This is sort of a continuation of my saga to try and revive an old laptop (Thinkpad) in an attempt to install and learn Linux, primarily to connect to our wireless router, which I'm beginning to believe is a myth.
Aside from that, I have actually installed and played with several distros. The one I ultimately liked best was Mandriva using KDE, primarily because it handled the video correctly with respect to aspect ratio. Other distros seemed to wrap the screen vertically, a bit of a nuisance to say the least.
Anyway, I was trying to use a PCI card adapter for the wireless and it entailed downloading drivers in the form of a tar file. No problem, got the file and transferred it to the laptop via a USB drive. Moved the file as Root to proper place and attempted to process it. The disk drive light starts its thing (I'm doing something else on the desktop system while waiting). After a couple of minutes, I notice the disk light is still active. Hmm? More time goes by and now I'm beginning to think something is amiss. I let run a l-o-n-g time and nothing. I couldn't get control back no matter what I tried. I finally just cut the power.
Now, I can't reboot. Even with a distro CD with all the upfront disk handling functions won't recognize the drive. If I attempt to boot from the HD I get a message there is no OS. I've also gotten messages about the MBR not found. I've tried some very basic disk access and manipulation software, but getting no place. Any suggestions as to how to address getting this HD back to at least being recognized?
