Laptop booting issue

[Klamberext]

Hey, this is my first post here.

I have a Lenovo 3000 N100 laptop. Well, it had a little accident years ago - LCD got kicked in with a foot. It's a great laptop and I have been using it ever since with the external monitor only i wish it had a screen strength like my Thinkpad has

It's been fun, i have learned to communicate with it throught led blinkings and hdd sounds - like having somekind of Altair.

Well the thing is that with this external monitor i can't see BIOS or anything before some drivers or smth. hasn't been loaded by the os. I recently upgraded a harddrive and installed Linux ( Slackware 1337 ) in another laptop. Set  up the bootloader, .... etc. and the hdd works great. But when i plug it into my laptop it wont boot. It just sits there. Funny thing is that it boots of CD/ DVD and i can load live distro and see that the hdd has been detected and i can access files and such.

It just doesn't boot form hdd. It doesn't boot from the CD too first time, but when i press F1 twice it looks like it then reboots and then it loads the CD(  huh? O.o ). I am not sure what that F1 does and It has been years since i have seen the actual boot menu of this laptop.

So i was wondering if reseting a BIOS somehow could do something, but didn't find info how to do it on this laptop( there is a battery like component on the mb but i am not shure (  i have seen other kinds )   ) and maybe someone has encountered similar issue and can point me to right direction ... I don't remember even if it does a USB boot.

Maybe it has somekind of hdd removal protection ?

Thanks.

[Klamberext]

It even might be linux booting issue.
I could do a reinstall of another version that has been working on it since the beginning.

I'll let ya all know.

Sometimes problems solve themselves when you state them.

[andyP Community SuperMod · Accepted solution]

Hi Klamberext, welcome to the forum,

I don't know if the BIOS settings are the same for the N100 as the N500, but in this thread the member was able to solve their issue.

Please post your type and model number, maybe a member with the same type number, (the first four digits), can provide you with a "walkthrough" ??

[Klamberext]

Thanks for the post. It was promising.
I wish i had this screen option there, but i think my bios didn't had this.

TYPE 0768-6VG

But model seems to vanished from the sticker 

However I think i got bios version from live shell using command biosdecode.
It says SMBIOS 2.4 present.

Also tried a program called cmospwd to reset my bios. It's for passwords, but one of the methods is to reset bios, but this program didn't help.. or well i don't know

 
Meanwhile i reinstalled another version of linux and tested booting and got the same answer. Seems it's not software on the disk that is causing the boot failure.

I'll try to search more on this bios but if someone has a walkthrought or other ideas, i would be very happy.

Thanks.

[Duck3]

Klamberext, do check that thread Andy mentioned,

I think my walkthrough was for getting screen output
changed to Auto so bios could display on external.

I do not have a N100 now, but it was a 0768, and it did
have a setting in bios for screen output. Default was
"LCD only".

Wish I could help more...

[Klamberext]

A little update:

Also tried a program called dmidecode. It parses the biosdecode output and gives a more verbose output.
I got my model number too 61ET20WW ( this, when i scratch my head, looks the one i once used for drivers )

[andyP Community SuperMod]

Your model number is 0768.

Duck3's walkthrough I linked to should work because he had the same model of system, please give it a try and let us know how you get on.

[Klamberext]

OMG!

This worked, the walkthrought worked !

Thankyou Andy and Thank you Duck3.


Sorry about my little misapps about models etc.

Hahahha .. ohh i am so happy... even when it says HDD has SMART failure but i don't care, i can always get a new hdd.

This has been most productive and i am sure to visit Lenovo comunity next time i have a problem.

Thank you all again and have a nice day, spring is coming!

[andyP Community SuperMod]

  definitely good news, thanks for coming back and letting us know it worked out.