Restoring T61 back to life [ Edited ]

[Bucks-Gold]

Just received a LENOVO ThinkPad T61 type 6465-57U

Product # 646557U.  The hard drive has been totally wiped and there were no system disks, driver disks or recovery disks, nor was there any documentation included with this Laptop.  I wish to restore this laptop back to its original configuration.  I don’t care if its Windows 7 or Windows XP Pro.  Right now, attempting to load XP Pro, I get a blue screen message telling me it can’t find a hard drive. I opened it up and found a 120 Gig. hard drive, which you can hear running. I reset the drive and attempted to reload XP Pro but still get the same message about not finding a usable hard drive …..  Is there someone out there that can help me out, … Point me in the right direction, … Or tell me how to breath life back into this laptop so that I will have full and total function once again ?  Many Thanks to anyone who can assist me on this venture. I want to be able to use all the original features that came with it.

Thank You !

Moderator Note; s/n edited for member's own protection

[andyP Community SuperMod]

Bucks-Gold, welcome to the forum,

as you are trying to install XP you will need to enter BIOS and set, in the Config menu, the SATA setting from AHCI to compatibilty mode. XP doesn't have the necessary SATA driver in order to be able to see your hard drive.  To enter BIOS press F1 when you see the Lenovo BIOS splash screen at start up.