IBM thinkpad will not boot past Windows Xp screen.

If you have the machine on a dock of any sort, remove it from the dock.

If that doesn't help, try taking out the hard drive. See:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-54584

for instructions.

If you get past that screen, put the hard drive back in. If you're stuck in the same place, you may have a bad drive. If it boots. . .great!

This is a possibility, the T23 is a very old laptop.
Normal 0 Check the BIOS to see if the hard disk is detected, if not open then re-seat the hard drive.
If the BIOS does not detect this hard drive, then the hard drive is probably faulty.
If it was me, I would not waste my time and money trying to get a new hard drive for this ThinkPad.
Disk drive manufacturers do not make small capacity hard drive anymore and the current range of hard drives won't work in your ThinkPad because the BIOS cannot support these hard drives.

Hi Donovan,

In order to save you a lot of time and trouble, I wonder if you might comment me back as to what you are trying to accomplish. Answering a these questions will help too.

• Please confirm we are talking about a thinkpad.
• How many hard drives do you have
• Does the machine boot
• Does your CD work
  

If you have one drive and it boots, its master

Unless you have two Hard drives, the master / slave is sort of moot. There is also the CS option. This is why I need additional info.

Best regards,
Mike

You have faulty RAM modules. Reseat your RAM modules, to make sure they make proper connection. If this doesn't work take them to your friendly computer shop and ask them to test them for you.

HELLO...
ACTUALLY ITS BUILT FOR WINDOWS NT
SO TRY INSTALLING THE OLDER VERSION OF XP AND THEN REBOOT IT
IT WILL WORK
THANK U

Did the laptop you got come at least with a windows XP cd? If so boot the laptop off of that and try to install Windows XP and see if it goes thru. Just make sure during the installation you tell it to delete the partitions first and then let it go thru that way you know for sure the hard drive is clean at that point.

check it on bios whether the hard drive is detecting or not, if detecting then recover OS using recovery Cd

apparently the boot setup screw up.
my best suggestion is to restore windows after you found a way to save all your files....

This solution is for s-k-i-t: you will have to get a copy of the win xp install disk to fix this problem (you can borrow one as long as you have a COA on your laptop) but first get into the BIOS by pressing F1 right after you turn it on - you'll see the prompt in lower left corner. Then go to startup>boot>hard drive>Enter. This will show you the type of hard drive. If it is a IBM or Hitachi less than 60 gig chances are it is failing and this is why the hives (where XP stores its memory states) are corrupt. You can download the "Ultimate boot disk" and make a CD that will let you run hard drive test tools. If the hard drive is bad I would try to get the eBay seller to make good - depends on how long you've had it.

I would say the hard drive is failing. But need to run a diagnostic on it to be sure.

If you would like to know where to get the ibm / hitachi hard drive diagostic let me know. It's free for download and you can get a bootable ISO image to burn onto cd. Allowing you to boot from cd in order to test the drive.

As far as replacing, you should be good with a 60gb or 80gb. Did it orginally have a 20gb in it? I would say for most people, 60-80 is way more than enough. Unless you have a ton of music or pictures.