Thinkpads Forum

Hey guys,
Just want to start of saying, really impressive forums you got here. There is more information here than Lenovo would be able to provide.

Anyway, I have a T61p and am looking to install another OS on it. I am currently using Windows Vista Premium that came from the factory. I want to also put on Windows XP. I tried it once more and messed up the bios part of the install. I updated the bios and reformatted the harddrive and it seems to have taken me completely back to stock--just what I wanted. I am about to reinstall XP on a partition that I have already created.

From my previous install, I noticed that when I boot my computer for the first time after the installation, it loads the XP partition automatically. After that I have to use some software to edit the bios to give me the option of choosing which OS I want. Now my main concern here is all the drivers that are involved. I need the network card driver to access the internet. And then I have to download Lenovo's software that would install all the drivers for me. But for some reason that didn't work last time so everything had to be done manually.

I have the recovery disk for my computer, but they are for Vista. Is there anyway I can use the drivers disk from there to install everything on my XP partition? This would make things so much easier.

Also, does anyone know of a good software to edit the bios? I was using one...the name seems to have slipped my mind, but it proved to be too complicated for me.

Thanks in advance for your time and help!

just a suggestion

Why don't you install vmware's workstation and load WinXP as a guest OS. Virtualization is suppose to be the big thing lately anyways. So much easier than to deal with dual partitions.

just an option... that's all...


also, btw, if you're ever interested in installing/playing with Ubuntu. There's Wubi installer which is quite neat!

best of luck

Follow the instruction here and I don't believe you'll have any problems. It works easier to add vista to a xp install, but sometimes we need to go the other way. Hope this helps.

Thanks for your replies guys. When it come to virtualization, I've always had the idea that it is a huge memory/everything hog.

Thanks for the link DAH, I followed something similar to that. But my question is can I use the drivers disk to load all the necessary drivers from my Vista Restore disk

If you have 2gb of memory, Running vista and virutalizing XP shouldn't be that hard.

If you use virtual PC, you won't have much of a problem with drivers at all.

FWIW, now that I have 2.5 gigs of memory I can run 2 instances of Server 2003 and 1 instance of XP Pro on Virtual PC. The CPU has a hard time keeping up, but it's really not that bad.

Oh man...you guys are starting to tempt me now. I guess it's time to download virtual PC. Thank for the help guys!