Thinkpad 600x PIII-500 Won't Boot

[Biggs]

When I turn on the power switch, it just shows the thinkpad logo and hangs.

1) If I power it down, hold the F1 key and power it up, it still defaults to the thinkpad logo and hangs.

2) If I power it down, press the F12 key, I get the choices for HDD or CDROM. When I select either, the screen turns blank with just a blinking cursor on the upper left part.

Greatly need your help. Thanks!

[whizkid]

Is the not booting sudden, or is this a new machine for you?

Does it boot if you remove all the removable hardware: battery, ultraslimbay device, hard disk, RAM, disconnect all ports?

If that fails, try battery only and unplug the adapter.

Can it boot from floppy? From CD?

Report back.

[Biggs]

I finally got it to work! Nonetheless, thanks for the advice.

For the benefit of the archive surfers, I disconnected the CMOS battery (i.e. backup battery) for a couple of hours in order to reset the CMOS. After that, I powered up the machine and received errors 161 and 163 (incorrect time & date error and defective battery error respectively). My battery runs just fine though. Anyhow, I proceeded to set the correct time & date settings, restarted and *wah lah*, the laptop booted up to Windows 2000.