start to try to understand a computers interworkings. The service dept at the local retail shop told me to scap it and get him a new computer. But hopefully that is not the case.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Most Thinkpad keepers are their own mechanics, they can muck around their Thinkpad and get it going. Your 390 can either have a bios battery problem, a hdd about to die, a flaky mainboard, when problems start happening to any notebook, remedies are inconclusive. We can only swap the part and see if the problem goes away. This is why most people don't bother fixing their broken timing belt on their 15 yr old car. It's a risk to drop $500 on the car and it can still not work.

The advice is a good one, you're not doing your nephew a favour in giving him obselete technology while the other kids are getting ahead and smarter on their Dual Cores. I too, give the same advice when Dad's want to hand down old crap to their children.

Listen closely for your hard drive's spin noise. Maybe it's just not spinning up fast enough but entering BIOS gives just enough delay; you can easily figure out if that's the case by keeping a good ear out. Also look at boot device priority and also make sure the BIOS detects the drive properly. Also, if possible, maybe you could try the laptop with a different HD to see if any others gather same result? While I can't really fully judge, I'd be willing to bet that your issue is HD related.

Also, soyabean, let's avoid baseless comments flaming people for being nice enough to want to go through trouble of fixing something up before giving it away. Let's also understand that not everyone necessarily needs or can even afford the latest technology. If the kids in school, the computer boots ,runs word, checks email, etc and the kid has use for it, it's probably going to be considered a favor.

It does seem that the issue is HDD related. You could try replugging the hard drive. Make sure also that it is near the top of the bootlist order in the bios.
Apart from that its a question perhaps of booting from a floppy - if it will and checking out the disk with PC Doctor or similar utility.
Then perhaps formatting and reloading the O.S. A good learning experience together for a youngster.

This is perhaps the most common "problem" to anyone that has a hand-me-down, and without a proper workshop, it'll be impossible to diagnose. You really need 2 or 3 of everything, the same make, same model. First thing I would do is put in a good hdd. But if an average joe has a hand-me-down, does he have that second hdd? No. Yes, it could be the hdd. Yes it could be a busted optical. Yes, it could have a bad cmos battery. Yes it could have a bad DC board. The most common problem to a 15 yr old car, is that it is 15 yrs old. Thinkpad forums are great when there is a definite solution to a direct problem - that can be carried out by the enthusiast. It also encourages first timers to open up that MyFirstThinkpad, afterall, the worst thing that can happen is that they creak it entirely and this planet has one less hand-me-down.

In the end, they bring the laptop down to our shop, I quote them both a repair price and a trade-in credit towards purchase.