Thinkpads Forum

My 380D doesn't boot anymore. It loads the Thinkpad screen, Seems to do memcheck and then beeps. It almost sounds like a series of beeps. One, then two, then three beeps. Anyone have any ideas?

If your 380D is anything like my 365x (they are of similar vintage), power up and immediately hold down the F1 key. You will then (after a few moments) be presented with a BIOS set-up screen. One of the icons should be for "test." Choose that one, and then you'll get another screen, with the various system components. Test each one, and you might get some useful answer(s).

Nope...F1 doesn't do anything and it still makes weird beeps. How about the small battery next to the memory? If that is dead what are the symtoms?

I'm not 100% sure on your machine (and I've been wrong quite a bit when I take a guess). On my machine, the small battery holds the CMOS settings. When mine went bad, the "clock" would not hold the correct time of day, but otherwise it ran fine. Putting in a new battery certainly couldn't hurt. Did your machine just go bad all of a sudden, or did you notice something(s) funny beforehand?

When you hold the F1 key, you need to get to it right away, after you turn the power on. If you wait more than a second or two, it won't go into the CMOS set-up.

If this still doesn't help you, then I might suggest you take a look at the FAQs at the very top of this board. The method of accessing the BIOS program may be different on your machine.

I don't have too many more ideas, so hopefully someone else will chime in.

Hold F1 while you are moving the power switch to turn the system on and keep F1 held until you see the setup screen.

The only thing that happens when I hold F1 down is after 3-4 minutes I get a window that says "error" and 174 is written in it.

According to the user's manual for my 365x, a "174" error means Device Configuration Error. Quoting from my manual, "Check that the hard disk drive and the other devices are installed firmly in their connectors."

Don't know if the error messages are the same for your 380, but maybe something worked its way loose inside your machine???

I finally got this to accept a boot up disk. I held F1 for 5 or more minutes(lol) and got a screen that graphically instructed me to put a disk in the a drive and hit F1. It doesn't see either the cd drive or anything in the c drive except the boot up files and it says no other disks are installed. So maybe the cable from the MB to the cd and HD came loose. Is there such a thing, or are these drives plugged directly into the MB? Is there a link to show me how to take apart the case to see?
Thanks.