Laptop problem

Pck21

Pck21

New Member
A friend of mine at work gave me a laptop to fix for him. Now here's the problem. He said that the thing would only boot to the bios. Well when I turn it on it goes to the load screen for IBM and says "press F1 to enter IBM bios." Well I do and nothing happens. I've pressed every button on the thing to get it to boot to the bios but nothing. Is there ANYTHING I can do? By the way it's an old old old ThinkPad. I have no idea what year or what OS.

Thanks in advance!

Dave
 
i have a similar problem with a HD, that came from a IBM desktop, im just going 2 reload windows on it, maybe your HD's shot?
 
foschia said:
check and see if there are any bios upgrades from IBM
Click to expand...
And how does that help if he can't get past POST?

My first thought is a bad drive of some sort. I've heard of similar problems on a forum about my laptop if/when the CD-ROM dies. If you can get into it, try to remove the drives and see if it'll give you any POST errors that way.

Also, a little test I do to see how "locked up" a computer is... During post, press one of the lock keys and see if the light comes on for it. If they still work, then we know the machine's not totally locked up.
 
I would pull both the optical drive and the hard drive. If that doesn't work swap the RAM around. If you have more than one stick leave the machine running for a bit and then shut it down and feel the ramsticks to see which is warmer and take the warmer one out. It sounds odd but i've used this to eliminate ram problems.
If you can then get into the bios try putting either the optical drive or the hard disk back in. If you can still get into the bios its more than likely a ram problem. However, its also worth looking at the drive information in the bios as odd characters in the device information area will mean that the drive is shot.
I've seen some really wierd problems in notebooks that are caused by something that seems unrelated. Its worth trying everything.
 
Wow guys thanks for all the replies!! Sorry for replying so slowly but I've been putting together my parents new comp for them. I will do EVERYTHING everyone suggested and get back on here and post my results. Thanks so much again!
 
Ok well I switched the ram around first and nothing changed. However when I changed them back to their original spots, now it doesn't even boot to the screen I had before. I have no idea where to find the hard drive on this thing and the cd drive doesn't seem to want to come out. I think it's a bad hd but I'm going to try some other things.

Does anyone else have any ideas? Or where to pull the hd? Thanks!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top