recovery to factory config or reinstall WinXP without I386

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Hi all

After having done a stupid manipulation with Partition Magic, I hope that you can help me to make my T41 work again.Thank you so much

Problem:
-Crash when using Partition Magic to create another partition in hard drive
-I could not reboot by WinXP

I have tried
- Press IBM Access button when booting to restore bakup. But it did not work.
- Press F11(or IBM Access button) when rebooting in order to recover to factory contents but NOT succeed (Message: Application authentication has failed! This application cannot be loaded!). I do not know why

I have read some instruction to re-install Win XP in the forum. But I cant now get I386 or any other folder from hard drive.

Thank you so much for your help. Waiting for your solutions.

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Sorry, I forgot an important thing. I do not have recovery CDs.

[bevross]

After having done a stupid manipulation with Partition Magic, I hope that you can help me to make my T41 work again.

Well, if that manipulation was to delete the recovery partition then sounds like you have an unrecoverable situation, unfortunately! Did you try pressing F1 on bootup to get into the recovery partition? Only other thing I can think of is to call IBM support and get the recovery CDs, even if you have to pay $45 for them. Alternatively, buy XP?

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as i said before, i used Partition Magic in order to create another partition on my hard drive.

Do you of another solution? Not buying XP nor recovery CDs? Thanks

[pdudas]

You should check if the service partition exists on your system. On older systems (T40) it seems to have a frre space after the system partition (If the settings of the predesktop area in bios is set to disable). If you know what is the type of your hard disk, you should see the size on the net. Newer systems (like my T42 there is a partition after the system partition.

If I were you I try to boot from CD (Hiren's boot Cd) and I could start Partition magic from the cd and I can see what is the situation on the hard drive. Before I boot, I disabled the predesktop area in bios, so it can see on the hard drive.

If this is an older-fashioned predesktop area (T40) and there is only one partiton on the hard drive and the size of this partiton is smaller than the size of the drive (size is 40gb, but only one 36gb partition exists) then you have to make changes in bios, because the predesktop area is still hidden.

If the size of the partition is the same as the size of the hard drive, then you overwritten the predesktop area. In this case I can try the Emergency recovery Pro software. Your XP were on Ntfs. You can be sure that if you only made a bigger partitinon then your files are recoverable from your hard disk. You need an USB hard drive or you have to remove the hard drive from your thinkpad and install it to a desktop computer. Start the emergency recovery pro and it will recover your files to your USB hard drive. You will find the I386, Ibmshare,Ibmtools,Drivers folders and with these folders you can make a clean install. The howto is a sticky topic in the forum. http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=3827

If you have a newer predesktop area (like on my T42), this is a partition after the system partition. If this is exists, you can make it active and bootable in Partiton Magic, so your system can be booted from it.

If you dont have Hiren's boot cd, send me a mail and I can upload it to you.

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Thank you so much but I do NOT have a ftp server

Can I download the Hiren's boot CD from your server. I've tried to download a version of this Cd from http://www.uucyc.com/archives/Hiren's%20BootCD.6.0.zip
and used Nero to burn it. However, it did not work!!!

Waiting for your solution

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I got Niren's boot CD that works. I'm trying to do the rest.

[pdudas]

Send me your IP address in PM , and I'll enable to download from my ftp server.

If you need the Emergency Recovery Pro,PM me too.
(do you have a desktop or you want to boot from floppy/cd/pendrive?)