R60e Hard Disk Boot Fault

[Bertie Wooster]

Hi there all,
I recently purchased a Thinkpad R60e for my Father. We have only ever had IBM ( Aptiva desktop, Thinkpad 380z and a Thinkpad R50e ) nad have never had a moments trouble.
The thing is, his new R60e has developed a fault after only a couple of weeks use and nothing of any real consequence installed (Just AVG, Firefox and Skype )
On boot up, just after the splash screen, there is a beep (or 2 ? ) followed by an error message along the lines of " Hard disk error , device not detected ", something like that. The unit then goes to a list of the boot order (I notice the first position is a USB FDD ) in which the HDD is third. This list prompts you to press esc but just seems to hang. Turning the comp off and going through this a few times ( say 4 -6 ) usually remedies the issue.
In addition, during normal use ( web browsing, nothing processor intensive ) the unit has taken to bringing up a full page "Xp is shutting down" error message. When it goes to restart, well its back to square one with the HDD error.
As the unit is only 2 weeks old and is under warranty I'm not really worried but that's not the point ! I've tried an RnR recovery but it's not fixed anything.
Any help would be very appreciated !

[tfflivemb2]

It sounds like it might just be a bad hard drive.

You might want to contact Lenovo and get a replacement drive....ask for Recovery Disks too at the same time, since you have no access to yours to create a backup.

[Bertie Wooster]

Thanks for that. I remember the HDD making a sort of clicking sound a few days ago, is this something ?
Would Lenovo just send out a new HDD and if so is it just a plug and play type instalation with a pre load on it ? Ie do I just replace it and power up or what ?
Thanks

[tfflivemb2]

You should be able to call them and have them send you a new one...they will however need the old one back....to make sure.

You can remove your existing drive by using the Hardware Maintenance Manual, to show you how. It is very easy to do. You will most likely have to use the restore disks after replacing the hard drive, because it won't come preloaded with an OS...

[Bertie Wooster]

Thanks all !
All fixed now, IBM sent out a new HDD and recover disks ( all 7 of them ! ). Took about 4 hours and now everything is as god as new.