Thinkpads Forum

Had Windows XP up and running fine (upgraded from Win2k which was on the machine when I got it) until I decided to do a clean install of the OS. Unfortunately, my ThinkPad does not recognize the PCMCIA CD drive (TEAC, if that matters) so the Windows installation disk can't initialize.

I updated the BIOS... didn't fix my problem. I used the XP floppies... the installation program didn't recognize a CD drive. I created a Recovery Diskette like IBM's support site instructs... still didn't fix my problem. In fact, the last thing made matters worse! Now the previously installed operating system won't even load. (I get a "Missing Operating System" message after the BIOS screen.)

So what do I do from here? I want my ThinkPad back! Is there a setting I'm missing in the BIOS that will make my laptop boot from a CD? IBM says the Recovery Diskette should do the trick, but it sure as hell didn't in my case. Any help will be greatly appreciated...

mateo wrote:So what do I do from here? I want my ThinkPad back! Is there a setting I'm missing in the BIOS that will make my laptop boot from a CD? IBM says the Recovery Diskette should do the trick, but it sure as hell didn't in my case. Any help will be greatly appreciated...

No, the BIOS won't boot from the PC-Card drive. But you can copy Windows XP to the hard drive and install it from there.

* Create or download...

http://www.bootdisk.com

...a DOS bootable floppy. Be sure to include the format and fdisk commands and set up the DOS drivers for your PC-Card CD-ROM. Boot up with this floppy. Now create a FAT32 partition, format it (you can also make it bootable with the FORMAT/S command, if you like). Create a new folder (preferably called "i386") and copy the contents of the i386 folder from the XP installation CD to this location on the hard drive. Start setup ("WINNT") from the hard drive. When you're given the option to convert the FAT32 partition to NTFS during the installation process, I'd recommend you to do so.

- or -

* Create or download a DOS bootable floppy and copy the format and fdisk command to it. Boot up with this floppy, create a FAT32 partition and format it (you can also make it bootable with the FORMAT/S command, if you like). Remove the hard drive, connect it to your desktop PC via a USB enclosure or a 3.5"->2.5" adapter. Copy the contents of the i386 folder from the Windows XP installation CD to the hard drive. Put the hard drive into your notebook again, boot it up and start setup from the hard drive.

Further information:

"How to start the Setup program from MS-DOS in Windows XP"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... 48&sd=tech

So far, so good. I can boot with a DOS disk and get my CD drive recognized. The C drive is formatted. But how do I copy the i386 directory on to the hard drive? DOS is beyond me so any more help you can provide would be awesome. So far I've tried the xcopy command... don't even know if that was successful.

mateo wrote:So far, so good. I can boot with a DOS disk and get my CD drive recognized. The C drive is formatted. But how do I copy the i386 directory on to the hard drive? DOS is beyond me so any more help you can provide would be awesome. So far I've tried the xcopy command... don't even know if that was successful.

Read the Microsoft link I posted above. Seems you can execute the Windows setup also directly from CD, it will copy the install files to the hard drive for you.

Otherwise, provided that D: is your CD drive, type:

MD C:\i386
XCOPY D:\i386\*.* C:\i386 /E/H

Thanks to this post, I got WinXP Pro loaded on one of my 240s. I found a USB CD-ROM for an X series, used a boot disk, loaded the USB drivers and then FDISKed and FORMATed the hard drive, then followed the microsoft link above and loaded WinXP from the cd-rom via a command prompt. Everything loaded, video drivers, USB drivers, sound drivers, etc.

I have the 2609-41U and enjoy 800x600 screen resolution

Thanks so much.

-lohman