[stealintv]

Hello all, this is my first post. I recently acquired an IBM Thinkpad i1400 series, model 2621-422 from ebay. The auction listed that it was missing an HDD and power supply; an otherwise complete system. And, of course, the item was sold "as-is".

Now, onto my problem. The BIOS will not find the HDD. I have two (2) working HDDs from other laptops. I thought at first I needed a new HDD caddy/pin connector. Wrong. Down another $10.

I figured I would attempt to repartition and format one of the hard drives and when I reboot with a WinXP disk, the installation program formatted and installed Windows. OK great! Now the system states it will reboot, and did so. Upon reboot, I am left at a screen which displays, "Please instert system disk and press any key..." I again reboot and went into the BIOS setup and to my surprise - no hard disk found. Interesting.

Just out of curiosity, I tried again using the Winxp CD and reboot. Again, this time I got the message about how there is already a copy of Winxp and asking me what i want to do. For some reason, I reformatted and reinstalled. We already know the outcome.....

Any ideas? This laptop was one I was building for someone. I have already purchased another that is working great so the customer is happy and has recieved his product. I am just out some money and was wondering if I can fix this issue. Otherwise it looks like I will be getting a DSLinux LiveCD and using this laptop to surf the net in the garage.

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
stealintv

Edited by stealintv, 02 June 2009 - 01:42 PM.

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Ok, well to my surprise it seems that this system does not like jumpers on the hard drive. Regardless of the instructions on the hard drive, a jumper is not necessary. The scenario was as follows:

As previously stated, I have two hard drives I was testing with this system and only one spare laptop sized jumper. I had switched out the hard drive earlier and forgot to place the jumper on the other hard drive. The computer booted and I heard the disk spinning. I checked in the BIOS and viola! it has been detected. Very strange.

Now I have no idea why this would be as the MASTER and CABLE SELECT options both have a separate area in which the jumper must be placed according to the instructions printed on the face of the HDD. Plus, I have all components removed from this system except RAM.


Problem solved. Don't use a jumper on the hard drive.

Now to sell it....

[stealintv]

Ok, well to my surprise it seems that this system does not like jumpers on the hard drive. Regardless of the instructions on the hard drive, a jumper is not necessary. The scenario was as follows:

As previously stated, I have two hard drives I was testing with this system and only one spare laptop sized jumper. I had switched out the hard drive earlier and forgot to place the jumper on the other hard drive. The computer booted and I heard the disk spinning. I checked in the BIOS and viola! it has been detected. Very strange.

Now I have no idea why this would be as the MASTER and CABLE SELECT options both have a separate area in which the jumper must be placed according to the instructions printed on the face of the HDD. Plus, I have all components removed from this system except RAM.


Problem solved. Don't use a jumper on the hard drive.

Now to sell it....