correct succession for drivers

[u.vivarelli]

In a few days a new T43p 2668-g4g will be mine!I live in Italy but I've bought it in Germany because italian merket is very strange..
So, when the t43p will be in my hand, I format all (because there will be German software) and I will install my italian winXP and all the drivers from the website.

Can you advise me the correct succession for drivers? (for example: video->trackpoint->power managment ecc ecc)
all the drivers/software are important? for example...easy ejet I think is not important...what driver/software are indispensable, what are important and what are useless??

Another question: where can I found the instruction to burn a good recovery disk with my drivers and my winXP??

Bye bye!!

[FTC]

Hi,

Really, now with the software installer the drivers update thing is extremely easy... just install the software installer thing and run it... tell it to install all the proposed latest versions of everything and you will be set.

The only tricky thing for me has been with the wireless drivers / access connections installation. I *think* there is still some problem if reinstalling the wireless drivers with access connections still installed (I'm not sure software installer does this correctly)... so make sure you first uninstall access connections.

[u.vivarelli]

ok..thanks!

I would delete the hidden partition: if I meke the recovery cd's before, than I delete rhe partition, can I use the recovery cd's after??
Recovery cd's needs only of IBM Access software??
bye

[FTC]

Hi,

I don't really understand you... If you want to delete the hidden partition you can do it but previously you can back it up using FWBACKUP and later restor it using FWRESTOR which are in the factory recovery area of the same HPA. There is a document in the IBM web which explains all the process...


Regards

[u.vivarelli]

I don't find the document...can you give me the link or a keyword to find it?

[FTC]

Hi, no, sorry, I did not take note of the link when I found it some moths ago, and I renamed the PDF to an easier name, so I don't even have a keyword...

But I can copy herunder the procedure from the document:

Creating an image of the hard drive
The procedure for creating and delivering an image of the hard drive with an HPAbased
system is different than the procedure for creating and delivering an image of the
hard disk with a hidden partition.
To create an image of a hard disk using an HPA-based system, you must complete the
following procedure using IBM-supplied tools and a third party disk-imaging tool, such
as Phoenix ImageCast, PowerQuest DriveImage, or Symantec Ghost.
1. Ensure that the Access IBM Predesktop Area security level is set to Normal. This
is the IBM default setting.
2. Copy the FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR tools from the factory recovery area in
the HPA using the following procedure:
a. Start the system and press the Enter key or the Access IBM button during
startup.
b. Double-click the Recover to Factory Contents icon. The Recovery Menu is
displayed.
c. Press the F3 key. A command prompt is displayed.
d. Change to the A: drive. (This is a virtual diskette drive in the hidden protected
area.)
e. Change to the recovery directory. The command prompt displays
A:\RECOVERY>
f. Insert a diskette into the diskette drive, which is mapped as the B: drive.
g. Type copy fwbackup.exe b:
h. Type copy fwrestor.exe b:
i. Eject the disk and turn the system off.
j. Follow the directions below for using FWBACKUP and FWRESTOR.
3. Create an image of the hidden protected area using a command prompt to run
the FWBACKUP tool.
FWBACKUP has the following format:
FWBACKUP size=<span file size must be between 25MB and
640MB> file=<Path and name of file set>
If you are creating an image of the HPA to a network drive, it must have a drive
letter assigned. For example, if you want to store an image of the HPA space to
drive D: that is of span size 640MB, the command is
FWBACKUP size=640 file=d:\IMGSET
The image set consists of files IMGSET.001…IMGSET.nnn.
4. Create an image of the main partition using a third party imaging tool to capture
first the C: partition, and then the main partition.
5. Restore the hard drive image using the following procedure:
a. Make sure the destination hard drive is blank.
b. Make sure that the master boot record is deleted and that no partitions
exist on the hard disk.
c. Run FWRESTOR from a command prompt. FWRESTOR has the
following format:
FWRESTOR file=<name of span file set>
If you are restoring an image of the HPA from a network drive, it must
have a drive letter assigned. For example, if you want to restore an image
from the D: drive that was created using the above example. The
command would be:
FWRESTOR file=D:\IMGSET
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This loads all the files in the image set (IMGSET.001 ...
IMGSET.nnn). All of the files in the image set must be in the same
subdirectory.
d. When this is complete, perform a power cycle.
6. Restore the main partition using the normal procedure of your imaging tool.
7. Restore the security setting to High Security, if this setting was changed in
Step 1.

Hope this helps
Regards

[FTC]

Hi,


Well, finally found it again, so if you want the full document, the download link is in this page :

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... TOOLS.html

(look for predesktop area white paper)