A hard drive problem on my very very very old laptop

The IBM 390 Thinkpad Laptop

from WinCustomize Forums
Well as the title says, i have a hard drive problem. And as the subtitle says, The hard drive in on an old, VERY OLD, IBM Thinkpad 390 laptop.

Well lets explain the hardware specs:

1. Pentium 2
2. cd/dvd drive
3. floppy disk
4. 64mb RAM.
5. 4.55GB hard drive.

Ok before you guys start laughing(  )I have to tell u guys that it has surved me for years now i want it to surve me more. (Yes i have better computers like the HP pavilion 750n which i'm using to type this thread and a 2005 vaio desktop computer.)I have personal reasons for still keeping this laptop so.....

anyway... It could run DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, NT, 98, ME, 2000, and also XP(but obviously slow)

Ok by now u guys are saying to yourselves "SO WHAT'S THE PROBLEM!!" so i'll tell you the problem.

Ok i had a copy of windows xp home edition and decided to stupidly install it on the laptop. Yes it worked but slow of course. I was planning to buy extra memory later on so im not that stupid. But the problem is the copy of windows that i brought was pirated!! i didn't no that at the time until 30 days later it told me to activate windows??!!! i mean the cd looked like the orginal and everything but i somehow have been tricked. so i formated my hard drive and made a partition so i can install win 2000.

Problem was it said that it couldn't read video.bat. Sometimes it would also not read pcamid.bat.

sometimes it would work with no problems but when i format it to nfts or Fat32 format it stops formating on 75%. i did the same for all the windows i have except win 3.1 and 95.

then i kept doin the same things over and over again until i suddently the cd says that there isn't any hard drives installed. in windows me and 98, it told me to go to FDISK and create a partition. but when i do it, it says no fixed drives present. i can format either.

so now im stuck with this whenever i boot my laptop: "Operataing system not found."

I even tried to install Knoppix 3.7!!! (seriously i tried!!) but it didn't work.

Any ideas on how to slove the problem?

P.S: IF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY IDEA WHERE TO GET AN UPDATED VERSION OF KNOPPIX, PLEASE TELL ME WHERE I CAN GET ONE.   
42,400 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I'll give it a shot, mostly based on what I have seen posted here. You should be able to remove the HD and hook it up to another computer. Since it's out of a laptop you may need to hook it up by USB, (not sure about that part). That way you should be able to read the drive and go from there, save your info to another drive, check the drive, whatever.

If I'm totally wrong I'm sure someone will correct me.   
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Knoppix and any other Linux distro can be downloaded from the internet for free. Just google it or go to distrowatch.com.

Start11 - Customize the Start Menu and Taskbar in Windows 10/11.
Reply #3 from WinCustomize Forums Top
does the bios see the correct hard drive?
Reply #4 from WinCustomize Forums Top
i hear fishing boats always need new anchors
Reply #5 from WinCustomize Forums Top
does the bios see the correct hard drive?


how can i tell?

i hear fishing boats always need new anchors


I'd agree if i had a boat without an anchor.
Reply #6 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Sounds like maybe the drive has a lot of bad sectors on it and you will need to use a boot cd or disk[floppy] to get to where you can run check disk. When and if you get that far besure to have it correct any errors found on the hard drive. This will mark the bad sectors for now and then when you try to reinstall they will be skipped over.
You can use the cd for the xp home you have and locate the I386 files to which you should be able to run chkdsk.exe from there in dos prompt.
If the hard drive fails to report as being there - then thats another problem - with maybe doing a few things to see if it is a bad bio battery or just the bio needing to be reset.

start the computer and find the bio startup key

it can be either or a number of different ones usually f1,f2,f3, and so forth and don't forget this one too the delete key is sometimes used for bio setup.
once there find out if the system see's the hard drive and if it has a test for it. if anything do reset to default values and restart again
then try to use the chkdsk.exe as I mentioned before and have it fix the disk.

good luck...
SGT  
Reply #7 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I went to the bios setting and it says that the IDE Primary Master is [NONE] and the IDE Second Master is [CD-ROM].

I'm guessing that the primary master is supposted to be the hard drive. If so, then the BIOS doesn't see it. I restored everything to the default settings but it still didn't work.

And i can't run chkdsk from DOS because it says "Cannot CHKDSK a network drive"

Need more help please?
Reply #9 from WinCustomize Forums Top
You checked all the physical connections to the drive, right?

If your BIOS can't see it . . . . I think it's gone.

Reply #10 from WinCustomize Forums Top
If your BIOS can't see it . . . . I think it's gone.


PLEASE DON'T TELL ME THAT'S TRUE!!!
Reply #11 from WinCustomize Forums Top

PLEASE DON'T TELL ME THAT'S TRUE!!!

OK...it's not true....

But it's still likely to be 'gone'...

Reply #12 from WinCustomize Forums Top
OK...it's not true....
But it's still likely to be 'gone'...


NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!