Thinkpads Forum

Im looking for Windows XP Tablet Edition 2005 retail boxed complete with disc and Key. Cannot find any on ebay for some reason. My X41T and X60T have the COA stickers but cant do anything without the disc. Would like a complete boxed retail complete one.

You can use professional edition with sp3, it has full support for tablets. If you need a copy with matching keys I can provide them. I also have a disc I've added SATA support.

If you do find an original tablet edition disc you'll have to disable your SATA controller (compatibility mode) so that it will be recognised by winXP, or you can reauthor the disc and add the drivers.

Also, if you do get a retail disc, your oem keys from your laptop will not work, you'd need to get an original oem disc.

There never was a retail edition of XP Tablet, it was only provided by OEMs for specific machines.

FYI, the sets for X41T and X60T are very different. I wouldn't expect one set to work on both machines.

Thats probably whats wrong, I have burned copy of Tablet Edition 2005 and try to use Windows KeyUpdater and it fails with my COA on the bottom of my X41T and X60T. I do have the 7 or 8 X41T recovery CDs if that helps.

If you use the recovery set for X41T, no activation is required.

Microsoft never sold a boxed retail version of XP Tablet. They did, however, had a "retail" version of XP Tablet on MSDN, and people with the appropriate subscription could download them. Whether anyone could have licensed them properly, I have no idea.

There is a way to create your own "OEM" XP Tablet 2005 disks that will be pre-activated once you install them onto a ThinkPad. I'm not entirely sure of the legality of this, but here's an outline of the process:
1. Obtain the 2 installation CDs: They are called "Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005 (English) - CD1" and "... - CD2". DO NOT use volume licensing disks: those are called "CD1 - VL", etc., and may not work with this process. CD1 in this set is actually identical to the XP Pro SP2 Retail disc, and CD2 is the tablet-specific bits.
2. Follow one of the many guides online to turn CD1 into a Lenovo OEM disc. You have to first edit a file to change Retail into OEM, then add the correct OEM files for Lenovo / IBM.
3. Install. You may have to use the key provided by Microsoft here, instead of the one on your COA. If everything worked, you now have a pre-activated OEM installation of XP Tablet 2005.