Thinkpad 600E-2645 55U- Not showing full hard drive capacity

[supercomp923]

Hello,

I am working with an old 2645 55U, 600E Thinkpad. This unit has been down since sometime last year and I am trying to revive it to give to my son. Upon startup, I get one extra beep, which is odd, and it ends up booting to a DOS screen that says: HIMEM.SYS is missing.
Make sure that the file is in your windows directory.

I have attempted to replace the HIMEM.SYS file but the system will not allow me to make the changes.

Thanks in advance for any and all help you can give me. Larry, Wichita, KS.

[supercomp923]

Hello,

I am working with an old 2645 55U, 600E Thinkpad. This unit has been down since sometime last year and I am trying to revive it to give to my son. Upon startup, I get one extra beep, which is odd, and it ends up booting to a DOS screen that says: HIMEM.SYS is missing.
Make sure that the file is in your windows directory.

I have attempted to replace the HIMEM.SYS file in C:\>edit.config.sys, but it will not accept the changes. I am not sure if this is a physical problem with the memory or just a missing file.

Thanks in advance for any and all help you can give me. Larry, Wichita, KS.

[ChefJohn]

Check to see if the config.sys is read only... Sometimes on some os's the techie used to make all system files config.sys autexec.bat read only.

make sure the version of himem.sys is the same as the version of the os
ie if a win 3xx Dos 3 - 5. Win 95 the win 95 etc etc

[supercomp923]

Thank you for your help on my computer. I ended up replacing my hard drive with a new Western Digital 2.5" EIDE. I got the system back up, but now have another problem. I doesn't recognize the new 40 gb hard drive. It shows the C: drive as being 1.99 gb and the D: as 5.9 gb. I have been doing some reading and everything tells me that you have to do a BIOS update to get the computer so see the hard drives full size. I downloaded the TP bios update and applied it but it still doesn't see the new hd as 40 gb. Thanks. Larry.

Check to see if the config.sys is read only... Sometimes on some os's the techie used to make all system files config.sys autexec.bat read only.

make sure the version of himem.sys is the same as the version of the os
ie if a win 3xx Dos 3 - 5. Win 95 the win 95 etc etc

[Davemci]

You didn't say what operating system you're using but if it is MSDOS v6.22 the max primary partition is 2GB with a 16bit FAT.

[pkiff]

I ended up replacing my hard drive with a new Western Digital 2.5" EIDE. I got the system back up, but now have another problem. I doesn't recognize the new 40 gb hard drive. It shows the C: drive as being 1.99 gb and the D: as 5.9 gb.

That doesn't sound like a "new" drive: it sounds like it already has at least two partitions on it. Did you buy it used? If so, you will want to wipe it properly first and remove all existing partitions. Then, once you have a really completely blank drive, stick it in your 600E and boot up with a DOS/Win98 floppy boot disk. Partition the disk using fdisk in DOS. Then format the drive using format in DOS. If you need help with those steps, let us know.

Phil.

[pkiff]

I have attempted to replace the HIMEM.SYS file in C:\>edit.config.sys, but it will not accept the changes. I am not sure if this is a physical problem with the memory or just a missing file.

I can't understand you here. I'm not sure if you've already committed 100% to going with the new drive or not, but if you want to go back to the old drive, then I would start with this item.

Normally, in a Win 98 installation, the HIMEM.SYS file is located either in the root directory or in the C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND directory. It may be referenced in either the C:\AUTOEXEC.BAT file or the C:\CONFIG.SYS file. But if you install Windows 98 properly, you don't normally need ANYTHING in your AUTOEXEC.BAT or CONFIG.SYS files, since Windows 98 will take over all the startup functions needed. The file you referenced "edit.config.sys" doesn't mean anything to me, and is probably just a leftover file from some earlier editing done by some program or other. I can offer additional assistance on this if you decide you want to go back to the old drive.

On rethinking this, I expect your old drive had a Windows 95 installation. This can be a bit trickier to sort out.

Phil.