Thinkpads Forum

I just bought a used 770e with no battery, hd ,floppy or cd rom. When I installed my old hd.and a new cmos battery it would work but would not recondize the cd rom.it said the device was working but didnot show up in the device manger. the floppy worked although. I tried a recovery disc but the cd rom still was not in the device manger. What do I need to do I still have not got a battery in it , I was waiting to make sure everything worked before I got one. Can this be fixed or should I get another one? Thanks

First thing to check is whether the CD-ROM is recognized in Easy Setup.

Get into Easy Setup by holding down the F1 key while you power on the laptop. Keep F1 pressed until the Easy Setup screen comes up.

Now go into Diagnostics (little ambulance icon). See if the CD-ROM is bright or grayed out. If grayed, the CD-ROM is not being recognized.

If the CD-ROM is not recognized, question 1 is whether it is a genuine IBM CD-ROM module for a 770. If it is, make sure it is completely plugged into the Ultrabay. If it is, then make sure the release lever is snapped in.

This should give you a few things to try. Report back with what happened and we can give you more help if you need it.

Hope this helps.

I still cant get it to work Tried what i was to do and still nothing.

One more thing to try (and I'm grasping at straws, here). Make sure you have installed all the right 770 drivers. Also, try resetting the BIOS. In Easy Setup you need to select Config-Initialize. Then you will have to reselect the boot devices. See if that works.

Basically, since you are planning to trash this box if you can't get the CD-ROM to work, find the Battery-less BIOS procedure on this site and try it.

Hope this helps.