Well recently I dug up an old IBM Thinkpad out of the closet and decided to turn it on. When I turn it on it asks me if I want to start up in Safe mode or start normally. Neither of them work. When I click start normally it just freezes and safe mode mode stops loading at the file apg440.sys. I have tried other methods but my disk drive does not work. Is there anyway possible I can fix this?. Thanks.

It sounds like that driver is corrupted & needs to be replaced. Follow these instructions on how to correct this.You must know the administrator password [password for the account called "administrator"] and the xp install disk. If you don't know that password then you might have to reinstall XP or you can try to repair xp.

Thanks for the reply but my disk drive doesn't work so this method won't either.

If you have a floppy drive working on the laptop, you might be able to make a recovery floppy disk off another Windows box using the same Windows operating system as your laptop. As far as I can remember from my Windows days, there should be an option to make a recovery floppy for Windows that won't boot, whether its Windows 98, 2000, or xp.
Book disk

Unfortunately, it will also need a working cdrom so you can access your original Windows install cd. It almost like you are in between a rock and a hard place. I'd tell ya to try Linux, but you need a internet connection, or a working cdrom drive, or a USB bootable laptop to do even that.

... my disk drive doesn't work ...

When I turn it on it asks me if I want to start up in Safe mode or start normally.

This indicates the drive is "seen" in the bios. and it boots, so it is working, to an extent.

http://www.d-a-l.com/help/general-ha...ng-system.html <--- From this forum - A "Sticky" relating to information about O/S's and hardware.

What O/S is the machine running?

Do you have the original "load" media for the O/S?

Well the driver works when I put a disk in but it doesn't read it correctly. I know it's not the disk because my friend stuffed gummy bears into the drive a long time ago(he was acting dumb). I tried to clean the drive and I get the same results. Also it was running Windows XP SP2 as far as I can remember. Not sure if I have the load media for it.

So does anyone have any idea how I can fix this?

Originally Posted by lancelot854

Well the driver works when I put a disk in but it doesn't read it correctly. I know it's not the disk because my friend stuffed gummy bears into the drive a long time ago(he was acting dumb). I tried to clean the drive and I get the same results. Also it was running Windows XP SP2 as far as I can remember. Not sure if I have the load media for it.

The gummy bears situation kinda negates a fix. Not having the load media doubles the difficulty. The only option I can see is to pull the hardrive from the laptop. And try to repair it slaving into a Desktop with a working CDROM and a Windows XP disk. Maybe somebody else might have a better way of suggesting how to do this.

I know it's not the disk because my friend stuffed gummy bears into the drive a long time ago(he was acting dumb). I tried to clean the drive and I get the same results.

Are you being serious?

Yes...it was pretty bad.