Due to problems with the hardware I have got my hard disk installed as a USB drive and due to the age of the machine have to boot from floppy into the USB device.

I have so FAR managed to get access to the USB device but when I try to start Win98 SE 2 errors appear (one about XMS and another about registry files). The system then halts with a blue screen saying "VFAT Initialization Error".

It is a Thinkpad 600 if that makes any difference.

Any suggestions?

Is it possible to acquire a NEW hard drive and BACK it on to there?

You can BUY USB hard drives now.

R0SSI don't think you quite understood the situation...

Normal HDD - Broken (Not fixable).
USB HDD - OK (NEW!!!)

Due to age of BIOS boot process is:

FLOPPY (MSDOS) -> USB HDD (Win98SE)

The errors occur when EXECUTING the WIN command.Who said this is going to work? Has it ever worked this way on that machine?Without a lot of hard work (Even then, it's not guaranteed), you need to boot from the USB device. If your system doesn't support this, forget it and buy a new hard drive.I can't seem to make it boot from USB in it's current state.

I can get into the USB drive via MSDOS though so the drive is not faulty.

My only hardware solution seems to be to buy a HDD for my ultrabay.

If anybody knows if a BIOS update will allow USB boot then feel free to let me know...I am not aware that a ThinkPad of that era can boot from a USB drive.