R40e won't start

[Mardok95]

Hi everyone, yesterday I bought an IBM ThinkPad R40e with 256MB of RAM. I try to turn it on and it tells me that the following file is missing or damaged: \windows\system32\config\system.
I should reinstall windows or install a light version of linux like puppy linux or Tiny Core Linux.Do you have some tutorial to do it from USB? I tried to do it but it doesn't recognize me the USB keys and when I try to boot from usb it tells me the missing operating system.

[tfflivemb2]

Do you have an image on the USB? If so, is the USB bootable? I have been using "Rufus Portable" lately to create bootable USB Drives. You can also check the Marketplace, where there is a post from a user that has a ton of recovery disks available. Not sure about the R40e though.

PS
Please update your location, per forum rules. Thanks!

[Mardok95]

I have a Windows XP iso image but the bios doesn't recognize the os. In the bios setup the USB Boot is enabled. So I don't know I can do it

[tfflivemb2]

If you have the XP ISO on a computer, you can use a program like Rufus Portable to properly burn the ISO to your USB, to make it bootable.

The bios doesn't differentiate between the different OS's, its just not seeing a boo table device.

The other option is to burn the XP ISO file to a cd.

[Mardok95]

The problem can be the fact that the usb is also a micro usb pen for mobile device. I think that this kind of stuff are not recognized by old hardware. Do you that I may change the usb pen drive? I have also an 16GB 3.0 USB.

Update. I used the 3.0 usb and the bios recognize it. But when I boot the usb the result is:
Missing operating system.
Operating System not found

[Mardok95]

I used a live version of Puppy Linux so I restored windows xp and now all works. Thank you