basic software question??

[S_O_Laban]

Have a T23 2648-4PU that I got used from a major pharmaceutical company. I don't have any windows discs of any kind, what are my options beside paying Microsoft for a new copy of win2k or XP. This machine does have a product key on a sticker underneath.

BTW it's currently loaded with win2k pro. Can I use the restore utility to create a fresh install of win2k? If I do this will I be able to download the necessary updates and patches from microsoft?

[rkawakami]

Welcome to thinkpads.com!

The 2648-4PU systems shipped with Windows 2000 from the factory. The COA on the bottom should be for that OS. Depending upon who did what previously to the hard drive, it may or may not have the recovery partition. Pressing the F11 key when booting will start the recovery process if the partition is still accessible. Note that all of the contents of the disk will be erased so if there's any important documents, back them up before running the recovery. Once the OS has been re-installed, you can certainly download any Windows updates, as well as ones from IBM.

Your other options for operating system installs are:

- purchase a retail copy of Windows (whatever version you can find, but I wouldn't try installing Vista ) and use the license key that accompanies that OS to activate it
- purchase the original IBM restore disk set (which can also re-install the recovery partition but I'd advise against doing that); a WTB post here in the Marketplace forum should result in some success

The reason why I don't install the recovery partition is that, to me, it's wasted space. It won't have any of the Microsoft Service Pack updates, nor any other security patches since those IBM restore disks were released. I suppose that one could "slipstream" all of the OS updates and then somehow place a copy of that into the recovery partition, but if the hard drive itself dies, then the recovery partition is useless. Instead, I rely upon disk imaging software to take a snapshot of the drive onto another hard disk or write it on a couple of DVDs.

[S_O_Laban]

Hi Ray, let me first say , thank you very much for your reply.

I've been banging my head against a wall over the past 2 days trying to get my new 3com wireless card to work on this machine and all to no avail.. thus, the tone of your reply to a somewhat newbie type question is greatly appreciated.

Anyway after removing a belkin wireless utility that I thought might be the problem.... I created a much greater one. It seems removing the utility also removed some important program dll files needed to even install/ uninstall my 3com utility. I'm unable to finish a total uninstall, nor install of the 3com utility.

Quite frankly even if I knew exactly what was missing, I'm not sure I would know where to place it. Thus I'm considering a total recovery or reformat/reload of the drive.

I also wonder about software that might be able to restore/fix/find the missing file/s.
I run the free version of AWC (advance window care) but running it didn't help any.

Any further thoughts of ideas are appreciated and let me say once again, Thanks for your excellent reply. Have a great day, Todd

[S_O_Laban]

So I formated the whole drive and loaded XPpro sp2. Reloaded the 3com utility created a network and I'm up and working. Thanks for the help.