thinkpad 600 win98 installation and WHN88

**crushthislaptop** · April 30th, 2006, 05:51 AM

I've spent several weeks going round in circles trying to sort out my daughters IMB600E. It was running Windows 98 and had been fine for a couple of years. When it wouldn't start up, she took it to tech support at uni who told her it needed a new disk drive.

The disk (20GB) formats OK and installs Linux (mandrake 10) without any problems. The recovery disk that came with this second hand laptop doesn't have a product key and I can't recover this from the disk. I tried installing Windows XP and upgraded the bios. That wouldn't install.

I'm now tring to install Win98 SE and have followed IBMs instructions at http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...id=MIGR-4FJ3SC

When I try to create c:\win98 it come out as WHN88 and scandisk reports problems and then fixes them.

Do I need a new hard drive or is there something I can do with this one?
Any help very welcome - I've spent days on this!

**YottaHertz** · April 30th, 2006, 06:26 AM

Is scandisk also reporting bad sectors?

If it is then you may need a new HDD...

EDIT: It can also be a KB issue... Check it out here

EDIT: To check for HDD issues... see this

**crushthislaptop** · May 1st, 2006, 03:20 PM

Thanks for the ideas - scandisk runs, finds problems and then fixes them. The recovery disk runs upto the call for product key and PC Doctor tests the disk without problems. BUT, the Hitachi drive fitness test reports the disk as faulty with error 0X70 (what ever that is)

So - looks like the hard drive - ebuyer in the UK is doing 40GB laptop drives for around 45 pounds sterling - so will probably get one of those (already tried getting a second hand one from ebay and got ripped off/mucked around)

**YottaHertz** · May 1st, 2006, 04:49 PM

0x70 -> bad sector...

Looks like you might need a new drive....

**crushthislaptop** · May 5th, 2006, 05:21 PM

Just got a brand new drive - formatted it. Started trying to install Win 98 - same dammed problem. And Win XP won't load either - page fault in non paged area.

Motherboard fault? No spent more on the dammed thing than it's worth. Perhaps it's time to give up - unless there's something else cheap I can try?

**crushthislaptop** · May 6th, 2006, 03:03 AM

Further info - all BIOS tests run fine - I've upgraded the BIOS to BIOS 1.2 Version INET36WW 11/20/99 The processor is a Pentium II 366Mhz.

I've spent more on it than it's worth - probably end up selling it for parts on ebay - but is there anything else I can try?

Must be something simple?