560X Failure to Load Operating System

[mozartpc27]

Hello All ---

My girlfriend picked up an old IBM 560X Thinkpad a few months ago, and we were able to successfully install Windows 98 on it. This afternoon, after (eep!) leaving the thing on the entire night before, she went to start the machine again and the Windows start up forced it into a ScanDisk operation. After a few attempts where the computer shut itself down after running the initial ScanDisk, it finally moved into the full surface scan, chaecking itself sector by sector. Unfortunately, her laptop is without a battery capable of holding a charge, so it had to be shut down once while the process was ongoing, and restarted. At any rate, it is currently working on running that surface scan now, and before starting it up this time, I ran a BIOS test, which reported no errors.

Anyone have any ideas of what is wrong here? We'll let it run tonight and hope it fixes the problem, but I'm not sure what to think considering it ran a BIOS test that reported no problems. Any thoughts are appreciated.

[whizkid]

It's likely that Win98 just got concerned about the disk; perhaps after a loss of power. Let the surface scan complete (while on AC) and let us know if there's still a problem.

And backup anything important, just in case the hard drive is starting to become unreliable.