ibm thinkpad 600e issue!!!!!

[czenz]

Hi all,
I recently purchased an ibm thinkpad 600e and decided to upgrade to windows xp, big mistake!
The setup got as far as installation and then I got error codes, I put these into google and found that ibm's have conflict problems windows xp, apparently I need drivers to make it work, however, everytime I turn on the computer, it continues to install xp again.
I now have a windows Me disk. Could anyone please give me a step by step guide on how to get into dos on startup, wipe the hard drive and install windows Me?
Any help/advice would be gratefully received,
Thanks.

[John Sanders]

I have loaded XP Pro on a 6G 600E. I had to Fdisk the harddrive first so that it could redo the MRB. XP will take up alomost 2G of this drive. I reformatted in NTFS and loaded XP. NTFS makes better use of the disk space. Make sure to start smartdrive or it will take a couple of days to transfer files, ( I found out the hard way ) If you have a dead main battery in the unit, XP will not load because it does a system check and checks to see if the battery is good. Take out the battery and run off the AC adapter.

[PrntRhd]

I now have a windows Me disk. Could anyone please give me a step by step guide on how to get into dos on startup, wipe the hard drive and install windows Me?
Ok, here:
http://freepctech.com/pc/001/004.shtml
Be advised Windows ME is no longer supported at Microsoft so no patches will be available in case an exploit pops up.

You will have to FDisk it, and set up a partition first.

[John Sanders]

If your main battery is not good, take it out and just run off the AC adapter while doing this. The computer recieves an error code and will not load because if fails internal diagnosics.

Do you have a boot floopy or cd with fdisk and format commands on it?

Does it also have cd support for loading the os after the disk is wiped (fdisk) and made ready for the new OS (format)?

If your ME disk is bootable, it should have these commands on it.

I ended up having to get a 600e fix disk on ebay for $10 to do it. This disk worked great. The guy has more of them and they are worth their weight in gold for any pc work, not just the 600e.

I am assuming you have a cd with these instructions.

Boot the computer with the cd.

DOS should now ask you about loading things for cd support. Tell it yes.

Find the fdisk command and execute it. Warning - This will wipe all data off of the disk and reset the MRB of the drive. Make sue you have backed up anything worth saving before doing this.

At this point your drive is more like it was when it came from the factory.

Fdisk is not mandatory, but I have found that systems work better after the disk is completly wiped of any previous OS being on the disk. Unless you have a large harddrive, you only want one partition on the drive. The instructions are pretty self explanatory.

The next command is "format c: /s".

The computer will warn you of data being lost again. It just wants to make sure.

Enable large disk access. It allows the format of large drives as one drive instead of mandatory partioning due to size restraints on older systems.

Format will then check the drive and format it for windows operating system

When the format is done, the "/s" part of the format command copies the bootable sys file on to the hard drive.

Reboot the computer.

Use the path command to get to drive C - "path c:"

If this worked, your computer is ready for you to load the new os to it.

Now path over to drive D/E depending on how the cd drive got assigned.

Somewhere on the cd should be a setup file for windows. If not on the root directory of the cd, look in the windows directory.

Type setup and press enter and away you go. The file copying will take a while, so be very patient. My loading of XP took over 18 hours.

Good luck,

John