If the CMOS battery is dead then the BIOS will fall back to default values whenever power is interrupted. You could attempt to set the harddrive up manually and possibly get the drive to show in the BIOS. I suspect there MAY be an 8GB limitation with the BIOS in that mechine. I am not, however sure about that. If you can get the BIOS to see the drive you MAY be able to use a drive overlay in order to utilize the entire capacity of the drive. In order to setup the drive manually in the BIOS you need some info off the drive label or try to get it from specs off the manufacturer's site. That would be easier than opening the case again.

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Well I was smart enough to write down what the model numbers etc. off the the HDD before I put it in (surprisly enough haha.) It's a Toshiba MK4025GAS - HDD2190. Any tips on how to do a manual setup or should I just look around online and see what I can find. Thanks again.

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I think about it and maybe that makes sense? Windows XP seems to recognize it but if the BIOS doesn't because of the size. I see online some places say to try to use EZ Drive by Micro House or Disk Manager DiskGo by Ontrack to make it recognize larger HDD's.

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edmond That is what a drive overlay is. The drive still needs to be seen by the BIOS in some form or another or you can't install the overlay. The info you need is at the link below. http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Pa...

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Thank you very much..and I really appreciate the advice. Just a few quick thigns before I attempt this stuff tonight. 1. Is it possible that Windows XP installation can recognize the HDD but still BIOS doesn't show one is connect. (When I partition/format it in XP setup it shows the correct size..etc..) 2. You said in your last message that BIOS needs to see it in some form before I install the overlay. Are you saying these programs will not help me then? Or do I need to do some sort of manual setup on the HDD then install an overlay? 3. Would it help/work to create a small partion in FAT/FAT32 through XP setup..format..then restart and see if that makes it show up in BIOS? Or is it strictly the disc size and not the partition size that effects this. That's all for the day..promise. Thanks again!

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I don't believe that the BIOS is NOT seeing the drive, if WinXP can see it. If, in fact, that is the case that would be a new one on me. I can't explain it. Going back to the beginning. You said the BIOS doesn't see the drive. Explain where you are looking. The best way to know if the BIOS has picked up on the drive is to watch the POST screens at startup. The drive should be identified by model. If all is as you say I guess I would try and use the drive. Just don't save any mission critical files on it until you are sure the drive is storing the files correctly.

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When I boot the computer without any discs in all it shows in the IBM screen..counts the memory..flashes to a black screen and asks for me to insert a system disk and hit enter to restart. If I use a boot disk (98se OEM disc) or (xp boot discs) it doesn't show anything about the HDD either...but it does load the RAMDrive stuff onto C: (format, scandisc, that stuff..). If I hit F1 right after turning on the computer to go into the BIOS I can go to a "system information" page in there. It doesn't give you a choice to change any of these but lists out the processor, DVD drive, floppy, etc...and where it says hard drives it says "none". I'm definately not questioning anything you've said..because honestly I don't know. Thanks.

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OK, boot into the BIOS screens and try to change the listing that says NONE to AUTO. Also, you MAY not be seeing the screens because the BIOS is set to fast boot. If you see that option try changing it to disable. Look for an option that mentions LOGO and change to none. Post back.

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ok..i do remember seeing that fast boot in there. i will try that. i read around some other sites and people were saying to make sure the HDD detect (or something to that extent) was set to AUTO but I am pretty sure in that screen there it gave me no choice to change it. I might be wrong..in which case I probably missed something right in front of me the whole time haha. Wish I could find some screen shots of my BIOS online here..but no luck..

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Ok just checked it out..when I got into BIOS here is what I have: System Info: CPU - 366 p II Disk A - 1.44 System With - DVD-Rom Attached HDD - None HDD Serial Number - (blank) System BIOS Version - V3.0 r01-a4e (it will not let me change any of these..just a list showing me what is there) Basic System Settings: Date/Time Startup Config: ACPI OS Fast Boot - Disable Silent Boot - Enabled PnP OS - Enabled Then boot sequence.. at A: D: C: Onboard Device Config: Serial Port - Enabled Base Address - 3F8h IRQ - 4 Parallel Port - Enabled Base Addres - 3BCh IRQ - 7 Operation Mode - Bi-Directional ECP DMA Channel - (option is blank and greyed out..not able to change) Then there is security options (to put passwords on computer and HDD - HDD password is greyed out and will not let me change.) Then power settings. Nothign with the HDD in there, only about system going to standby with lid closed..that option is turned off so power is on at all times. That's the only options I have in BIOS. Man what a headache huh? haha. See anything there that jumps out at you? Also..changed that silent boot and it shows a memory count - goes up to 256..says memory ok, then flashes right to the "insert system disc" message.

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Below is a link to the support website. Look in the BIOS settings to see if there is a option to select to boot from fixed or removable HDrive. I suspect the removable drive bay had a HDrive option that you might have been able to boot from. If so, that is what the boot secquence may be set to. There is reference to a BIOS update a corrects an issue with NONE being displayed even when a CD or DVD drive is present in the removable drive bay. This may of may not be related. I didn't hunt the entire site as I don't have the exact model. You can enter numbers off the unit and download the manual, etc.

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Sounds like a bad CMOS battery. Everytime you shutdown the system completely the CMOS battery is too weak to sustain the NVRAM and the settings are lost. You would have to go back into the bios and re-select auto-select, or enter the HD parameters. Core2 Duo 1.86 2GB DDR2 667 Nvidia 6800GS Asus P5L-MX

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To expand on Outlander's response, if the battery is not retaining the settings a clue will be the date and time in the BIOS, should be incorrect.

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The problem I'm having is there is no settings in there at all that I can change to "auto" or "auto-detect" unless somehow by changing the serial port settings it will change something. Still that only gives me 3 choices of different addresses..no auto anything. As far as the battery yesterday when I went through all the setting to check for options I looked at the time and date..they were right on. Since I've had that computer I've never changed those.

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And before I got this computer it sat for over a year without being charged/turned on. It just makes me wonder if there's some utility that I can use as a boot disk and will let me troubleshoot the HDD problem? So strange that when I load the XP setup it knows the size of the drive, where the drive is connected, and supposedly formats/partitions it. But even after restarting after XP setup installs the first set of files I can't see the files it supposedly wrote to the drive. Throw in a boot disk and get into dos and try to c: but says no drive. Maybe the type of dos that loads..can't see NTFS partitions? Just throwing as much info out as I can...

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You haven't commented on my #17 response. Did you understand where I was going with it? Was/is the removable harddrive an option with this Laptop? If that were the case and the BIOS was set to boot to a removable harddrive that could explain why you see NONE and yet XP can find a drive.

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Sorry..yes it was. But the thing that gets me is there is no way in BIOS to change anything so it'll detect the HDD. I know you guys (plus every other message board I've read about the same kind of problems) say to change to auto so BIOS will look for it..but the screen that shows HDD - None give you no chance/option to change any of those. All that screen will do is display what is and isn't there. When I go in to set boot order it does show "hard drive" but not sure if that'd mean anything. The link you tried adding in that post never showed up. I have upgraded to the newest BIOS that is there on the Lenevo website..with a list of what it fixes..but never saw anything on there about removable HD's.

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That message wasn't very clear..sorry. On the laptop physically is 2 laptop "card" slots. From what I know there isn't a spot for removable HD's..the DVD seems to be fixed in the manual shows how to remove the DVD/CD drive by taking the keyboard..case..apart. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s... That's a picture of the laptop...I don't believe there is a removable HD spot no.

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The BIOS updates referred to CD drives being physically present but the BIOS registering as NONE. I was carrying that premise a step further. If the CD that isn't seen is in a removable bay then the BIOS is faulty and that is why they released updates to fix it. I am also assumming that if a removable HDrive is an option here the BIOS would somehow allow you to boot from it. It could be a simple matter that if there were two HDrives available you would have a choice. Or it could be like the computer I am currently on, where in addition to having "harddrive" in the boot order there is an additional selection on a different page that I choose which harddrive to boot. I am guessing that when you first received this Laptop you didn't examine the BIOS setting until problems arose? So you are not sure how things read even with the old harddrive in place? Seems as though there were MANY different similiar models of that series. Are you positive you used the correct flash file?

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Ohh..ok I hear ya. The model is definately a 2611-452. This is the one I put on.. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s... I'm assuming as they come out with new ones they include all the prior fixes? I do see now where it talks about the BIOS/CD problem. As far as the boot order goes it only gives me the three options..hard drive, cd-rom, floppy disc. And yes, unfortunately I never checked the bios settings. The one thing I did kinda play around with last night was changing the base address on the serial port..it gives me three options..and after restarting the DVD drive came up as NONE too. I reset to factory setting and restarted and it was there again. Not sure if that helps at all...

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In the end I doubt you will ever find a definative answer here. I suggest you use the drive and don't rely on the data as the only copy until you are positive you can rely on it. I think the only way you could do that would be to dump a huge amount of files on there and then randomly access them for verification. There is a similiar situation with 48bit LBA compliance. Under certain circumstances WinXP can access portions of a drive and write to those portions, even though the BIOS cannot see them. The result is usuall corrupted data. Ifthis interests you look at the link below. http://www.48bitlba.com/index.htm

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You really need to see what POST (Power On System Test) is reporting as your laptop boots up. To see your POST output you need to DISABLE the "silent boot" option in your BIOS. "silent boot" option when enabled hides POST by using a Quiet boot splash screen. This is usually achieved by displaying an OEM logo (e.g. IBM, Dell, HP Etc). Boot up your laptop once you have the "silent boot" option disabled and you will see what is going on during POST. With any luck there may be some clues to the problems you are suffering. Also if you are using the win98 boot floppy to view your disk, then run fdisk and use the "Display partition information" option to view you partitions. A better more graphical partition viewer I would recommend is Ranish Partition Manager. This is a very small utility which is very good for viewing what partitions are on the disk. I would not use it to create partitions though. If you want to try it then look on my Website (Homepage link). Follow the link titled "Partition and Format using Ranish Partition Manager" which has a detailed guide on where to get it and how to use it. Report back your findings. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

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I did disable that silent boot. So what happens is it does a memory count..goes all the way up to 256mb..and say memory ok. Then the screen flashes right away and says "please insert system disk". It's like it does nothing at all. If i use a windows 98 boot disk it will run through..add in the cd driver, ramdrive on c:, and brings me to a:. When I try to FDISK it says "no fixed drive present". I've tried dos boot disks..other windows versions...thinking maybe FDISK was specific to the O/S or type of partition set up on the HD? To all of you..I really appreciate the help on this. I may not ever figure this out..but once you get going on it and seem to be so close it's frustrating to not figure it out..haha. It seems weird this BIOS doesn't give me more options to change stuff but it doesn't...I spent a solid hour going through those few options in BIOS..looking for something I can change. I did try to just wipe out all partitions on the HDD in the XP setup and then restart the computer before it copies files. Then I threw in the 98 boot disk..got into dos..and then tried to install 98SE from dos. At that point it goes through a few menus then comes up with an error saying there is no FAT or FAT32 partition on disk..that I need to create a dos boot partition and restart. again fdisk doesn't find the drive so that won't work..? it also says it could have an NTFS parition on the HDD. So i did try to go back into XP setup..just take a 2gb size of the HD and make a FAT partition on it..format it..restart again..and still says the same thing. Again..maybe none of this will/or even would help but it seemed kinda like a good chance anyway..haha.

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Is there anything in the Windows XP Recovery area that will help me? Just a thought..

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Let me just ask this.... If it really does see the hard drive in XP setup (it seems like it does because the format actually take a decent amount of time..and so does copying the setup files to the hard drive). If I use a boot disk of really any sorts I should be able to type in C: and then DIR and see what files are on there..right? Because when I do this..the bootdisk puts the RAMdrive on C: and I am unable to locate any of the files XP supposedly put onto the disk. I know from doing other clean installs of XP that after it copies that first set of files..it restarts and uses those files it copied to the HD to boot the computer up and finish install. At this point those files are either not really there..or the HD is not visible to the computer to use to boot up. If I eject the CD it just asks for the disk again..and restarts install again..and over and over.

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This is a BIOS level issue. As I asked above, Are you sure the BIOS flash file and utility were the exact file for your computer? You nned to answer that question yourself. I can't determine from a link you posted. BIOS updates can vary because of a suffix at the end of a model number. Or a MBoard version build. In the cas of a Laptop, my suspicion is that there may not be as may variables, but I don't know. I also don't know if the BIOS has anything to do with this issue. Just trying to eliminate variables. As I mentioned way back at the beginning of this thread, I didn't think the BIOS could configure a 40GB drive. I form that opinion due to the age of the machine and the original drive size. The reverse of your situation occurs when a really old HDrive is configured in a modern computer. The BIOS sometimes can't set it up automatically or even at all. I have seen computer BIOSes allow a CPU to run at full speed but not properly identify the chip. I don't have enough knowledge of the programming in the BIOS to understand the WHY of all this, but it happens.

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Having read the thread and all the responses. For the benefit of all reading, I would like to summarise your situation as follows: Product: ThinkPad i Series 1400 2611-452 Operating system: Windows XP SP2 HOME Configuration: P2-333 MHz, 256MB RAM, 4.0 GB HDD 1. Laptop working overnight. Battery drained. 2. Tried to boot with mains following day it failed no HDD detected. 3. Original 4 GB HDD removed and replaced with Toshiba 40 GB HDD. 4. Tried to boot with new HDD installed and still no HDD detected. 5. Win98 fdisk (using several different boot media) does not see the HDD either. 6. Win98 setup attempt fails (says the HDD has a problem and cannot install). 7. WinXP setup appears to see HDD and reports the correct size even though the BIOS does not detect it. 8. WinXP appears to go through stage 1 of install. However, on reboot it fails to see the HDD. Result of partial install was not verifiable. 9. Nature of corruption / fault as yet unknown Most issues that I can think off have been aired and most of what OtheHill has said pretty much applies. As OtheHill says this is most likely a BIOS level issue A few more things you can try: 1. Try installing XP again but remove the battery. Sometimes dead batteries can cause wierd problems with laptops. 2. If you install XP, use FAT32 not NTFS as your partition type. Your would then be able to boot with a Win98 floppy and try to view the disk contents. I do not think this will be any different to when you tried with NTFS but as we are clutching at straws this is one you can try. 3. Run a Linux Live CD. This will run the Linux OS directly from the CD. It does not need a hard drive. This will allow you to do most things like an ordinary PC including surfing the web. Use this OS to see if you can access the hard drive and report back. ___________________________________________ ☺ When everything else fails, read the instructions.

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Thanks. Never thought of the Linux idea. I've actually never used it but I'd seen alot of people who live and die by it. I'll give it a try tonight and see what happens. Everyone..again..thank you.

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edmond I missed that WinXP is not fully installing. You could use a drive overlay that may allow XP to fully install. Might be worth a try. You can download a correct overlay for your drive from the manufacturer's site. The CD version of Knoppix still needs to write some driver files to the HDrive in order to access the hardware fully. The DVD version doesn't have that requirement. At any rate, Knoppix if free and is a useful OS. It can sometimes recover files off a Windows machine when the file swystem on the drive is corrupted. Knoppix is a 700MB DLoad so you need a broadband connection. Or for a small fee there are places that will sell you a CD or DVD that is already configured.

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