How do I Reformat without recovery discs???

[wantathinkpad]

Hello all,

I have a T43 ( 266876U ) that was just infected with a serious virus and I need to reformat. I bought this laptop almost 5 years ago and no longer have the recovery disc or whatever. I haven't formatted a computer in probably 6 years and forgot the process.
What will I need to get the process going and get all the drivers. I have an XP cd. What else will I need? Any drivers hard to find?

I know if I do a google search I can find an instructional on how to format. However, I was just curious about the drivers and anything else that may be unique to Thinkpads. Also, I thought Thinkpads have another recovery partition?. Although I have had it for 5 years not familiar with other things since everything including XP Pro has been rock solid reliable through all updates over the years.

It's been awhile since I have been on here so not even sure if this post should have gone here or somewhere else. Thanks in advance.

[rkawakami]

Moved to General Hardware/Software forum.

Your system may still have the recovery partition intact. To access it, press the F11 key at power up and follow the prompts. However, if it were me and the only thing I had was a retail copy of XP and no recovery partition, then I'd wipe the drive prior to installing XP. You can do this in several different ways. You can download a utility program that performs a DoD-style wipe (killdisk.com), which is probably "over-kill". You can use a disk utility/diagnostic program made by the manufacturer of the drive (SeaTools for Seagate, DFT for Hitachi, etc.). Or simply grab a copy of PC Doctor for DOS from the IBM/Lenovo download site:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-58597

This last option is also where you can find the drivers and utilities for the T43.

Even if you do have a working recovery partition, you're going to have to install all of the Windows updates since the system was delivered. I just updated one of my T41 systems yesterday with the XP SP3 disk and it took a couple of hours (not including the time for the 560MB .ISO image download from Microsoft).

P.S. You have a PM from me as well...

[wantathinkpad]

Two things. I believe I do have the recovery partition intact. But even then a few minutes after I made this post I found the recovery cds. So I guess my question now would be is there any benefit of doing a clean install.
I have a retail copy of XP. Do I just pop it in and do an install? Are there any benefits to doing a clean install from XP? Thinkpads don't come with alot of extra programs to begin with right?

And I do understand the concept of installing the updates. I think I sent in my computer for a problem with my screen 3 years ago and they gave me a new mother board so I do remember having to install all the XP updates.

[rkawakami]

Again, if it were me, I'd use the recovery disk to re-install the operating system (after having previously wiped the disk with some other disk tool to insure that no traces of the malware exists), rather than using the retail copy of XP. The recovery disk will include the IBM software and utilities that are needed. Some people may complain about the "bloat" that may also be installed but you should be able to easily remove what you don't want/need (Symantec, excepted ).

I'd also NOT install the recovery partition. Two reasons: it takes up disk space that could be put to better use and it won't have any of the system updates since the recovery disks were made. Then when you get the system the way you want it, image/clone it and use that as the basis of restoring your system in case it's needed.

[wantathinkpad]

Thanks. I ended up using the recover partition and restoring it to original factory settings. My laptop was not reading my recovery cds or at least not all of them.

So I am back up and running. I don't know if this was a common problem but through the life of my laptop the CD drive was has always been inconsistent I had it replaced twice so the one I am using now is my third one.

I tried to upload my office XP CD which I burned the same times as I did my Recovery Cds( at about three years ago- four years ago.). However, that did not work. Popped it into another computer and it was read. So I guess it is my laptop. But thanks for the advice and I am glad I had the recovery partition. Thank God for a reliable hard drive.

[rkawakami]

Since your recovery CDs are not being read by your laptop, you have several choices:

- backup or clone the drive now before anything happens to it
- copy the recovery disks on another system and see if those copies can be read on your T43
- purchase a new recovery disk set