T30 windows authentication fails

[toothandnail]

Doesn't seem to be my day. I've just bought a T30 (2366-BU4) which came with an installed (though probably not original) copy of XP Pro. After managing to get the machine online with my spare PCMCIA NIC, I went to the MS site to update it. It insisted on taking me through the Windows verification process and failed with 'an unknown error'.

The machine has a legitimate COA, so I would have expected it to verify correctly. Maybe it doesn't like my firewall?

Anyhow, other than attempting to purchase Recovery CDs (which could be problematic as well as expensive, judging by what I've read in these forums), is there any way of fixing this problem? I don't use Windows enough to be very expert on the subject, so any help would be appreciated.

paul.

[Kyocera]

Go to admin tools, computer management, disk management, see if windows reports a 2.47gig (or thereabouts) fat 32 partition, if it does you might think about reformatting to factory, this will give you a legit install and it might help solve your other problems.

[toothandnail]

Go to admin tools, computer management, disk management, see if windows reports a 2.47gig (or thereabouts) fat 32 partition, if it does you might think about reformatting to factory, this will give you a legit install and it might help solve your other problems.

Shows my ignorance of Windows. Done that. I don't really understand what it shows, since it would seem to exceed the size of the disk. Anyhow...

Two partitions are shown, Basic (no file system reported) of 11.23 gig, plus C: Basic, NTFS, 37.26 gig.

I'll have to dig out Dfsee and see what it reports. I thought the machine came with a 40 gig drive, so those figures don't look right...

Hmm. They really don't look right - just booted from the Dfsee CD, and it is reporting a single NTFS partition of 38154.4 MiB. Not sure where the other partition reported by XP is supposed to be.

paul.

[Kyocera]

Well, it sounds like your recovery partition has been deleted, try one more thing, turn off the machine, wait 10sec reboot and at the bios screen press f11, what happens.

[toothandnail]

Well, it sounds like your recovery partition has been deleted, try one more thing, turn off the machine, wait 10sec reboot and at the bios screen press f11, what happens.

Nothing. So I guess the recovery partition is no longer there. It beeps a few times, then boots to XP.

I guess its time I went and read the manual a bit more thoroughly. Hopefully its got a pdf viewer on the machine...

paul.

[Kyocera]

Well i only suggest a reformat because of the network card issues you are having also, and, it puts everything back to where you would be starting from scratch. Especially since you just got it you don't know really what has been done prior to your ownership.

You could connect to the Lenovo web site and download any updated drivers for the machine, pull out the old ones and go from there.