Thinkpads Forum

Anyone successfully installed XP Pro on Vista T61 without affecting the hidden system restore partition?

I wanna get rid of my Vista completely, but keep the hidden system restore partition there (for when Vista matures e.g SP1)

I remember reading that there may be issues with MBR even if removing the entire Vista partition.

Lenovo tech support said they'll charge for Recovery Disks for Vista (Grrr..balls to release buggy Vista machine and not provide recovery disks)

Thanks,

Can't you create your own Product Recovery Discs? Look here: go to Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media > Product Recovery.

You should be able to use the following to restore your hidden partition functionality.
Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette

Installing XP on the existing Vista partition will not affect the recovery partition. You can just select the existing partition and tell the XP installer to go ahead and reformat it -- just don't reallocate the disk partitions.

And as GomJabbar says, make a set of recovery disks first.

I would do what Gom Jabbar says and create recovery disks. That said, the recovery partition is not a partition and should be able to survive a format of the regular NTFS partition. Then you can install XP from its own license. ... JDH

I used Acronis to backup the whole recovery partition and it works fine.