I bought a thinkpad, it was suppose to have 98 on it, and come to find out they reformatted this drive. I put my 98 disk in to install, and it is stuck on c:/> I have entered everything in the world i can remember from programming to try to get it out of that, and where i can get it to recognize the cd being there, so i can install 98, and nothing is working. Please help, im getting frustrated. Thanks, Brenda

My X40 came with Win98 so I'm guessing the bios is the same or similar.

Also that your Win98 cd is bootable?

The IBM way would be use an IBM Restore & Recovery cd set - but I guess you don't have that? There is no reason why you can't install 98 without them if you can find the drivers - I could help there as well!

To boot from the cd there are a couple of ways:
1. Press F1 when the first screen comes up at pre-boot - this should take you to the Bios settings and you will be able to select to boot off the CD drive.

2. Press F12 on pre-boot and you should get a list of devices to boot from.

Hope this helps

Thanks very much. F1 did nothing, but F12 made it go to it tested the whole system, a system check. He chose cdrom, but it didn't bring up the cd. I thank you for getting us this far. This is an older thinkpad, I think, cause it has one of those red things in the middle of the keyboard for a mouse. Well, I hope it will respond, but this is a start. Would the 98 disk we have have the drivers it needs? Thanks again, Brenda

In fact it is ALL it has for a mouse - that's one of the reasons I bought it as Lenovo are (some of) the only ones still do - I prefer it to a touchpad.

I should have said X20 - was the one that came with Windows 98 (my X40 had XP). The X20 now runs Linux.

If F1, ESC or anyone of the function keys doesn't bring up the BIOS then it sounds like the BIOS is shot on the computer. The fact that F12 gave you a list of devices to boot from is a start but if you couldn't boot from the CD then the CD is either not bootable or the drive could be faulty.

The X20 doesn't have a CD-ROM drive and it hails from the days when USB drives (and USB in general) were not common. To boot from CD I had to use a media base.

You didn't say what model the Thinkpad was. I have a CD drive from an A21e that is sitting around gathering dust! Another Win98 relic - I haven't the heart to throw it away.

You say that F12 made it go through a test - I seem to remember blue IBM screens with birds flying around????? Those sort of diagnostic screens were nomally a sign that the pc was amost exired - sorry

You should get an IBM screen when the pc is first powered on - if you don't get that, maybe with options at the bottom, then it is quite probable that the computer is fried.
Good Luck - Martin

ps you may be able to find drivers on the Lenovo website. My Thinkpad of this vintage runs Ubuntu Linux from the Live CD without any extra drivers. You can download the CD image from the Ubuntu website.