Thinkpads Forum

so... i have a IBM thinkpad 600x and i used the program DBAN (dariks boot and nuke) and now i cant install any O.S.

on start up after it says IBM thinkpad i get a black screen with a picture of a white floppy disk and an arrow telling me to put it into a floppy drive my laptop doesnt have.

then at t he bottom it tells me to push the F1 key

when i do the only thing thats shows up on the next black screen is:

I9990302
I9990305

what do i do next. i have pclinuxos 2007 that i want to install on it but nothing happens when i pop the CD in.

DBAN appears to wipe out all of your hard drive's data and would assume that it erases your boot sector as well. That's the error messages you are getting:

I9990302: Invalid hard disk boot record
I9990305: No bootable device

What you need to do now is to go into the Easy-Setup (aka BIOS) menu and set the system to boot from the CD before anything else. That's done by holding the F1 key down and powering up. Continue to hold the F1 key until the Easy-Setup menu appears. Using the trackpoint, select the "Start up" icon, then the "Power on" icon. You will then see a list of "devices" labeled 1,2,3,4. That's your current boot order. Select the "Reset" icon and the list will be deleted. Then select the CDROM icon as number 1. Press the "OK" and/or "Exit" buttons until you get back to the main menu, then select "Restart". The system should then boot from the CDROM drive.

the icon you see is telling you no operating systim is present,, and is asking for a bootable floopy. so give it one. go into bios.
and make shure your floopy is set for fist boot. hard drive number 2. save and exit bos. hook up floopy, insert start up disk,
start machine. and proceed to install O/S of your choice.
if you have a bootable cd, you can use that instead. just configure
bios to boot from cd rom.
oh, by the way, if you dont have one of those removable floopy drives, your gonna eventually need one. adrian

rkawakami, i did as you said but the same still happens except that i no longer get the I9990302 error. just the I9990305

Then I believe that means:

- your CDROM drive is not being recognized
- the CD you are using is not bootable

About the only way to determine the first is to try another drive in your system or try the drive in another system. The second possibility can be determined by trying to boot the CD on another computer. Was this PCLinuxOS disk purchased or downloaded? If purchased, I would assume that it would be bootable (logic suggests this). If you downloaded the file from one of the web sites, then you may not have written it correctly. Looking at one of the mirror sites, you should have received an .ISO file. That type of file has to be written onto a CD in a specific format, normally called an "image" and not simply "copied" with Windows Explorer.

ok, i checked the pclinuos (which was downloaded and burned as an iso image using disk burner xp) but im not sure it works right. but i tried installing a windows xp cd and that didnt work either. either way i get the same error.

do i need to install drivers to get the cd rom drive working?

No, no drivers are needed. If the BIOS has been set to boot off the CDROM then it should work. Is there a chance that you can borrow another CD or DVD Ultraslimbay drive?

no, the cd drive sounds and feels like its working tho. it werrrrrs and vibrates. i da no, i completely wiped it tho

Keep in mind older cd-rom and dvd-rom drives cannot read consumer burned CDRs.

You need to find an original factory pressed bootable cd-rom. If you don't have a Windows one, order a free one from Ubuntu.com. Keep in mind that it takes a couple of week to get to you.

You're better off installing the hard drive into a newer laptop and installing an OS from there.

change your boot settings in bios, floopy first, cd rom 2nd, hard drive 3rd. try a windows 98 flopy, if it boots, run fdisk, partition
and format the hard drive. you can then use the "sys c:" command
to make the hard drive bootable. if your wondering if the cd rom works, get a older "maxblast" maxster hard drive install cd. they are
fully bootable. good luck, adrian

I believe the cd-rom is fine since it read the burned DBAN disk. I have used this and worked fine on a few 600e and t21. I agree that the boot-up order is culprit as mentioned.