~Toughbooktalk~

Hi guys, I searched on the internet and you seem to be the right guys to possibly help me out. I will give you the whole back ground and hopefully it makes sense.....

I bought a ToughBook CF-29EWKGZKM second hand which came with no HDD, no HDD caddy, no optical drive, no memory and no battery. I have bought a new HDD, HDD caddy, optical drive, memory and battery. I installed all the above parts and used the cd recovery discs that came with the laptop to try and instal Windows XP and this is where my problem has started.

I went into the BIOS and selected the boot order to boot from CD and checked that it was showing my HDD (80gb) in the information which was all good. The laptop powered up, booted to the install cd and began the process. Great I thought ! Oh hold on, not so great as once asked to format the partition for install, it runs to 100% and then gives me a fault saying that the hdd could not be formatted and that the disc might be faulty. I thought that this meant the hdd was faulty and not being reconised (although it shows in bios) so I bought another HDD and I am still getting the same fault.

My computer skills are limited to "hobby skill" so I left it into a local repair shop and he says that he thinks that either my motherboard is faulty or I have other problems.

Any help would be greatly appreciated

EDIT - I am not sure if this is of an relevance or if I have just bought a faulty battery but although the orange charging light flashes while the charger is plugged in, the battery went flat on me and will not charge even after being plugged in all night. I messaged the supplier and they are going to send me a replacement.

Well one thing for sure you battery is shot. What is your full model number , first page at the top of the bios is where you will find it.

Well hopefully the battery being knackered is a good thing in this case so far
The model says CF-29EWKGZKM
Serial No. 5AKSA913612
Cpu Speed 1.30ghz
System Memory 1280gb
Primary Master 80gb

Below is what your 29 had when it left the factory. The recovery disk you are using. Do you have 1 disk or 3 ?

Model Number: CF-29EWKGZKM
Status: DISCONTINUED
MSRP: $4,756
Description: Pentium M 1.3G LV (Centrino), 13.3Transmissive Touch XGA ,256MB,40GB,WLAN802.11b+g, WinXP,BacklitKBD

Battery should show solid light. (not flashing) So...bad battery or incorrect power supply. 15.6V 5A is correct. Voltage above 16 is asking for trouble and WILL hurt the computer. CF-AA1653A is correct Panasonic PS. (power supply)There are some very usable IBM PS also. Yellow tip....not over 16V.

Just to make life interesting the battery and hdd meet in the middle.........a slight chance of cabling problem if both are throwing errors.

The real install disks come in a three disk set for the MK2. See Shawn's avatar for a sample picture.

Welcome,

Jeff

can you post a photo of the recovery cd's?
also maybe a photo or at least all the model number of the hard drive.

Jeff beat me to it about the internal cable.

By the way..Stick around here a while. You will find that we are not "right" at all.


I have also seen where a bad cd disk or drive would cause problems because it can't read the disk fast enough. The software times out.

It is worth it to pull the bottom off, with no battery or power connected, and carefully inspect the cables. Years of dropping batteries in could have knackered the battery connector.
The WORTH IT part is you can carefully squish the thermal pad/s when you put it back together. The gray clay-like stuff. If it's dried out then replace it. Heat is your enemy. NOT Arctic Silver.....no short-cuts. GPU Thermal Conductive Heatsink Pad 2.5cm x 2.5cm 1.5mm Thick.

Sorry but for some reason I didn't receive emails that I had more replies. This is the charger and battery that I have. I'll take pictures tomorrow and post them up. It is a 3 disc recovery set. I also tried to use a genuine XP install cd but it basically came up with the same error.

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.vi ... 08&alt=web
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.vi ... 44&alt=web

I have 3 different HDD but I will post pictures of them all tomorrow for you.

I really appreciate the help

Just testing upload from phone.

Do you have a good set of screwdrivers? I prefer Wiha.

If you start cracking cases and join our mob of heros PH-1 x 60 and PH-0 x 50 will let you have your way with most case screws. Take a picture for reference. ummmm nice picture above??????????:D The size is right.

Back to screwdrivers.....push down hard to break the thread locker free and you will never strip one. Hardly ever.

Keep us informed.

To be completely honest your power supply should be o.k. battery questionable. I understand the need to keep prices down. I prefer the genuine Panasonics. Others use IBM power supplies and are happy.

Jeff