Member Avatar for maniacsyko

Got my hands on a nifty little Thinkpad 240x. The hard drive has no OS on it. It came with an external floppy drive and I just bought it a new external CD drive. I'm trying to get the CD drive recognized so that I can get XP loaded, but I can't get it to boot off a bootable floppy disk to get things started. I've tried several different floppies but with each one the floppy drive activates and seems to take a look at the floppy for awhile before [No Operating System Found] flashes on the screen. Checked the Bios, and under Startup everything seems normal. The floppy drive and the hard drive are listed under Startup. IBM's Bios utility says use [Shift 1] to enable or disable a device. Doing so places or removes an [!] next to the device entry. I'm not sure whether the [!] signifies enabled or disabled, so I've tried booting with each. No change in results. I always get [No Operating System Found]. Any ideas? Maybe this floppy drive is defective? I can't see anyway to add the CD drive in the Bios.

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Notes and practical follow-ups for older ThinkPads (building on points from and ).

Try these checks first: verify the floppy or CD is truly bootable by testing it on another PC. Watch the POST text for device enumeration (it usually shows when USB devices are detected). Experiment with different USB ports and look for BIOS options labeled "USB legacy", "USB storage", "USB-FDD/USB-HDD/USB-CDROM" or a one‑time boot menu key. If the BIOS never lists the device during POST you can assume the firmware is not handing that device to the boot sequence.

If the firmware does not allow direct USB CD/floppy boot, use a small chainloading approach or a minimal PE environment. A tiny bootloader (commonly used tools can be launched from a floppy or small CD) can hand off to USB devices so an optical or USB stick becomes usable. Alternatively, build a WinPE/BartPE disc or USB stick that includes generic USB mass-storage drivers, boot into that environment and launch the Windows setup files from the attached media. Network/PXE install is another reliable route if you have a second machine to host TFTP/DHCP.

Also check partition/MBR issues: a machine may skip to the next device if the HDD has no active partition or the MBR is missing. A rescue floppy/PE lets you set a partition active or run fixmbr/fixboot before attempting an install. Practical cautions: Windows XP needs roughly 1.5GB minimum for the OS itself (more for a usable system), prefer a larger drive and NTFS; consider updating the 240x BIOS for improved USB support; and always confirm any external drive boots on a known-good system before relying on it for installation.

Member Avatar for hittingrabbit

! means disabled.......
check in your bios and set the floppy as the bootup drive choose the secondary drive to cd,and third as hard drive try that.
If not check the size of your hard drive if it is less than 2 gig remaining youll have to upgrade as xp requires 2 gig of hard drive space to install,other option would be to remove any programs/sotware to give you enough space..

Member Avatar for maniacsyko

Part of the problem was there was no CD drive selectable in the Bios settings. The laptop didn't come with the CD drive, something I bought separately. Anyway, what I succeeded in doing was inserting another HD with an old OS already on it, then getting it to recognize the CD drive, then re-formatting HD and loading XP. Works like a champ now. Thanks for taking the time...

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