Reloading the OS on a T61... Vista? or XP?

[Mark_Venture]

My brother passed away and I now have his Thinkpad T61 (6459-CTO, 2.5Ghz, 2gig ram, 160gig 7200 rpm, bluetooth, firewire, A/B/G wireless, Gigabit ethernet, etc).

I don't want to touch his HD, I want to leave it intact... So I purchased a new 320gig WD Black sata drive and now need to load an OS.

His thinkpad came with XP Pro pre-loaded, and I think I can make the recovery CD's to install the OS, although I'd rather not have some of the pre-loaded crap like the MS Office demo, Norton/Symantec, etc...

But I also have a Vista Ultimate DVD with License that I got at an MS Lauch event, and I haven't used because I didn't think my home built Desktop P4 3.2c system would be fast enough... I figured this T61 should be fine... and since the customer I support will soon be going to Vista, this could be an oppertunity to start playing with it...

Should I just make the recovery disc set from his original HD and re-load XP pro from that? Should I install from a plain XP Pro CD that I have? or should I go with Vista?

If I don't use the recovery media, any suggestions on the Minimal Thinkpad drivers/software I should load? I know I'd want the HotKey feature, Presentation director and access connections, but not sure what else..

[ZaZ]

Whatever you do, make the recovery discs and a copy of the SWTools folder on the C:\ drive. It contains all the applications and drivers installed on your machine. I kind of like Vista, but there are a few areas where it could use some work like all OS. SP1 does help. I'm running it right now on my R60. The bloatware is pretty easy to remove. You can always try out Vista and go back if you don't like it, if you have the recovery discs. Vista gives you 30 days to activate. I personally only use hard drive protection, power manager, ultranav, system toolbox and hotkey ThinkVantage tools.

[archer6]

My brother passed away and I now have his Thinkpad T61 (6459-CTO, 2.5Ghz, 2gig ram, 160gig 7200 rpm, bluetooth, firewire, A/B/G wireless, Gigabit ethernet, etc).

I don't want to touch his HD, I want to leave it intact... So I purchased a new 320gig WD Black sata drive and now need to load an OS.

His thinkpad came with XP Pro pre-loaded, and I think I can make the recovery CD's to install the OS, although I'd rather not have some of the pre-loaded crap like the MS Office demo, Norton/Symantec, etc...

But I also have a Vista Ultimate DVD with License that I got at an MS Lauch event, and I haven't used because I didn't think my home built Desktop P4 3.2c system would be fast enough... I figured this T61 should be fine... and since the customer I support will soon be going to Vista, this could be an oppertunity to start playing with it...

Should I just make the recovery disc set from his original HD and re-load XP pro from that? Should I install from a plain XP Pro CD that I have? or should I go with Vista?

If I don't use the recovery media, any suggestions on the Minimal Thinkpad drivers/software I should load? I know I'd want the HotKey feature, Presentation director and access connections, but not sure what else..

First things first... my sincere condolences regarding your loss.

Regarding the ThinkPad, obviously you have some choices. Here is my take on it:

With it booted into XP, go to Start / All Programs / ThinkVantage / Create Recovery Media. This is the application that gives you a "one time" opportunity to burn the factory XP preload to blank disks. Once this is done, you then will have both Operating Systems available to you on disk. Now assuming for this example, that you want to simply remove the main drive and replace it with your new WD 320GB drive, you simply install the drive and boot from the recovery disk which you just made, and follow the prompts. In about 1 to 2 hours plus or minus, you will have a fresh install of the OS and related software just as thought it came out of the box when it was new. At this point you have another step as an option. With the computer off, press the power button while tapping the F11 key. This will take you into "rescue and recovery" which is the hidden partition containing the system you just loaded. Follow the prompts that provide you with the option to restore the computer to "like new out of the box" or something to that effect. Reading carefully as you proceed you will be presented with an opportunity to have it done automatically at some point, or there will be a "custom" choice. If you choose custom, you will be presented with a list of what apps it's about to install with little check boxes beside them. This is a very handy way to "uncheck" what you do not want installed, such as the trial version of Anti-Virus software, etc. What I found when doing this very same proceedure on my brand new W500 is that even though it did not appear in the list, during the custom install it left off the trial version of MS Office 2007, which is exactly the result I wanted. Thus once done all the bloatware was gone, and only the OS was loaded. A delightful result. Also once you get through the first several screens and have chosen custom, and unchecked the boxes, it goes very quickly. About 45 minutes, without any involvement or loading of disks required.

So there you have one way to make it easy, fast, and end up with a "new" ThinkPad for you to setup as you wish.

Cheers...

[Mark_Venture]

Thank you both for the information and suggestions...

FredGarvin, it never even occured to me about NOT activating windows and trying it.. so that my KEY is still available if I didn't lilke it on the T61.

archer6, I didn't know about that custom option.. for XP Pro, that does sound exactly like I want to do. I'll have to try that for XP!

So it sounds like, making the recovery media, try Vista (without activating), and if I don't like vista, use the recovery media to go back to XP with the Custom option.

[archer6]

So it sounds like, making the recovery media, try Vista (without activating), and if I don't like vista, use the recovery media to go back to XP with the Custom option.

Precisely... you understand perfectly. It's a great way which gives you the flexibility to accomplish exactly what you want.

Cheers...