Unable to restore to factory settings with recovery discs

[LewB]

I have a T43 Thinkpad (2687) running XP Professional. It has become interminably slow so I backed up the system and data and want to return the unit to the factory settings and then restore selected material. When I purchased the computer it was suggested on this forum to have IBM send the recovery and boot discs although IBM insisted and urged that recovery could and should be done over the web. Follwing the forums advise and after a bit of hassle from IBM the discs were sent, a bootable disc and 6 additional recovery discs. I followed the instructions and when asked to place disc1 in the CD tray an error message:
"Internal error has caused the process to fail"
pops up follwed by another window:
"Can't find a service partition. You must restart the process"

I have done this several times with the result being the same. So my computer is nonfunctional at this time. Hopefully someone has a solution to this dilemma. I always felt comfortable with whatever happened because I had the discs in hand to take care of anything.
LJ Brown

[RealBlackStuff]

Since you are starting from scratch, you need to first erase the HD, using e.g. DBAN, free on the web.
It's enough to do ~5%, then abort DBAN, reboot and start recovery.

[goofyGAguy]

http://www.dban.org/download

[LewB]

Thanks. Unfortunately this doesn't work or I am using it incorrectly. I downloaded the file, burned it and put the CD in the laptop. But on restarting the same screen appears with:
"IBM Rescue and Recovery"

at the bottom an immediately asks for disc1. Doesn't recognize the DBAN file. So needs some additional suggestions. Thanks

[RealBlackStuff]

You need to use a program like ImgBurn to burn an .ISO.
Or use e.g. Nero, and select CD, then Burn from Image (that's what the ISO is). This creates a bootable CD.

[LewB]

That works.....awesome! I do have Nero and first burned the DBAN file using the make "data CD" method and that didn't work. I have used ISO in the past to update to XP SP3. First time using "Burn from Image" and watching the process proceed it looked exactly the same as the first method. Anyway, whatever works...... Thanks all for your great help
LJ Brown