OS installation & new harddrive = "disk read error"

Very generally, the HD is best prepared in the system it will be working in. Installing windows in another system and moving the HD is bad practice. How did you come to not have the passwords for the unit? That's a bad situation; depending on laptop model, you may have a paperweight or, in best case, a unit that needs a CMOS reset.

You may need to contemplate getting a bootable external CD unit or FDD and prepare your HD while in the laptop (formatting...). Then you could move it to another system and copy over the complete contents of an install CD, put it back and run install from the HD itself. The HD must be bootable, of course... Perhaps the system allows install from USB unit?  I can't understand how laptops without FDD or CD ever could make the market.
/RID

The situation is compliacted, though. You can try hook up hard drive onto a desktop and install windows os there, but it will be difficult when you plug into laptop and make it boots properly. You have to buy either USB CDROM, but do that you must ensure that the bios support USB as well.

Search on ebay see if you can find any accessories for this laptop such as CDROM/Floppy, and then install OS.

I guess my computer is a paperweight, since the password can not be reseted. And as I already told, IDE HDD 1 and 0 are my only boot devices. And the password is unknown since my company IT support didn't prefer to give it to me =) Guess I'm out of luck

If you can find another person with a IBM Thinkpad X31 (2672-4G2) use their laptop as the install machine for the hard drive. About the only hope for getting the laptop up and running at this point, other than getting the BIOS password. The password cannot be reset as this is a security chip  feature that would require a motherboard replacement when lost or forgotten.

Yeah, this is the solution that I've been considering. But let's wait another day or so before accepting any answers.

How bad is the old HD, you could try to clone it outside of the laptop on the desktop with something like Acronis or similar cloning software.

Here is a bit more info on lost passwords for thinkpads
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-59377

If the supervisor password is set, then it is likely there may also be a hard drive password set on the old hard drive. If this is the case, then the cloning will not work either.

According to IBM/Lenovo-->"A forgotten Supervisor password will prevent access to the ThinkPad BIOS setup utility. To regain access, the system will need to be serviced to have the system board and hard drive replaced. Proof of purchase is required, and this repair is not covered under the warranty."

Yes, I've multiple times read those notorious lines, and I'm very aware of the situation. I guess I've got to keep on working with the old disk until it's totally gone.

ok the solution which i am writing over here is not guarenteed to work, but it has worked for me most of the times.
connect your drive to any desktop, start the installation when the computer prompts for the 3rd and last reboot, shutdown the system and remove the hard disk, place it back and power on the system,
what it actually does is, on last final booting, the hard ware profiles gets final and drivers get loaded. ( if you install the windows on other system, it will pick the hard ware profile of the current system, on changing the system all of those settings will be resetted). which can create multiple problems.

give it a try and see if it works

Perhaps these people can help
http://www.pwcrack.com/bios.shtml

My machine does have the LAN boot agent, but I don't really know how it works. Could I save my machine with the intel boot agent?

Do you know if a hard drive password is set? Have you tried cloning the drive?

the harddrive password is not set, and soon, if nothing else works i will try cloning.


But could this be an option?

"Installing Windows 2000 or XP

    * Attach the harddrive to the host computer and install a minimal bootable DOS system i.e. by booting a Win98 Emergency Boot Disk and performing the command "SYS X:" (where X = the laptop's harddrive).
    * Copy FDISK.EXE to the laptop harddrive.
    * Return the harddrive to the laptop and boot to DOS. (If you have Win98 installed by default, you can skip the first two steps and simply reboot in Windows to DOS.)
    * Run FDISK and set up your new Windows system partition on this laptop. (If you do not do this on the laptop, after reboot you will receive the infamous "NTLDR IS MISSING" error. This error may still occur if the partition is greater than 7.8gb in size)
    * Then return the drive to the host and format the drive as FAT32. (DO NOT format as NTFS.)
    * Repeat the "SYS X:" step to make the new partition bootable.
    * Copy Himem.sys and Config.sys, too. Otherwise SMARTDRIVE.EXE won't run
    * Get SMARTDRV.EXE from the internet and copy it to your Thinkpads harddrive.
    * Also, from the Win2K or WinXP CD, copy the I386 folder to the harddrive.
    * Return the laptop's harddrive to the Thinkpad one final time and boot to DOS.
    * Run SMARTDRV.EXE first, then change directories to I386 and run WINNT.EXE, this will allow the installation to begin.
    * During installation, choose NOT to format the destination partition, since it contains the installation files. If you want that filesystem to be NTFS you can convert it after installation from within Windows. "

I found it att www.thinkwiki.org

The method explained above might even work, i'll keep you guys posted.