Emptying - still trying

Hey guys, Really appreciate the time and effort to help us. Unfortunately, by the time I got to my son with the info, he had gone to Windows Explorer and deleted anything the delete key would delete! We tried using the Win 98 Start disc and the DOS 1 disc, as well as a recovery disc I found, and all we get now is the message: Invalid system disc. Replace disc and press any key. Looks to me like the A drive isn't working either. Tried a CD recovery and that didn't work either. All we get now is the system disc message, and no matter what we do, it repeats that message. I do see the Thinkpad logo - so something is still there - Have we hurt it permanently? Thanks again for all your help!

 

IBM Thinkpad,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Do you have the external case that holds the floppy drive(has short thick cable with small wide plug on other end)?

Ifso, then have CD drive in laptop bay and connect external floppy via small connector on side of laptop. power up laptop and stick Recovery/Windows CD into drive. Put IBM boot diskette into floppy and power down. Restart laptop with diskette and CD in. It should start process for you and will ask for Input.

Bluecanary25

 

You may need to check your bios settings. If the bios is set to read the hard drive first is will get stuck there because there is a good chance that one of the file deleted was command.com. Go into the bios and see if the settings are set it so that the floppy and the CD-Rom are ahead of the hard drive.

 

If you suspect a system file has been deleted and therefore stopping booting from the hard disk, simply boot from a floppy -95, 98, whatever the hard disk has (had!). Then type "Sys c:" This will copy any deleted system files back to the hard disk and make it bootable.