Thinkpads Forum

Hello everyone. This is my first post here on this forum and hopefully I have placed it in the right area. I spent some time reading through the various topics with similar issues but have not been able to find a resolution for mine.

I have a Thinkpad 240, 2609-41U. A few weeks ago I felt the PC running a bit slow and decided to run the system defrag utility. Upon restarting the PC I was left with only a blinking cursor on a blank black screen.

Since the only external drive I have is a Floppy Ultra Bay I attempted everything I could think of and or came across in the forum. I then decided to connect the drive into an older 600E Thinkpad. Although the screen is cracked on the 600E, I was able to connect it to an external monitor to reformat the drive and reinstall the OS and Applications. This all proved successful and seemed to run fine while in the 600E. Unfortunately upon transferring the HDD back into the 240 I end up with the same results at start up, just a blinking cursor.

I know it is a pretty old system but I do not need that much from it. Since I am not able to afford a new laptop at the moment and would really like to be able to get this one back up and running. Hopefully one of you will be able to offer some guidance on what I could do to resolve this issue.

-Darren

Assuming you haven't got the 240 working yet here's what needs to be done. Simply copy the OS disk directly onto the hard drive while it's in the other laptop. Re-attach the HD to the 240. Using a WIN 98 startup disk in the floppy, navigate to the OS copy on your HD and install it from there. XP won't install through DOS but Win 98 and 2000 will. Get yourself a 4 or 8 gig flash drive and install everything else through that.
Tim S