Need help with laptop - Won't load any OS

11/18/2013 | raybbr

[raybbr]

Hello to all you techies, geeks and lurkers.

I've got an older Lenovo laptop (3000 N100) that crashed for the second time in a month. It was definitely software related. Had W-XP preloaded by Lenovo. It's been running slow lately so I thought this would be a good time to Linux on it.

My sons use it for home schooling. I don't need it to do much other than surf the web and play some flash videos.

Lenovo has this thing called Lenovo Care that is installed on the LT. Does anyone know where this resides? I can't find anything in the BIOS and it still comes up without a hard drive installed.

What happened is the Lenovo Care (LC) function would come up and the LT would keep rebooting.

I put the recovery discs in and it starts the process but I would really like to get rid of LC and use the LT without it using Mint if I can. When the original disks get to a certain point it comes up with a fault. I can't remember what it is but it stops the process. I believe it has to do with hardware and the fact that the original DVD is not in there.

I pulled the hard drive out and reformatted to NTFS on another LT. It's and 80G that shows 74.5G available after formatting. I've run several tests on the HD and all come up good.

I have no internal DVD drive. I am using an external drive and the BIOS sees it and connects okay.

I put the HD into the Lenovo and boot. The screen comes up saying "No operating system found". Okay, I put an XP disc in and it tries to boot. It still shows no operating system. I tried the Linux Mint disc - same result.

I think the problem is with the LC. It still shows up during the boot process. Is it possible that it resides in some hardware and is the default boot. I can't find very much on Lenovo's site about the inner workings of LC.

I now have a LT that is working okay other than an OS. All the hardware seems to be doing its job but I can't get an OS on it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[roamer_1]

can I do all this using a USB bridge to the HDD?

Beat me : ) I am old skool... I like direct-to-the-bus, so I keep a couple boxen on my benches just for such purposes...

[roamer_1]

LOL! BeatS me....

[roamer_1]

and the /s tag doesn’t work from command prompt.

DOS? Yeah it will... Just format, then (with DOS dir pathed) Go sit in the root of C: and type SYS C: (assumes full DOS, and SYS.COM is present)... It has always been stupid about SYSing from a non writeable drive... I think it assumes you are on a writeable and checks where you are, rather than the drive itself... NO, WAIT. If you have the drive hooked up USB, DOS cannot see USB without drivers (which suck,, btw)... but if the drive is on the bus the above ought to work.