Ibm t21 turn on to start up page with diaganol ibm logo and press f1 for bios f12 for temporary boot device,but it just hangs there the f1 & f12 buttons dont do anything any help much appreciated

You can access the BIOS usually by pressing "esc", "F1", "F8", or "F12". One of those buttons

should work.

As for the hang up at the logo, it sounds like your hard drive might have crashed. The same thing

happened to me on my Vaio.

Go to bios setup and see if the unit is detecting the hard disc drive...it should be on the first page of bios...if it does "see" the hard disc, then get out of setup and go to F12. (you will need your operating system disc for this next step). Choose to boot from the cd. It may ask you if you are sure you want to do this. The operating system will ask you what you want to do. Select the option from the list. It may ask you if you want to repair the installation...select this option if avail....if not, depending on which O/S you have , you may be able to reload the system without losing what you have stored on the computer. If at anytime it asks you to reformat the hard disk..you don't want to do this as this will erase everything on the hard disk drive. Now, if the computer does not "see" the hard disk in the BIOS menu, then your hard drive may have failed and you will need to obtain a new one and reload it with the O/S and all software you want...unfortunately...if the hard disc is bad then you will have lost all info on it...there are some data recovery services out there...but they can be expensive(depending on how important your data is).

I received an IBM laptop with same issue a few months back. The error message due to the drained out CMOS RTC (coin-cell battery), which retains and other BIOS settings.
The system is OK and all you have to do is to get the CMOS/RTC battery replaced by the a professional.
Good Luck!
CreativeTECH

You probably need to replace the BIOS battery. This battery is small and on the inside of the laptop connected to the motherboard. It stores the BIOS settings, date and time. If this battery becomes worn out then it will cause your issue. First try and press F1. Navigate to the last tab and select to restore defaults, then save and exit. If the computer boots up fine but the next time you use it the same message appears then you need a new BIOS battery. Alternatively your HDD may be damaged if it cannot find a boot device. Check your HDD is recognised on the boot menu by pressing F12, select it and press enter and your OS should boot. Hope this helps,
www.PuterCare.com

enter to bios set up then disable the f1 and f2

The Bios Settings need to be changed to boot from The ATAPI drive. When you turn on computer press the F2 or F1 or Delete button, sometimes its F10. Once you are in the bios setting look for boot devices. Follow the on screen instructions to change the boot order. I hope this helps.

Press all of the function buttons one at a time until you get a response. Not all laptops use the same buttons for Bios and choosing the boot device.
Also, it won't boot from the CD-ROM because the bios boots from the Hard drive first by default. You can change this in the BIOS.

Please rate, Thanks!

Reseat your RAM modules, remove and insert them a few times so they make proper electrical contact in the slots.

Chances are since the system CRC1'd it has a very old BIOS revision. From version 1.10 on, the CRC issue has been fixed. So, get the latest BIOS from IBM, T21 BIOS: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mobiles/spsdkz34.exe and flash the BIOS. Reboot the system and verify the updated BIOS. Now power down the system, desolder the known good EEPROM and resolder the CRC1 EEPROM. Boot the machine and hit ESC when the splash screen comes up and watch the post screen. The new BIOS should have recalculated the EEPROM checksum and written the changes to it. You'll know if it worked because the CRC1 error will be gone.

Have you ever been able toboot this machine? Sounds like you have a corporate machine which is configured to boot with several options. If that's the case, you should re-load windows. Get back to me if that's the case. Thanks, harvester3