From: "Frank Haber" 

Glenn, you're having so much trouble that I'll forward this WAG.  The
original HDs for some Thinkpads have some *firmware* features to support
IBM's boot security scheme.  This involves *redirection* of the boot
process at a very low level, and very early on.  Talking to an authorized
repair station or a human being at IBM support might pay dividends, or at
least save you some flailing around.

There used to be secret BIOSes for some machines that omitted query to the
secret partition, accessible only through the secret drive firmware.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5