Hi, here is a kind of long saga, though its only been a few days. I put this up on the Lenovo T30 forum but its slow getting info over there, seems most people are into hardware repairs, not issues like this.

My IBM T30 laptop (win XP) suddenly stopped booting. The error was something like "we are sorry windows could not start .... unable to mount boot disk...."

I got the menu of options- reboot using "safe" mode, reboot using last known good configuration etc.... None of these worked. I always got the same error message. I did not want to use IBM RapidRestore because the backup I have is a little old and I want to recover some newer files before reformatting.

I did some searching and found out about the XP repair CD, which did not come with my computer (I bought this computer new and it was preloaded with everything). I searched more and found a link that supposedly had the image of a bootable XP repair CD and booted off of that, but it made things worse.

Now the computer will not boot off CD at all. There is no longer an option to start in "safe mode" or any other mode. The errors are

Bootup text-
================================================
Intel(R) Boot Agent Version 4.1.07
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation

Intel Base-Code, PXE-2.1 (Build 083)
Copyright (C) 1997-2002, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
Operating System Not found
=================================================

Here are the IBM Bootup Screen options
=================================================
F1 enter IBM Bios setup
F11 to invoke product recovery
F12 to choose temporary boot device
=================================================
F1 works

F11 does not work/ no message "starting recovery" and instead you get the same error as #1
F11 used to work before I booted from the supposed 'repair' CD.

F12 options
=================================================
1. Removable Devices
3. CD-ROM Drive
4. IBA 4.1.07 Slot 0240
=================================================

I do not think F12 will work as it tends to give the same errors as on bootup and F11.
Therefore I cannot successfully boot from CD, I think.

What I want to do is recover a few files from the HDD and then reinstall the backup (either HDD backup or from CD-ROM) on another HDD and proceed.

I do have a bootable IBM Rapid Restore recovery set of discs and a local backup archive on the problem disc (if IBM rapid restore could be executed); however before reformatting anything I need to extract a few VERy crictical work projects from the hard disk which took me 2 weeks to create.

So the tasks are #1- recover some files and #2 reinstall XP. How do I accomplish this?


The HDD is a 2.5" PATA.

Next, the computer store guy told me PATA and IDE are the same, so I removed the HDD from the laptop and put it into a IDE to USB enclosure. It fits the connector, except that the T30 drive has 4 extra pins that don't connect to anything???? What???

But it kind of works, the Drive "F" is the computer HDD of interest which the 2nd computer tells me needs to be formatted. The drive "G" is the recovery partition which I can see a directory of but which is hard to extract anything out of. Whenever you try to do anything with "F" the OS (Vista) on the new PC will freeze and the program will fail.

I've got a repair product but it concedes to the OS that drive "F" needs to be formatted and won't try to make an independent evaluation (supposed to fix/ check it right/?)t. What good is that?

help?

Man, run Get Data Back on it. Just choose right FS.

_________________
Good Luck
http://www.datarecovery.net

As there is no F12 option to boot from a hdd device I would suggest the hard drive has now failed to a point where it is not seen by the bios.

Your biggest mistake was to mess with it whilst it was in the T30 laptop.

What you should have done as a minimum is to mount it as a secondry drive and check it in a bootable pc. Then you should have imaged the drive/partition. You might even have been able to grab the most important data with the right tools.

It does now look like your tinkering has nearlly killed a failing drive.

If the folder is still available then you need to run a software recovery which allows you to change the read retry settings otherwise the system will lock up and maybe you really kill the drive.

Recovery is still possible and might still not cost too much. A pro would have to take this on as he would have access to the required tools.

They're for master/slave config. No connection = master

Yes, I am an idiot! I should have let it sit in the IBM and not messed with it all all.

I am running getdataback, thanks for the idea as I could not really tell which products to buy from doing searching and going to the computer store.

Running getdata back.
1. boot 2nd PC (no network connection)
2. plug in enclosure with problem drive to USB2 socket (right side up!), wait for steady green light.
3. run getdataback, select default option, hit "next"
4. getdataback gives me a list of drives- including problem drive in a popup window.
5. getdataback hangs and does nothing...still trying to find more drives although it found the only 2 in the system.

Should I be waiting hours for the list of drives to be populated? Seems it does not know it is done searching for drives. Its not even let me pick a drive at this point.