Thinkpads Forum

I am trying to update the bios on a ibm 240x that I recently
purchased. I have been to the IBM site and downloaded the bios update to a floppy. I followed the instructions that called for utting the update in the floppy drive and then turning on the computer. When I did this I get the message of, not a system disk. I don't have any of the orignal disks that came with the computer. All I have is the computer the floppy drive and the portable drive bay 2000. I want to install XP on it, it currently has 98se. The IBM site recomened to update the bios before installing XP but I can't seem to get to that point. Are the instruction leaving something out? I know that the computer won't boot up with a floopy in the drive that doesn't have some kind of system info on it. Can anyone help?
Thanks,
Bill

IIRC, the TP 240 required a CD that plugged into a PCMCIA port and required a special physical CD-ROM to boot from. The TP40X used a USB connected CD-ROM. So make sure you have the right CD-ROM for the TP240X. ... JD Hurst

That's very strange. The floppy disc should be bootable. Perhaps it has bad sectors? Find another disc, format it, reload the BIOS files onto this disc, scan the disc for errors to make sure it's error-free, and try again. I flashed the BIOS of a TP240X from a floppy drive just several weeks ago and the process was very straightforward.

Boy I must be missing the boat on someting here. I went back to Ibm site downloaded spsdks45.exe to a floppy and checked it for errors. Loaded it in the floppy bay and started the computer. I still get the same message "non-system disk or disk error". Is there any other files that should be on the floppy?
My CD drive is the IBM portable drive bay 2000 USB. I have it attached to the computer but there is not a cd in it.

Where am I going wrong?

Thanks,
Bill

Ah, I think I see the problem..

After you download the spsdks45.exe file, you need to EXECUTE it. That launches a program which then creates the bootable floppy with the required files. For more information, see this:

Building diskettes from the Web

The link is the first one after the download files on the 240X BIOS Update page:

240X Bios Update

Thanks for the info problem solved.
Thanks again.