Thinkpads Forum

Afternoon all, my daughters 600e died (dead mobo), and i managed to pick up an incomplete 600e off ebay, F1 tests show all hardware OK.

Oh goody! So, I put in all the good bits required from the dead 600e - HDD, memory sticks, CD drive & battery, all of which I know are good, as they've all been double checked on my son's 600e as well. Changed the CMOS battery as well for good measure.

Problem is, the 600e can't see the HDD in BIOS - when you switch on, you can hear the HDD spinning no problem, and it boots fine from an XP CD in the CDROM drive, tries to install XP, but the HDD just will not show - i've tried other HDD and the same result, the HDD are 12gb, and it's running the latest BIOS version showing on the IBM site (already done when i got it), anyone got any suggestions?

thanks all

It could be that the IDE connection is physically defective. I have a 600E board with the same problem. It started as an intermittent problem and now won't detect any HDD at all.

what part's exacly did you replace? as it's possible you do have a faulty motherboard, the only think i can suggest until your next reply is purchasing a can of air $6-$7 just about anywhere, and spray down in there and try and clean it out the best you can.

Also: check for broken pin's on your hard drive, because obviously it's not reading..

also: check the boot sequence in your bios setting to confirm your hard drive is an option, even try making it your first option.
it most likely won't even list the hard drive as a boot option if it's not reconizing it, but you never know...

Hope that helps..

...and try "Initialize" in BIOS menu - helps to clean IRQ-issures. Also may help a BIOS update, if bytes are skipped.