Have you tried a different hard drive, or confirmed that the hard drive is functional in another system? These old hard drives are doomed for failure.

Did you try booting the system with a standard DOS start-up disk, e.g. the kind that are created in Windows 95/98 and formatting the hard drive using fdisk and then format c:?

If you enter the BIOS, does the system recognise the HDD and are the HDD parameters set correctly?

Does the board use a Dallas RTC module which needs to be replaced? How about the BIOS battery on the board - still good?

On another note, that is one very attractive looking system. I've always had a thing for these old Aptiva towers.

I'm a bit late to this post, so also posting for anyone else with similar problems:

1) For this machine to have its original software load, use a hard disk that is 2 GB or smaller, or, for a drive larger than 2 GB, partition it such that the partitions do not exceed 2 GB in size. This is because Windows 95 (the original/vanilla 4.00.950 flavor, which shipped with it) cannot recognize a drive partition larger than 2 GB. For a 2168-M series Aptiva (M4x-M7x), the correct recovery CD-ROM should be part number 41H7875: https://archive.org/details/aptiva-2168-recovery. This worked perfectly on my M62 Aptiva.

2) You can find the boot floppy there, too: https://archive.org/download/aptiva-master-cd … -7875-sept-1995
**note that in the page's "download options" section, you'll need to select "show all" and then download the single .IMA file in that archive listing. Then, with another PC with a floppy drive capable of running WinImage, use WinImage to create the recovery disk from this image file.**

3) Connect the 2 GB (or properly partitioned) or smaller disk to the machine. Plug everything back in.

4) Insert the floppy disk, then start the machine. Allow it to boot from the floppy disk (assuming the boot order is correctly set up in the BIOS/SurePath Setup Utility). You should see a few errors about HIMEM.SYS and/or EMM386 not being loaded, etc., but these don't matter. Next, the IBM CD-ROM device driver (IBMIDECD.SYS, if I recall correctly) should load. If the disk is not partitioned or formatted as FAT, you should receive the error "5 - Bad Partition Table."

5) If you get the "5 - Bad Partition Table" error, just run FDISK, delete the hard disk's primary DOS partition, and create a new primary DOS partition. Insert your product recovery CD-ROM (P/N 41H7875), and then reboot. The recovery floppy should remain inserted. Do not format the hard disk at this time.

** NOTE: If no error messages, skip to step 6. If you still get "5 - Bad Partition Table" even after using FDISK, then: **
5.1) Go ahead and manually format the hard disk (FORMAT C:). Once again, the partition size must be 2 GB or less.
5.2) At the archive link above, download the APTRSTOR.EXE file and run it on an another PC with a floppy drive. This will create two files: RESTORE.EXE and RESTORE.SCR (I believe--I'm going from memory. One file is the .exe, and one is a script for the .exe). you can *barely* fit these onto the recovery floppy disk.
5.3) After running APTRSTOR on your other PC, copy these two newly created files (RESTORE.EXE, RESTORE.SCR) to your recovery floppy, and then,
5.4) Copy these two files from the recovery floppy to the Aptiva hard disk (once it's formatted).
5.5) Make sure your recovery CD-ROM is in the drive, and then,
5.6) Once booted (assuming you still get the "5 - Bad Partition Table" error) navigate to C:\ and then simply run RESTORE with no parameters. The system image will restore itself. It takes ~10-15 minutes, depending on the speed of the hard disk.

6) Let the system boot from the floppy, and, if you don't get "5 - Bad Partition Table," you should instead get the prompt to start recovering everything. If you don't have the original recovery set, you can find everything on archive.org (link above for "IBM Aptiva 2168 factory CD-ROMs," though I think that should be renamed "2168 M-series CD-ROMs"). Recovery takes about 10-15 minutes. if you see/hear a lot of CD-ROM and hard disk activity, and lots of scrolling text, you're in good shape!

**Leave the MWave adapter installed during the factory load, if you have it. The system image is heavily dependent on the MWave adapter...it takes a few steps and a few .ini file line edits to properly remove it.**

For the floppy issue, this is interesting and I have never seen this problem before (owned an M41 back in the day, and currently own an M62 and 2161-C9E)...go into the BIOS/SurePath Setup Utility (F1) and make sure any floppy drives attached to the system are correct (i.e., you'll likely need to make sure drive A is a 1.44 MB floppy drive, and, unless you have a 2nd floppy drive, it should be disabled). If necessary, replace the system's CMOS/clock battery, located at the upper-left corner of the system board (when facing it as installed in the system) Thankfully, this uses a standard CR2032 coin cell battery. it's a bit of a pain to get to, but at least it's not a Dallas battery.

For those who simply want to load a vanilla copy of Windows 95B, you can use a disk larger than 2 GB, but if it exceeds 8 GB (the limit of the "Cylinders/Heads/Sectors" model, from what I understand--someone please correct me if I'm wrong), then you'll need to install a dynamic drive overlay, such as MaxBlast 3.x.

Let me know if this helps...this is a beautiful, well-kept machine! I was lucky to find a 2168-M62 on eBay recently. The procedure above worked for me, and I'm almost certain it should work for this one.

other good stuff:
service parts list: http://ps-2.kev009.com/pcpartnerinfo/ctstips/f12e.htm
service manual: http://ps-2.kev009.com/pccbbs/aptiva/2144_68a.pdf (note that this is for "Service Level I" or SL-I machine, but works for SL-H)
**CPU jumper settings on page 175**

EDIT: I have now seen the "insert disk" animation screen above. Here's how to fix it:

1. For this specific hard disk drive, try removing the master/slave/cable select jumper on the rear of the drive, if it is present (hard to tell from the photo). For me, when this jumper was present on either Quantum or Western Digital drives, the machine either would not finish its POST, or it would not detect the disk and present the "insert disk" animation above.

2. If the jumper is not present, then you may need to do the opposite. That is, make sure the "master" setting on the disk is set with a jumper.

3. If either of these fail, then I'd recommend replacing the disk with either (a) another vintage spinning disk, or (b) a CompactFlash-to-IDE adapter, or, of it works, an SD-to-IDE adapter. I have yet to try this, though.