Re: [Thinkpad] 600X CMOS Battery Issues

Maybe................put a hard drive in there; or at least a bootable
floppy attached to the laptop, preferably the IBM type attached to the
floppy port.

The machine can't find anything to boot to> and the bios won't let the
machine respond.

I don't remember the exact particulars, but at one time a client's A-series
had a similar issue.
Tried two or three new bios batteries before we got a good one. Then the
laptop required a hard reset with a blanked hard drive in the machine to get
it jump started.
We installed a bios update equal to what the machine already had.

Then it would accept and boot to the previously installed hard drive & OS. A
real head scratcher.

Best of luck.

Matt

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Schumann" <chris@idlelion.net>
To: "'Philip Kiff'" <pkiff@sympatico.ca>
Cc: <Thinkpad@stderr.org>
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 9:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Thinkpad] 600X CMOS Battery Issues

>> [mailto:thinkpad-bounces@stderr.org] On Behalf Of Philip Kiff
>> Sent: Saturday, November 4, 2006 11:47 PM
>
>> Chris Schumann wrote on Sat 2006-11-04 22:31 EST:
>> > My trusty (so far) 600X finally said buh-bye to its CMOS
>> battery. 163
>> > and 173 errors, and it made me set the clock, even though it was
>> > correct over and over and over.
>> >
>> > I have a supervisor password on the machine, which I know, but it
>> > still wouldn't boot.
>> >
>> > No big wup.
>> >
>> > I went to Batteries Plus and had them spot-weld a new cell on my
>> > leads, popped it in, and got the 163 one more time.
>> >
>> > But now, it just reboots over and over. I wonder if it's
>> confused by
>> > the supervisor password, but I can't clear the password because I
>> > can't get into EZSetup. The memory count appears, as does IBM and
>> > ThinkPad, then the blinky cursor as if it's going to boot, but then
>> > there's a beep, the screen goes off, and it reboots.
>> >
>> > Holding F1 has no effect.
>> >
>> > Any tips or pointers on how to get around this would be awesome.
>> >
>> > Should I try a BIOS upgrade? (And yes it's already at the latest.)
>>
>> I experienced this symptom with one of my 600X machines
>> recently. My machine does not have a supervisor password,
>> nor did I have a bad CMOS battery that needed replacement. I
>> am still not quite sure what brought about my endless
>> boot-post-blinky-blank-beep-reboot sequence.
>>
>> However, my current theories are that it was caused because I
>> was switching around various hardware components on a
>> multiple-hardware-profile, dual-boot
>> (98SE/XPSP2) machine and the BIOS got confused about what the
>> current hardware set was. Or that it was caused because I
>> switched around my IDE "channel" configuration in Win 98SE by
>> enabling the 3rd IDE channel in the ThinkPad config utility
>> and that my BIOS got lost about where my actual boot drive
>> date was supposed to be coming from.
>>
>> In my case, I was using a SelectaDock III with my 600X and
>> the incessant reboot cycle only occurred when I tried to dock
>> the system, not when I used the laptop standing alone. I was
>> able to solve the problem by pulling all of the extra devices
>> out of the SelectaDock III, deleting the docked hardware
>> profile, and then booting up in the Dock.
>>
>> Now, everything is working fine with 3 hardware profiles and two OSes.
>>
>> It is hard for me to figure out whether there is any common
>> element in my endless reboot sequence and yours, but maybe
>> you can see something common there?? Do you have more than
>> one hardware profile? More than one OS?
>> Have you got any additional hardware devices that you can
>> detach? Is you boot partition on C: with no other fancy boot
>> loaders? Have you tried to reset the BIOS using the pin-hole
>> behind the power button?....
>>
>> Phil.
>
> Thanks for the reply, Phil.
>
> But my machine does not even attempt to load an OS, so any hardware
> profiles
> that Windows is aware of are irrelevant, and as it happens, I don't have
> Windows on the machine.
>
> Right now there's no hard drive in it at all, and I'm attempting to fiddle
> with it while removing all the hardware I can get to.
>
> Still no luck at all, so far.
>
> It's got to be a bug in the BIOS, but the machine's over six years old. I
> know IBM came out with a BIOS update for a ten year-old desktop machine I
> once had, but I sure didn't expect it, and I'm not holding out much hope
> that Lenovo would do anything about this.
>
> Looks like I'll have to get a replacement system board... or security
> chip.
>
> Chris
>
> PS - Got to try the reset button, but I thought that was exactly that: a
> reset button.
>
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Received on Fri Jan 5 22:20:06 2007