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I have a thinkpad x40 with broken USB ports and no optical drive or floppy drive and I'm trying to install windows.
I'm trying to install windows by putting the laptop harddrive into an adapter in my desktop pc, installing DOS, then copying my i386 folder to the laptop harddrive and placing it all back inside the thinkpad. Once there, I should be able to boot to the command prompt, then go to the i386 directory and install windows XP.
Unfortunately, it won't boot. All I get is "invalid system disk" when I boot the laptop.
However, I know the DOS installation boots correctly, because it boots to a DOS prompt fine when the harddrive is connected to my desktop PC.
Any ideas on how to fix this problem?
Thanks!
do you mean I should install windows from the desktop PC and then make sure it has a copy of ntdectect.com ntldr and boot.ini?
Because I'm not really trying to do that off the bat... I'm trying to install DOS first because apparently the windows portion of the install must be done on the laptop - see here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Insta...
Thanks for your suggestion though
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The only thing I can think of is that the bios boot sequence is messed up and it's trying to boot from something other than the hard drive.
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... I'd suggest that you whip out the thinkpad hard drive and hook it up to your PC with something like this (cheapo):
http://www.bay-wolf.com/hddadapter.htm
... then use a 98 boot floppy or CD off the PC with the laptop hard drive hooked up
... format E: /s (what ever the laptop is)
... the "/S" switch will make the drive bootable.
... or without format
... A: sys C:
... you might have to unhook the PC drive as I think you may only be able to sys C: drive with some sys.com
... it'll have to be FAT 32 as well I believe.
... with the i386 folder on the drive after booting to it with smartdrv on floppy or on hard drive.
... smartdrv [press ENTER]
... C: [ENTER]
... CD I386 [ENTER]
... WINNT [ENTER]
************************
... OR/
... hook it up to PC which has XP installed
(dos'nt matter)... stick in the XP CD and just install to laptop drive.
... winnt32
... OK Ya
Grrrr
wat do I know?
... got brain freeze
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I believe the OP has already done that, Mavis007. The hard drive boots up ok on the OP's desktop. It just fails on the laptop.
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right. I did already do a version of that, instead of just doing the "sys" I went ahead and installed DOS, but the result is the same, I get a command prompt when I boot the drive in a normal computer, but "invalid system disk" in when I place the drive in the laptop.
I'll play around with the boot options in the bios and let you know if anything changes aegis.
Thanks everyone!
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Update:
I removed everything from the boot list with the exception of the harddrive itself. No dice. Same invalid system disk error.
Here's another interesting wrinkle in the puzzle: with the exact same bios settings, I can swap another laptop hard drive into the thinkpad that already has a valid windows install and it boots fine.
so to sum up:
1: laptop bios settings work to boot a drive with a valid windows install.2: hard drive with DOS installed on it boots to a command prompt when placed in a notebook ide adapter inside a normal computer.
what could possibly be wrong?!
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... try looking @ it using a boot disk and typing FDISK select option 4 which should clear things up.
... you may even have to create partition and format the lappy drive if its hosed.
... S*** happens
... keep us posted
... OK ya
Grrrr
wat do I know?
... got brain freeze
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Drparty, I am baffled by your problem.
But I have another thought. I think IBM boxes have a hidden partition on the hard drive with a recovery image. Maybe you could try the Lenovo web site. They might have a special procedure to go through (like hitting special keyboard keys during the boot) that will do a restore from that image.
Hopefully you haven't wiped the drive with a 'write zeros' utility.
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mavis007:
Thanks for your suggestion, I have two formatted partitions on the drive. The first is a primary active partition, 7GB in size and is formatted with FAT, and contains a bootable DOS installation.
The second partition is logical extended, and has FAT32 formatting, and no other data. I was planning on dropping my i386 folder on there and installing windows on the other partition, provided I could get a boot screen so that I could navigate to the i386 folder and select the winnnt.exe. But it won't boot when inside the laptop.Aegis:
The laptop does ship with a special partition that you reference, however the windows installation expires about six months after purchase and you can no longer restore, so I just formatted that and mapped it as an extra drive to store stuff on. I've been using it as my "my pictures" folder for years.
The drive I'm playing around with has been completely formatted so the different partitions no longer exist.hmm... I just looked at the partitions in disk management (part of computer management in administrative tools of winXP pro) on my healthy disk (that has a normal windows install on it) and it looks like this:
IBM preload NTFS (system) C: 29GB healthy
IBM service FAT32 (EISA) 4.61GB healthy
Mypictures NTFS Y: 3.56 GBSo I apparently didn't format that recovery image like I thought I did.
I think what I'm going to try to do is make an image of the whole good drive, and place it on the other disk I'm playing around with and see if I can get that image to restore from that EISA partition.
The problem is the drive I'm messing around with is only a 20GB drive and the good drive is a 40GB drive. But I might be able to delete everything in the windows partition and resize it inside the image before I place that image onto the play drive. Will see.I'll post what I find out, will do it later tonight.
Thanks everyone for their suggestions. We'll get it done somehow!
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"IBM preload NTFS (system)"
That kinda bothers me. I have another suggestion. Download and run DelPart on the drive. Then repartition/format as FAT32, set up the drive again with with the I386 folder, a SYS (or reinstall DOS) and try again.
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will do, but remember those partitions are on my normal, healthy windows installed hard disk... (that I'm actually posting this from).
there are only two partitions, both created in fdisk on the *other*, smaller hard drive that I'm actually trying to install windows on. However, I will delpart those two partitions and anything else I find on that drive and start over. I'll let you know what happens.
Thanks for your suggestion.
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Sorry about that, I was careless reading.
My thought was that there might be another partition on the drive (ahead of the one you created) that the laptop was trying to boot from.
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well I did just try that, no dice. Still going to try to make an image of the good drive and remove most everything and put that one on the play drive. But I won't be able to do that until later tonight, at the earliest.
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Well drparty, I just don't understand how it can be failing. I sure hope your plan works.
Good luck.
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well my guess (and this seems to be proven *wrong* all over the linux forums on the web) is that the thinkpad x40 bios can't see DOS. So it has to have windows...
Which would be great if you didn't have to install windows from the laptop itself to get around an NTDLR error.
So without disk drives, USB or any reasonable method of doing a PXE network boot, I'm pretty much screwed if the image thing doesn't work. We'll see.
I might attempt another go at network booting this fall, but I'm just too busy right now to attempt that, because last time I tried it was ridiculously complicated unless your doing it from linux or server 2003, neither of which I want to do.
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"thinkpad x40 bios can't see DOS"
Thanks for posting back with that info drparty! That's amazing! I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't know about your problem.
I wonder if you can get a replacement bios to fix the problem.
(edit) Darn, misread your post again drparty. I don't think there is a PC made especially for windows. Please post back if you find a solution.
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