T43p: Cannot boot from Recovery CD with new hard drive

[wkohler]

Hi. Just received a replacement hard drive for my T43P. It's a 100gb Hitachi drive with a Lenovo P/N:39T2562.

I was having an issue where Windows wouldn't start. I have the correct recovery CDs and putting the first one in, allowed me to get to Rescue & Recovery. I had no backups and no data stored on the computer, so I had tried recovering the system, which failed. Fine.

I ordered the aforementioned drive, being told it would not trigger the 2010 error, which was my main concern. Plus it's bigger and faster. It arrived this morning.

I installed it and started up the computer. When the BIOS screen came up, I pressed the "Access IBM button," then F11 to get it to do the Rescue and Recovery, just as I had before. This time, though, the disc spins up in the drive for a couple seconds, then the screen goes blank. Then it comes up with the following:

Broadcom UNDI-PXE-2.1 v7.7.5
Copyright, etc, etc, etc

Broadcom Base Code PXE-2.1 v1.0.1
Copyright, etc, etc, etc
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Boradcom PXE ROM.
Operating System not found.

I know it's not the optical drive because swapping the old drive back in, everything functions just as it did before. In fact, it even tried to start Windows when I forgot to press the button.

So, what should I do? Optical drive is at the top of the boot order.

Thanks.

[ajkula66]

You must press F12 and choose the media drive as a temporary boot device, then insert the first (Rescue and Recovery) disk...

Access IBM/F11 will do nothing on a blank hard drive.

[Orclas]

Aye.

The Broadcom PXE etc message is the computer saying that network boot did not work. It does so since PXE boot is the last in the boot order, so it's basically saying "tried all the others, not even PXE boot works".

PXE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Ex ... nvironment

[wkohler]

I had done it the way ajkula66 suggested a few times as well. Forgot to add that process. That said, his instructions of which disc to put in the drive made me think.

I got it straightened out. I had the wrong disc in the drive. I had "disc 1" in the drive instead of the recovery CD, which was on the bottom of the stack. Been a while since I had done it.

Thanks.

[Orclas]

Nice to hear you got it working and nice of you to drop by and report back.

(I like helping people on forums like this, but can sometimes be a bit tired of people not bothering to come back and say "hey, it works!")

[cadillacmike68]

Think of the Recovery CD as "disc 0" in this situation

Glad it's all working correctly now.