challenging bios update
Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 1:43 pm
i've got a thinkpad 760xd with a bios date of 1997. it's got a 4G disk and the system doesn`t recognize partitions over 1G. also, it`s got no floppy drive, just a cdrom drive and the bios won`t boot off a cd (there`s no cd option in the boot settings of the bios). i want to flash the bios to overcome these limitations. i downloaded a bios update from here:
http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.ws ... 59734.html
and removed the hard drive from the system and plugged it into a desktop using an adapter. i then tried extracting the update program to a dos partition on the laptop hard drive. this didn`t work - the extraction utility gave an error presumably related to the fact that i wasn`t extracting to a floppy. i extracted to a floppy instead and then copied the contents to the laptop drive`s partition and copied the boot sector code from the floppy to the boot sector of the hard drive`s partition. the mbr of the hard drive was already set up and the partition in question marked active. i put the hard drive back in the laptop and booted it. it booted fine and went into the initial screen with the ``read me first`` and the option to run system updater. i dutifully read the readme and then ran the updater. it told me to shut down the system and restart and re-run the updater. i did this with the same result. it continues to tell me to shut down and restart and rerun the updater. there's no indication that it's actually updating the bios and the bios date remains the same. maybe this is related again to the fact that it should be run off a floppy. i have no way of testing this on another machine because when i try running it another machine that has a floppy drive i get the message that it`s not intended for this machine. can anyone offer any suggestions? (besides that this is a ludicrous quest.) thanks
http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.ws ... 59734.html
and removed the hard drive from the system and plugged it into a desktop using an adapter. i then tried extracting the update program to a dos partition on the laptop hard drive. this didn`t work - the extraction utility gave an error presumably related to the fact that i wasn`t extracting to a floppy. i extracted to a floppy instead and then copied the contents to the laptop drive`s partition and copied the boot sector code from the floppy to the boot sector of the hard drive`s partition. the mbr of the hard drive was already set up and the partition in question marked active. i put the hard drive back in the laptop and booted it. it booted fine and went into the initial screen with the ``read me first`` and the option to run system updater. i dutifully read the readme and then ran the updater. it told me to shut down the system and restart and re-run the updater. i did this with the same result. it continues to tell me to shut down and restart and rerun the updater. there's no indication that it's actually updating the bios and the bios date remains the same. maybe this is related again to the fact that it should be run off a floppy. i have no way of testing this on another machine because when i try running it another machine that has a floppy drive i get the message that it`s not intended for this machine. can anyone offer any suggestions? (besides that this is a ludicrous quest.) thanks