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Please excuse the long quotes.
On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Ken Manheimer wrote:
> In a few careless moves i may have fouled up my 701CS thinkpad
> harddisk (710 mb) partitioning so badly that i may have to send the
> ...
> I forged ahead with the win95 preparations, and recklessly (ab)used
> fdisk. I first removed the DOS partition - dumb shortcut - and then
> under linux fdisk, also removed the OS/2 boot partition - no good
> reason, sigh. I put to the DOS partition back so it encompassed the
> old OS/2 boot and DOS partitions. In the process i made the machine
> so it cannot be booted while the hardisk is in the machine.
>
> Even when trying to boot from the floppy drive, the machine will do
> the memory check and then freeze with the number 84 in the bottom of
> the screen. It will boot to the floppy if the harddisk is displaced
> from the machine.
I did the same thing, although not in the same sequence. I'd
partitioned it with OS/2 and Linux fdisk, but it didn't die
until I did another fdisk with DOS. Same freeze and error
number. Since the last program to touch it was DOS fdisk, I was
able to convince IBM it was a hardware problem and not my fault
("You're telling me I can make a Thinkpad disk unusable by just
repartitioning the hard disk with DOS fdisk!?").
I don't think this is a password problem because I don't use
passwords on my 701. If it were a password problem, wouldn't
it ask for a HD password?
> - Is there any way for me to reset the harddisk partition - something
> i can do to get it online, so i can eg do an 'fdisk /mbr'?
I only had a floppy drive to work with, but like you said, it
hangs before it even checks the floppy. You might try buying
a 2.5" IDE adapter and putting the drive on a desktop machine
and fdisk'ing it from there.
> - Failing that, should i call ibm tech support and pay the $35 to
> talk to the OS group (i bought the machine 1.5 years ago, but the
> os is only covered for 60 days, and then not if you're messing with
> a foreign os...), supposing that they can instruct me to recover
> the disk?
>
> - Or should i simply arrange to pay the $170 to send the disk back to
> IBM and have them reinstall the original OS?
If it's only 1.5 years old, it should still be under warranty.
Tell them you were repartitioning when the hard disk stopped
working. When they replace the drive, the new one comes with
all the original software installed.
--
John H. Kim
jokim@mit.edu