Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations IamaSherpa on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

strange behavior on laptop hdd.

Status
Not open for further replies.

wvdba

IS-IT--Management
Jun 3, 2008
465
US
hi,
i'm trying to install a hard drive on a thinkpad t42 laptop and install windows xp pro on it. i have the bios start up from cd first and hdd second. the bios shows the hdd and its model number etc. when i put the hdd in, the screen just shows a black screen with nothing on it. when i take the hdd out, everything is normal, xp starts to load from cd and stops because there's no hdd. but, when i put the hdd back in, the xp cd never starts, not does it say that there's no operating system - just a blank screen. i have tried two drives with the same result. any ideas? i'm just totally baffled.
thanks.
 
Motherboard could be fried in terms of the IDE/SATA connection since you've tried two hard drives. I'm somewhat concerned that the problem is in the mobo from what you have seen. If that's NOT the case, then some of the following might help.

You have an IBM T42 - that's pretty old. I have one that's a Pentium III 800. I'm wondering if you bought a HDD that is too big for the BIOS to recognize.

Verify you didn't leave any jumpers on the laptop hard drive before you installed it. Usually the motherboard will jumper the HDD if required.

Reset your BIOS to defaults and then go in and check all the options - especially anything to do with disk drive modes and boot order.

Do a BIOS update on the laptop if one is available.
 
goombawaho,
thanks. the strange part is that when i take the hard drive out, it's fine. windows starts installing and stops at the step when it checks for hdd. i can put another sleeve for the hdd from another machine. this machine pentium M with 1.5 ghz cpu. how would i update the BIOS? the hdd that i'm using is 60gb. i installed one in a machine with same configuration with no problem. the other stranger thing is that this hard drive shows up in the bios with model and serial number. so, i'm thinking that the machine can recognize it. but when you get out of the bios, it's just blank screen.
 
Very odd. Could it be a video problem?? Although I guess not if the setup program starts to run WITHOUT the hard drive.

Hmmm.... I'm kind of stumped if a BIOS update doesn't fix it. Are there different version between the two laptops (one that works and one that doesn't)? Can you do a BIOS update from an external USB floppy??
 
Hey there wvdba

To be clear, when there is NO hard drive installed:

1. BIOS POSTs and displays installed components;
2. Windows XP starts in the CD Tray

When there IS a hard drive installed:

1. BIOS POSTs and displays installed components, including the 60GB HDD;
2. Windows XP does not start loading from CD;
3. Screen is blank, no flashing cursor, no error message, nothing at all

Is this correct? If so triple-check the BIOS boot order. It really sounds like the laptop is trying to boot from the HDD. Is this a SATA or IDE drive?

Tony

Users helping Users...
 
That sounds like what he's saying, but if the laptop were trying to boot from the HDD, wouldn't he get a "boot sector not found" or "operating system not found" type of error.
 
He tried two hard drive so could the carrier be shorting something out??? Not really, because the BIOS picks up the hard drive and displays its size. I be stumped.
 
wahnula,
thanks.
you summed it up correctly:

when there is NO hard drive installed:
1. BIOS POSTs and displays installed components;
2. Windows XP starts in the CD Tray

When there IS a hard drive installed:

1. BIOS POSTs and displays installed components, including the 60GB HDD;
2. Windows XP does not start loading from CD;
3. Screen is blank, no flashing cursor, no error message, nothing at all

Is this correct? If so triple-check the BIOS boot order. It really sounds like the laptop is trying to boot from the HDD. Is this a SATA or IDE drive?

this is an IDE drive. the boot order says:
1-cd drive
2-hdd drive 0
....
i'm really puzzled. i've never seen one like this one.
thanks.
 
problem solved:
i removed the cover from the hdd compartment. re-seated "horizontal-to-vertical" plug. and then looked in bios under:
boot/network.
this laptop was set to boot from a network. the network boot had options for cd, hdd0, and usb device. even though the local boot order for the machine was cd, hdd, and usb, since it was waiting to boot from a network device, the machine was just showing nothing. this was the only difference between the working laptop and this machine. so, i don't know if re-seating the hdd plug did the trick or removing network boot option. but it's working ok now and windows is installed on it.
thanks for everybody's help.
 
Try loading just the sleeve w/o a hard drive. What happens? The post above at laptoprepair101 has the EXACT same symptoms, and it was fixed by HDD replacement, even though the HDD was accessible and data recovery was possible outside the laptop. This says to me that there was some inconsistency somewhere, maybe in S.M.A.R.T. data? I don't know, but I would get my hands on a NEW hard drive and give it a go. The case above is just TOO similar to ignore.

Test the laptop with a live Linux CD & no HDD, I'll bet that works. Try running the drive maker's diagnostics if possible.

Tony

Users helping Users...
 
Yeah - always be suspicious of those deals where something just won't work and then magically it works again. But he did try two hard drives so it's doubtful both were afflicted.
 
wvdba said:
...this laptop was set to boot from a network.

Ahhh...so it WAS the boot order! Glad you got it sorted.

Tony

Users helping Users...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top