Boot a machine without a full OS 1

[sadelste]

I have a machine that I tried to install windows 2000 on. It failed. The machine is an IBM T21. The machine is configured with a supervisor bassword that will not allow me to boot frm a CD. The machine has a swappable (not hot swappable) CD and FLoppy. In order to be able to re-load an OS, I need to be able to boot from the hard drive. I transferred the system (via the sys command) to the hard drive from a Win 98 startup disk , but the machine still will not boor to the HD. Is there a way to do a minimal boot (mimic the startup CD) from the hard drive?

 

[Hungster]

take out the bios battery to reset it and get in bios to set it boot to cd rom

 

[sadelste]

Resetting the bios will not help. There is a supervisor bios password that I do not have. The IBM supervisor password is not reset when the battery is removed. Without that password I can not boot from the cd.

 

[Hungster]

i understand, IBM tech support is terrible if you don't have any more warranty

 

[DucatiST2]

You could recover the supervisor password then use the CD to boot the system.
For password recovery have a look at this page.

http://www.ja.olm.net/unlock/

Good Luck!

 

[ceh4702]

SOMETIMES if you reset the bios either by a reset jumper or taking the battery out for 30 minutes, the BIOS settings will be lost and you can start over. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[sadelste]

I have now corrected the problem and here is what I did. I did an FDISK and removed an NTFS partition. Then I formatted my hard drive. Then I copied the startup files from my Windos 98 startup floppy to my hard drive. Once I booted up using the hard drive I was able to access the CD ROM drive to install the operating system. I want to thank all of you for your responses.

Steve