CF-27 Restore Issues

I have purchased several CF-27's from a public safety auction, and the hard drives were formatted. When I start the computer, a red box flashes up saying "Partition table is corrupted or doesn't exist. Save to disk feature is disabled." I have a CD-Drive and a first aid CD for the CF-27. When the computer loads, I can hear it looking at the CD, but then it just goes to a screen saying "Operating System not found." I could use some help, and be kind. I am not a huge computer guy, I'm more into cars. I am pretty good with computers, but I don't know much about Toughbooks.

 

Are you the guy I emailed this morning? If so, welcome aboard. If not, er.. welcome aboard...

You'll need an OS CD to do anything really, but the CD drive might not be selected first in the BIOS, so it may look at the CD to see it's there, but not actually use it to boot. I'm not sure what's on the first aid CD though...


Best guess is it came with Windows 98, so score up an installer CD and throw that in the drive, set the BIOS to boot off of a CD first, and try installing it.

 

I have tried that, but to no avail. I've tried all the boot orders, with nothing. I have also tried installing off of the Windows floppy first, but it needs to run after the CD after that. When I swap the CD-Drive into the computer, its says that a whole bunch of files are missing or corrupted.

 

Just a thought, but is the 27 like the 28 in which it needs a master CDROM to boot from? I remember having the same/similar issue with mine because I haven't done the CDROM mod yet. Maybe TB could chime in, or Modly do you know?

~Paul

 

I've never had a 27, so I'm not sure. If he's the guy I'm thinking of though, he's not far from either me or Gravitar, so it could be possible to help him out in person.

What model number is your CD drive?

 

I have the same issue as yourself. What I've learned so far is this. The two error messages are because the hibrination partition isn't there, that's what you would use the 1st aid disk for to fix.

Unfortunately in order to do so, you first must use your boot disk for the operating system. Here you may run into a problem as I have. I've done the boot disk thing, but now my cd rom isn't being recognized at all. So I am unable to use the 1st aid disk to repair the partition.

I think because the cd rom is connected by usb port it's not recognized, but it's suppose to have it listed in the config.sys file, which I can't seem to locate.

Hope this helps

 

I don't believe the CF-27s are likely to support boot from USB, as they are older than the CF-28s which DEFINITELY DO NOT.

Toughbook/Pappy - does your CF-29 support boot from USB?

mnem <~~~ Big fan of old-school*