I screwed up my T22

[spbettas]

Hello, I need some help with my 22. To begin I dont know much about computers, just simple basic stuff. Here is the problem. I have a Ibm thinkpad T22 that I bought which came with a OS of window 98. I figure let do a upgrade to window xp home. I buy the OS and upload it in my computer. I didnt know it was going to delete everything. I thought it just plug and play. Now, the only thing that works is the internet. I ask my friend and he says i might have deleted my bios, drivers, and some other stuff. My question is there any way to get it back??? Please help

Also is there any way that I can go back to factory settings, like new when i had bought it?

[awdark]

Perhaps you will find everything here: http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/

Reverting is probably close to impossible, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix everything.


Hrmm How interesting... this page looks so different from the T20 page yet the drivers are compatible.

[danage]

you might be able to use ibm's integrated recovery functionality. at startup, does it offer you to press f11 for recovery? if that does not work, then judging by your explanations my best recommendation would be that you show your computer to a professional who will redo the software installation.

[schen]

The F11 recovery function basically reimages the machine to the original "out of Box" specs (meaning wipes everything out to start over. As far as I'm aware, this feature was not part of the T20 line; it didn't appear until later (eg. T22/23 on up). The T20 originally came with a set of recovery disks (matching which-ever COA sticker is on the bottom).

An upgrade load of Windows XP should not have wiped out everything, simply loaded on top. I've done both a W2K over W98 and XP over W2K with no problems (although, I'd generally advise people to do a "clean" load instead). There is a possibilty that you may have chosen the wrong items from the install menu when it loaded and the installation did wipeout everything in W98. If absolutely necessary, those file can be retrieved by one of the professional companies that do data recovery. If on the other hand, you determine that the files aren't of huge importance, I'd forget about it and move on. Another possibility would be to remove the HDD and put it in an Ultrabay adapter and have another machine take a look at the disk to see if they are on another partition you can't see.

[Nolonemo]

First, if you want any meaningful help from the forum, you need to give more information in your post. It's not clear from you original post if you had applications installed in addition to the Windows 98 OS. It's not clear if there was data on your HD in the first place, and, if so, whether it's simply gone, or whether you can't access it because it was deleted.

So, to throw out some possibilities:

1) if all you had on was the OS, you will need to reload some drivers which are different for XP than Win98. Easiest way is to find the driver matrix for the T22, that will tell you what you need.

2) if you did an upgrade install of XP, it should have retained all your settings, program menus, etc. Since it appears that this didn't happen, there are two possibilities:

a) You did a clean install of XP without formatting the hard drive. This wiped out the registry entires, menu entries, and .dlls etc written to the windows directory when theprogram was installed. You may be able to run some of these programs by locating the main .exe in windows explorer and running them. If they work, you can manually create menu shortcuts. If they don't run, you will have to reinstall them. However, in either case, the data may still be on the machine, depending on where it is stored.

b) You did a clean install and formatted the hard drive in the install. It is possible to recover some of the data on the Hard Drive, in this case. You will need to run a data recovery program that runs from the CD or the floppy drive. If this is the case, you should not use the computer until you do this, as each time you run something on it, you risk overwriting the data that's on it and making it unrecoverable.

If, as you say, you don't know much about computers, I would recommend your getting some hands-on assitance from someone knowledgeable.

Good luck.

[spbettas]

Hello, first off thanks for some advice. Honestly I dont really know what im really missing. When I had the win 98 everything was working and show up on the desktop. It had the my computer, doc, internet explore, powerDVD icons, and more shortcuts. When i installed windows all that stuff was not there any more. I thought they just deleted the shortcut icons, but when I tried to test the dvd player it said it had no software. On that note, I whet to "add and remove program" page and there is nothing there. Usally when I open the add and romvie program it would have stuff in there, programs. Not sure if you guys can help me out but I do thank you guys.

[schen]

I just realized that you're in the DFW area. I not certain how close we are in actuality, but we might be able to get together and take a look at this machine. If you aren't familiar with Forney, it's 10 minutes east of Mesquite on U.S. 80.

[spbettas]

I am around the Irving Area. I notice you have a A30. Is there any difference with size with a T23 that you have. I was thinking about getting one of those also but look kind of big. Also, How is the preformance of that machine?

[schen]

Irving's not too bad. I have a friend that lives there. If you want to sit down and sort this thing out, I'll be happy to carve out an evening. I pretty much have every TP device know to man so it shouldn't be a problem to resolve your issues as far as getting everything loaded properly.

The A30 is actually my wife's machine. She likes to have all drives in one box, and the blown up XGA resolution on the bigger 15" screen (bad eyes). It is significantly bigger and heavier than my T23, but since we rarely travel with it, that's a non-issue. If you are comparing to the machines out there today, you can think of it as a Qosmio or HP DV8000; something in the full desktop-replacement catagory although it's not as heavy or as big as those 2 behemoths! There are some unique aspects about this machine that no other IBM has (especially the A30/31p version). They have 2 swappable bays (one of which is the "plus" version which allows the keypad or WorkPad dock), and could be had with a more robust video subsystem and UXGA screen as well. Ocassionally, I commandeer may wife's machine to do things like copy from disk to disk. The performance is very similar to my T23 (which is to say; fine). The CPU is just a hair slower, but they are both Tualatin cores and performance is really pretty snappy for something less than a P4/2Ghz or there-abouts. My T23 has recently kind of opened up the gap a bit since I installed a new 5400rpm drive and a fresh OS load, but otherwise, they are very comparable.

I really do like that machine quite a bit, but I wouldn't like it as an only notebook. Just too big to carry around consistently. Of course, that's a personal opinion thing.