Hard Drive failure? How to erase and start over? 1

[tearsmith]

All, I am having trouble with a hard drive.

 

[tearsmith]

Sorry, all. I was distracted and hit submit before I finished with the actual issue.

Here's the deal...

I have an IBM ThinkPad 770Z. About 2 weeks ago, I turned it on to hear the loudest clicking and ticking going on in the area of the hard drive. On booting, the operating system would not load, instead I got past the IBM ThinkPad logo and to an antiquated looking blue box with "Error" on it and two numbers under that.

Upon selecting "Enter", the screen changed to another blue screen with date and time. Once I set it to the proper time/date, I hit enter again. Next I get a black screen with little IBMTHINKPAD written in diagonal all over it. In the middle was a grey box with a big O > I in it. They were flashing back and forth. At this point, I tried everything and nothing worked except to turn it off. I did this over and over with no result.

Next, I went on the IBM website and used the help section for hard drive issues. It told me how use F1 to enter startup to run a test, which I did, and got 3 error codes.

DEV017
ERR08
FRU6010

I then followed the direction to move the boot sequence so the drive was first. Then I reseated the Hardrive.

The next restart actually got me all the way to the Windows 98 load screen, but it sat forever until finally saying that there was an error reading to drive C restart. I did that, and got as far as scan disk. At 21% it failed too and went to a black screen with another message..

Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail? I chose "I", nothing happened.
Next I used "R", same series of actions as above and back to this point again. I used "F" and got a C:\> prompt. I chose DIR.

All the directories listed. I used autoexec.bat
The message now is "Sector not found reading drive C". Somewhere in this whole process I believe I've seen that before. I think during a test on the HHD using F1.

Can someone please tell me what's going on? Oneday all is working fine and the next, nothing. I did leave it sitting on top of a DVD/VCR (magnet problems or something?)

I have nothing on the laptop to save and I have a new disk for Windows 2000 or XP and an Office 97 disk so if I can wipe it and start over, that's okay. Please just tell me how.

One last thing, I am good once the computer is open, but diagnostic stuff gets boogily to me. Please answer in layman's terms and try not to abbreviate too much. I need step by step, so forgive me if I respond and ask further questions.

Thank you for all the help.

 

[wolluf]

sounds like the hard drive might be dying. If machine has a flopy drive, get diagnostic utility from drive manufacturer's site and check out status of drive.

If its ok, try loading 2k or XP (boot from install CD and use their partitioning tools to remove existing partition and create new one. If it won't do this, try something like

http://www.killdisk.com/features.htm

to completely wipe the drive and start again). Hope you get it going, but suspect you'll need a new hard drive.

btw - is this machine ok to run 2k or XP? (if its been running 98 - is it compatible with later o/s and are there drivers available - laptops use proprietary drivers often, so check IBM's website for your model.

 

[tearsmith]

Wolluf,

Okay, you seemed to be on the right track here, so I have another question.

When the problem first started, I had to reset the cmos clock each time I logged on, and then things would work. Eventually, though, it stopped loading the O/S (win98). I still had to set the clock each time, but then I would just get a screen that said had a big flashing 0 > I and could do nothing at this screen but shut off the computer manually. Could I have a faulty Cmos battery? The laptop is over 5 years old and I don't think it's ever had a new battery put in it.

If I remove the battery from another laptop to test in mine, what happens to that other laptop? Will is kill it?

Also, my drive errors are telling me that the drive is not partitioned correctly. (Do they just spontaneously unpartion themselves or something?) I don't know how to use the Win 2000 partitioning tools, as you suggested. Is there a step-by-step instructions somewhere on line?

I am really in alien territory here so any help is :-D

Thanks,tearsmith

 

[edfair]

Based on the 2 posts it sounds more like the CMOS is losing the settings because of battery problems. You get the wrong parameters in CMOS and the hard drive will do wierd things. But it may have partially self destructed the OS in the process.
Are you using the AC power pack to get it to run? I can't remember if that machine has a separate CMOS battery, but if you are using a power pack to get it up then suspect that there is only one.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[tearsmith]

Ed,

Thanks for your response. I have a battery, but it was dead when I bought the laptop (co closed, sold us the laptops $100). I use the power cord to run it as I havn't invested in a battery yet.

In the back is the little silver cmos battery. There is only one.


I thought that my harddrive was crashed. Should I replace the little Cmos battery first? Will that fix the problem with the HDD?

Also, I have 2 laptops. Can I take the cmos out of the other one to test this theory, or will the other on tear up?
If not, can you suggest a place to go to get a cheap cmos battery? I see posts that say that they should only be around $5. True?

Thanks, Tearsmith

 

[edfair]

About a nickle size. Should be marked as CR2032, but you can use 2016 or 2024, physical size the same but battery life shorter.
You replace that, get into setup and do the date, time , floppy, and HDD setups , then if you are lucky the hard drive will be visible using fdisk from the boot disk.
Suspect that the OS is trashed, but there may be hope for the drive itself.
You possibly could get into the BIOS and look at the CMOS settings to see the HDD specs, provided the drives are the same.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.