T30 Operating System Installation Problem

[carbitz]

Hi, i have just been given a IBM T30.

Problem is when switched on following boot up, it goes to a black screen with only the following coming up ....OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND...

i have restore discs that came with the laptop and i can boot from them and it goes through the process of asking for all 3 discs after loading the files on, but when it restarts to continue with the recovery process it gives the same message ......OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND

I have tried the same with a win XP disc, and the same.

I have used IBM's utility to check the H/D and other hardware and no faults seem to appear?

Can anyone shed any light? I am thinking possibly the CMOS Batt?

[Neil]

Most likely not all of the hard drive pins are in their sockets. Do you have the hard drive in a caddy with all four screws installed?

[carbitz]

thanks for the reply, the hard drive does have all four screws, put there is a screw missing from the plastic cover, not sure if that matters? As it sits fairly firmly without the screw? The pins on the hard drive appear to be all there and straight.

[Neil]

The cover lock shouldn't make any dif. So I dunno. Just a shot in the dark, but what is the boot order in the BIOS?

[carbitz]

i've tried both boot orders, HD first, then CD. Unless I should leave it on CD until recovery is complete?

[Neil]

I can't remember for sure, plus I have never used recovery disks on a T30 (have on T23 and T4x though). But, maybe you just need to press F11 again at start up to start the recovery process from the newly created partition.

Once all the stuff is copied from the disks, I don't think you need them in the drive any longer. "course I could be wrong.

[carbitz]

thanks for the suggestions, but did not work! It actually asked me to remove the discs from the drive and as it started up i pressed F11 but same again, the IBM logo comes on then straight back to the usual message...OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND! Do you think it could be anything to do with the connector from the HD to the motherboard? I've not actually inspected that in any detail but i think i would have to dismantle things to do that!

[Neil]

Can you boot up a live Linux CD, mount your HDD and see if the recovery partition is actually there?

[carbitz]

It's probably a bit late as i erased the HDD with the IBM utility.

[Neil]

it goes through the process of asking for all 3 discs after loading the files on

This is the part I'm referring to. What it's doing there is rebuilding the recovery partition. Then you have to boot into the recovery partition and install the operating system. Just copying the files from the CDs does not install the OS.

[carbitz]

ok, thanks, i will try that tomorrow and let you know if i have any joy. I would have expect it to be there as when it's reading the discs, the HDD light is flashing and it's looking as though it is writing the data to the HDD. If it is there, is there any thing i can do?

[carbitz]

All sorted now! I was playing around with the F11 key on startup, pressing it a few times and it kicked into recovery mode, and installed all the files. So far so good, thanks for your help and advise as i would have been stuck without it!