Member Avatar for viperman224

I have a IBM ThinkPad T22. I have been using this machine for about 2 and 1/2 to 3 months now. It has been a good quality(sp?) machine for a while but all of a sudden when I boot or re-boot it it will just sit at the IBM ThinkPad screen. then it will say hard drive not found. then it will come up saying the OS isnt found. I know the OS is there. any ideas? Fried mobo? bad hard drive? anyways I plan to call IBM in the morning

Specs:
Model: ThinkPad T22
Processor: PIII 900mhz
Ram: 256 megs of PC100
OS: windows 2000 pro
Hard Drive: 30 gig IBM
Cd-Rom: 8x dvd rom and 24x cd-rom

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Dani AI

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Short expert summary and a practical checklist for the “ThinkPad shows logo then reports ‘hard drive not found’ / ‘OS not found’” scenario raised by and echoed by . These symptoms usually point to one of three areas: the drive itself, the drive connection/interface, or a corrupted boot/partition table. The steps below help separate those causes and get you back to a working system or a safe data-recovery path.

  1. Quick firmware check (no disassembly): reboot and press F1 at the ThinkPad logo to enter Setup. Look for the hard disk in the list of attached devices. If the drive is not listed, that is a hardware/connection problem; if it is listed but the OS isn’t found, the partition/boot record or filesystem may be damaged.

  2. Safe physical checks (power down, remove AC and battery first): remove and reseat the drive caddy/connector (check for bent pins or debris). If under warranty, contact support before opening. If you can, try the drive in a USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter on another PC to see whether it is detected there.

  3. Boot from external media to diagnose: use a Linux live CD/USB or Windows Recovery Console to inspect the drive. Useful commands/examples:

    # from a Linux live environment
sudo fdisk -l
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda   # or /dev/hda on older systems
dmesg | grep -i ata

    SMART failures, no device nodes, or errors in dmesg point to a failing or dead drive.

  4. Data and next steps: if data is critical and the drive is intermittent or failing, avoid writing to it and consider imaging with ddrescue or sending it to a recovery service. If the drive is dead, replace it with a compatible 2.5" drive (confirm PATA/IDE vs SATA on older T-series) and reinstall or restore from an image.

  5. After repair: install OS from trusted media, load vendor chipset and storage drivers, then make a full backup or disk image immediately. For prevention, prioritize regular backups and periodic SMART checks over extended warranties on very old hardware.

These steps will help pinpoint whether the fault is the disk, the connector/controller, or only the software layer, and show safe next actions for data and repair.

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Member Avatar for darkshadow

your harddrive might be bad a bad harddrive will do that

Member Avatar for viperman224

Heres and update: I called IBM. they had me run a disk fitness test on the drive. It never did find the drive so i called them back and they said i had a bad hard drive and are sending me a new one. I hope that is the problem. I'm due to get it in the next 3 to 5 days. then the fun of loading it up as I have never loaded a laptop and have no clue what to do lol. I imagine it is very similer (sp?) to loading up a desktop only more complex.

Member Avatar for viperman224

IBM sent me my new hard drive and I installed it last night and it worked so i'm good for now lol. The machine is almost 3 years old and my warrenty runs out sometime in september I belive do you think its worth buying and extended warrenty on it?

Member Avatar for tryit

Viperman, I have the same laptop with the same problem . How were you able to run a disk fitness test? Where can I get this to run it? I'm stuck on the thinkpad page, doesn't find hard drive, doesn't find operating system, and I even tried to reinstall xp, and it never got past the loading of files.
It's used and way out of warrantee. any advice would be greatly appreciated

Member Avatar for viperman224

I am not to sure on the disk fitness test. I know my dad got it off the IBM.com some how. He had to take care of it because mine is still warrentied and it was in his name. as for xp, don't bother use 2000 pro because I tryed installing xp on mine and it was nothing but problems. sound didnt work and it crashed all the time. it could possibly still be under warrenty. this is the site you can go to. http://www-1.ibm.com/support/us/all_download_drivers.html

if that doesn't work type in your machine type number located near the serial number on the bottom of your machine

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