Oh Crap...

[ragefury32]

A couple of days ago I removed the 7K60 drive on my T42p to install OSX/86 on my X31 (basically by swapping HDDs so I can use the optical on my T42p, as I don't have a dock - thank my lucky stars the X3x and the T4x series use the same caddy frame), and during the process I somehow mounted the 2 "clip" screws on the machine without the caddy frame, and when I installed the drive back onto the bay and turned it on the machine would not boot again. It'll go into the Thinkpad logo screen, but all attempts to induce it to go into BIOS or the recovery partition would fail utterly. I immediately took the HDD out, mount the caddy frame back on and then reboot...but still, the exact same thing. I even swapped in the original 7K60 drive, which did not help. I popped the backup battery already and has verified that the 7K60 drive is okay, as I have tested it on a plain-jane T42 and it booted to the recovery partition just fine.

Any suggestions before I call this one in?

(Besides buying an Ultrabase X3 to keep this from happening again?)

[carbon_unit]

Which machine won't boot, the X31 or the T42P?
I had trouble with my T42 every time I took out the hard drive. I'm not sure but it seemed like I had to make sure that the two silver contacts both touched the hard drive cover or it would not see the hard drive. Once I had to pry them up a little so they would contact.
Maybe it was just a coincidence? Give it a shot.

[GomJabbar]

On the T4x series at least, it helps if the laptop is turned upside down while inserting the drive. This is especially true when not using a caddy. If the T4x is sitting on it's base, the back of the hard drive may drop enough while being inserted so that the hard drive connector plugs in on the wrong row of pins. Also, some have reported that the hard drive may appear to be fully plugged in, when actually it needs to be pushed in just a little bit more.

[ragefury32]

Thanks for the responses. It was the T42p that refused to boot up with the original drive...although the X31 doesn't want to boot my OSX build either, so I strongly suspect a bad HDD.

No, I think the pins on the board might have been damaged during the insertion/removals...besides, taking apart the T4x series are a pain compared to the relatively simple X31. Anyways, I called this one in for depot (*moan*) service. Hopefully when it comes back it'll be in a better shape.