OS installation on a 570E without removeable drives

[dansthink]

Hi, I'm new here, but have been reading for a few weeks. I have a thinkpad 570 with a dying screen and a 570E that I just bought from eBay to replace the 570. When I got the 570, I easily installed Windows 2000 by taking the HD out and putting it in my T23. I ran the win2k setup and after the drive was partitioned and formatted and then the files copied, I put it back in my 570 and voila, the OS installation continued. The same process is not working with the 570E. I no longer have the T23, but my T42, Dell Inspiron 2200 old Gateway Solo 9100, as well as three different desktop systems of varying vintage are not working with this process. When I get the drive back in the 570E it either boots the first part of Win2k (or XP) and then I get a blue screen and setup can't continue or I just get a disk read error after the bios and have to hit ctrl-alt-del.

I'm pretty sure the drive works because i can install xp or 2k on it in the above mentioned systems. Also, I'm pretty sure the laptop is ok because I was able to get my old 570 HD to work in the 570E after a rather tedious process similar to the above (I can't get a fresh, clean install that way, however, but it does prove the 570E works). The drive involved is a 20GB IBM, about three years old. Any thoughts? I hate to spend more money on this (buying a floppy or Ultrabase) since it was meant to be a cheap solution. I have been offered an ultrabay with CD and floppy for $50 from the guy I bought the 570E from on eBay, but like i said this was supposed to be a cheap solution--it's just my couch-internet-surfing-email-checking pc. I have read on here that some thinkpads require their HDs be fdisked and formatted in the actual machine. Is this one of them? Think it is safe to say the Ultrabase will solve my problem since I'll be able to do the whole process within the 570E?


Sorry for the long post!

[tfflivemb2]

Have you upgraded the BIOS to be able to accept Win2000?

[dansthink]

Yes, I have the latest BIOS--it came preinstalled from the guy on eBay. It's just kind of odd that the 570 and 570E would be so different. I thought they shared the same logic board and only differed in HD size and processor type and speed. If only they included USB booting. I'd try network booting but there is no built-in ethernet and the IBM PCMCIA card is expensive, even on eBay. It seems an ultrabay may be my only hope?

[pianowizard]

Perhaps installing Windows 98 first followed by upgrading to Windows 2K would work?

[carbon_unit]

Try this:

Put the hard drive back into the T42.
Then perform a "format C: /s" (without the quotes) booted from a win98 boot floppy.
Then "copy D:\I386 C:\" (without the quotes) will copy the I386 folder from the win2k install cd to the hard drive.
Put the hard drive back into the 570E.
Boot up to a command prompt.
type "cd I386" (without the quotes)
Type "winnt" (without the quotes)
Install should proceed from there.

If you don't have a win 98 boot floppy one can be found at http://www.bootdisk.com/
If you don't have a floppy drive for your T42 you can try to use a USB flash drive.

[dansthink]

Carbon, I already tried that but I just get a flashing cursor. The installation of Win98 first may be the way to go. I'm going to try that now....

Dang. No luck, WIn98se installed from my Dell but when I put the HD in the 570E I get "Invalid System Disk". When I install WinXP from the Dell (and the T42) I get a blue screen after the initial phase of the XP boot process. Safe mode, whatever, makes no difference. Looks like I'm going to have to suck it up and buy the ultra thing. I just hope that works, or else I've got a lemon.

Anyone have any other ides? I'm thinking that this is a boot sector, partition kind of thing. Maybe there's some software out there that will let me edit this info so it works on the 570E?

While I hate to spend more time on it, I'm going to try one last thing: Win98se from my T42....

[dansthink]

Sorry for the much-delayed report on this, but it's good news. I have a reliable way--albeit somewhat elaborate and a PITA--to get WinXP on my 570e (which runs just fine, in case anyone is wondering.) Here's what i had to do:

1) Remove the HD from th 570e and install it in my T42.
2) Boot from Win98SE floppy and make sure the floppy has xcopy.exe on it
3) Run fdisk, create new partition, reboot
4) type 'format /s' at the command line
5) copy himem.sys and smartdrv.exe to the C: (I did this via CD)
6) Edit the config.sys to load himem.sys (smartdrv requires himem to load)
7) xcopy the contents of the i386 folder to the C: drive and make sure you copy it to a folder also named i386. If you can remove the drive and put it in an external enclosure and then copy the files from a runing PC, that is easier and more reliable.
8) type 'fdisk /mbr' at command line (this was key in my case--if left out, I'd get a blinking cursor or error message on reboot in the 570e)
9) Reinstall the drive in the 570e and boot up. It should say "starting Windows 98 and then go to the command line.
10) type 'smartdrv'
11) type 'cd \i386'
12) type 'winnt' and you're off and running.

Once I had XP installed I turned off all the stupid, CPU-hogging animation effects (except show window contents while moving--that is useful) in System Properties-->Advanced-->Performance Settings. Loaded with 320MB of RAM, and a wireless PC card, this little 570e makes a perfect little living room laptop that sits on our coffee table and we use while on the couch after dinner and on weekends. It actually get far more use than my much more powerful desktop PC upstairs.

I hope this helps someone. Feel free to email me about this if you have any questions: 'trash' at 'dgnetworks.com'

-Dan

[AlphaKilo470]

When you used the T23 for installing Win2k, you were probably able to move the drive to the 570 because the chipsets are compatible.

This is not the case in going from the other computers because they probably have different chipsets which will cause Win2k to not properly work.

The 570 and 570E, if I'm not mistaken, use the Intel 440BX chipset which is compatible with the 440LX and possibly other Pentium II and III chipsets by Intel.