T42 Rescue and Recovery clarification

[jz646]

Hi all, I recently got a used T42 in pretty good physical shape from a relative, however it runs really slow and there seems to be a few viruses on it. After reading the info on this site I come to figure that restoring the hard drive won't be as easy as I thought.

First of all, I read about the rescue and recovery feature, but when I booted up and pressed the IBM button there was no special menu like I read there would be. It only gave two options: start up normally or enter the BIOS configuration. At first I guessed that it wasn't installed, so I downloaded Rescue and Recover 3.1 and tried to install it. It said there wasn't enough hard drive space or something like that. Then I read here that once the rescue and recovery is performed and the recovery disks are made/used, it disappears and you can't get it back again without buying a new set of discs. This would make sense since it was used.

So I figure the rescue and recovery method is shot. Now a few questions: What exactly is in the system recovery discs, and what would happen if I just reinstalled a new OS? Would the laptop still work? I have a winXP home edition disc made for a Dell PC and a windows 7 disc. Would either of these do anything? Are there any alternatives? Thanks in advance

[Harryc]

The W7 disc would work, but if you want the original R&R to work place an AD in the Marketplace forum requesting T42 recovery CD's.

[Norway Pad]

The Dell disc will probably also work. My T42 has XP that was reinstalled from a Dell XP Pro disc. I found out, because I found some Dell logos and folders around. I bought the T42 that way, and because the install was brand new and I didn't have any other XP discs around at the time, I chose to just stick with it. Not the preferred method, just in lack of anything better.

Be aware that any install done from regular XP or W7 discs will not contain any of the IBM specific drivers, like drivers for Wireless, Battery/Power manager, Active protection, etc, so you will have to download and install them afterwards. I downloaded and installed mine manually, but other users here says that simply downloading and running System Update takes care of it all. I have never tried that myself.

I bought R&R discs for my T43 at this site: http://www.<promotion of site not allowed>.com/ In case you don't find them on the Marketplace here.

[Mornsgrans]

The T42 also works with T40(p), T41(p), and R50/R51 recovery-CDs. In case of R5* recovery-CDs the ATI graphics device driver must be installed manually after recovery.

The Recovery-CD all have one disadvantage:
The Windows operates slow caused by the bloat-ware. Norton antivirus will be installed in a 2003/2004 - release.

You will get a high performance T42, if you install your T42 from a clean install-CD or self built slipstream cd and add all Windows updates. After that install only those drivers and tools from lenovo download-site you want/need.