Thinkpads Forum

Hello all,

Here's the situation. A friend of mine decided to wipe the hard drive of his new x60s and do a fresh install of winxp (during the procedure he deleted the service partition). After that (installed winxp pro retail), he realized that the initial setup was better (?) and wants to restore the hdd to the factory condition (ie restore the service partition, winxp with the preinstalled apps etc). Obviously, he'll need the product recovery CD's but he didn't burn them before wiping the hdd. I also wiped my hdd, so i can't help him either.
No problem, though, because another one of my acquaintances is getting the same machine soon and he can then burn the necesary recovery media. Anyway, a question popped up. How exactly are things with the preactivated copies of winxp? My friend was wondering whether he can use the licence key of his own machine (on the sticker) if he runs the recovery procedure using the CD's created in another machine. Or does the recovery procedure use the key of the machine in which the CD's were created and therefore the newly recovered winxp cannot be validated as legal?
My apologies if it is a stupid question, but I'm currently not able (because of the reasons described above) to simply try and run the recovery procedure myself and see how it handles the licence keys.

Offtopic: X60s itself is great, loving it more and more with every passing day.

Thanks in advance,
Kaspar

When you restore it, it shouldn't even ask you for the CD-Key. IBM/Lenovo uses pretty much the same keys across the board for certain models, but they are imbedded into the OS, so that you don't have to enter them yourself.

If you use the same disks on all the machines, as long as they are the same model/type number, you shouldn't run into any problems.

kaspar wrote: Here's the situation. A friend of mine decided to wipe the hard drive of his new x60s and do a fresh install of winxp (during the procedure he deleted the service partition).

Why do people do these silly things. There is not one single post in here that would suggest it is a good idea. Yet people continue to wipe out their only way home.
/me chuckles. ... JDH

jdhurst wrote:

kaspar wrote: Here's the situation. A friend of mine decided to wipe the hard drive of his new x60s and do a fresh install of winxp (during the procedure he deleted the service partition).

Why do people do these silly things. There is not one single post in here that would suggest it is a good idea. Yet people continue to wipe out their only way home.
/me chuckles. ... JDH

Users tend to do the same things with passwords and anything else that happens to have any part in the operation of the system. Also, for some, the idea of an on-board recovery isn't *exact;y* clear or vague, or just seems to use up space.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have a few cron jobs to kill -9 on some systems to save space and speed things up as the users don't seem to be using them....

jdhurst wrote:

kaspar wrote: Here's the situation. A friend of mine decided to wipe the hard drive of his new x60s and do a fresh install of winxp (during the procedure he deleted the service partition).

Why do people do these silly things. There is not one single post in here that would suggest it is a good idea. Yet people continue to wipe out their only way home.
/me chuckles. ... JDH

They do it to makes us laugh. It is absolutely hilarious.

jdhurst wrote:
Why do people do these silly things. There is not one single post in here that would suggest it is a good idea. Yet people continue to wipe out their only way home.
/me chuckles. ... JDH

Why don't you think it would be a good idea? I was about to do a clean install for XP but mind to explain why I shouldn't?

I mean, the machine is filled with tons of application I don't need. I really like the thinkvantage so, do you think I can download them after my clean install?

Brave_turtle wrote:

jdhurst wrote:
Why do people do these silly things. There is not one single post in here that would suggest it is a good idea. Yet people continue to wipe out their only way home.
/me chuckles. ... JDH

Why don't you think it would be a good idea? I was about to do a clean install for XP but mind to explain why I shouldn't?

I mean, the machine is filled with tons of application I don't need. I really like the thinkvantage so, do you think I can download them after my clean install?

Did you read the whole citation? "to wipe out their only way home", i.e. you should first create the recovery CD/DVD before you delete the service partition.

Zeitgeist wrote:
Did you read the whole citation? "to wipe out their only way home", i.e. you should first create the recovery CD/DVD before you delete the service partition.

I already did it, thank you. So there's no way we can download thinkvantage tool?

Brave_turtle wrote: So there's no way we can download thinkvantage tool?

Here are the thinkvantage tools:
http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-61432

If you mean the service partition: No, you cannot download it, you can only recreate it with the recovery CD/DVD.

Brave_turtle wrote:<snip>
Why don't you think it would be a good idea? I was about to do a clean install for XP but mind to explain why I shouldn't?

I mean, the machine is filled with tons of application I don't need. I really like the thinkvantage so, do you think I can download them after my clean install?

There are two issues here:
1. You can format Drive C if you wish and install your own Windows. That leaves the hidden protected area intact and you can rebuild if necessary.
2. No one has proven to me that a non-IBM install is better. I use the pre-load and set it up for good performance. You need and/or can use the video driver, sound driver, NIC driver, wireless driver, HD protection, the mouse driver, the UNAV driver, the CD drivers and probably others. The drivers I listed are not *crap* as some people suggest. Access Connections is exceedingly good if you have multiple connection issues (I do). The rest is not a lot and does not burden your machine unduly. By all means do as you wish.

Either way, it is foolish (in my opinion) to wipe out the HPA. I have had bad recovery CD's, so unless you have the CD's and truly tested them, you may easily be up the creek without a paddle.
... JD Hurst

I cringe when I hear about people wiping their laptops.

This is kind of like...
A car mechanic works on Fords, and knows how they work.
He buys himself a new mercedes, and immediately takes out the engine & rebuilds it. He does not know anything about the Mercedes engine management computer, so he leaves it off.
He then complains that the car runs badly, even after he fixed it.

Why oh why do people do this.

Sorry, end rant.

Worst case scenario: people who don't have a way to return to factory settings can buy the recover media from Lenovo.

jdhurst wrote:Either way, it is foolish (in my opinion) to wipe out the HPA.

I'm afraid that I am even more conservative in this matter and think that folks who wipe their HDs in order to obtain a "clean" install of XP are the poster children for hubris.

I'm not referring to those who wipe the HD and install some other OS, but those who somehow believe that they can perform a better install of XP on a Thinkpad than the software engineers employed by IBM/Lenovo who have spent hundreds of man hours fine tuning the machines to work reliably with an admittedly flawed OS.

At best this is foolish. At worst it's simply ignorance or arrogance.

$.02.

Regards,

James

Thanks, I sort of got your point...
Anyway, as for me, I am happy with my clean install. I got rid of the unnecessary (and possibly isecure) services, utilities, drivers etc that winxp incorporates by default (created a custom iso) and the machine is A LOT faster (even though I did try to do some fine tuning before reformatting).
I do admit that people should not delete the service partition unless they are absolutely certain about what they're doing.
As for my friend, he got the machine restored to the factory state and decided that it's the way that suits him the best. You see, it's simply a matter of preference.

all the best,
k

OK kaspar, seems like everyone replying is just giving you their opinions as to whatever happened is the right thing to do or not and how you or your friend should behave. Yet no one has given you clear and direct answers to your questions. I went through similar issues in my desire to have a multiboot system. Seems like I succeeded as I am booting 3 separate XP's, one Vista and OSX86 10.4.6 from the same HD

Anyway, here you go:

Fact: All computers with pre-installed operating systems from MS will use the "OEM" version of that particular OS. In the case of my machine and the X60 you are referring to, that is XP Pro OEM. That said, all you need is to get a hold of an OEM XP Pro disk. I will even dare to say that you can download an "illegal" gosh! copy from any torrent site and then simply use the key from the XP Pro OEM sticker on the machine. Believe it or not, you will have a FULLY LEGAL install as you paid for that OEM key! Once the key is changed (Google for "change XP key" and see MS 's own articles) you can then activate over the internet and it's done!

You cannot use a "Retail" version of XP or the popular "Corporate" version as that will result in piracy since the OEM key on the laptop sticker will not work!

To get the original IBM partition back, simply use Ghost or Acronis and create an image of a "virgin" X60s machine. Alternatively, use the same tools to get an image of JUST the IBM Partition, press the thinkvantage button as startup and choose to recover the entire OS. If you do this, the OEM key will be pre-installed and the OS will already be activated, just like when the machine was 1st turned on. However you will be using your friend's key and that is not legal/good so just do a key change as described above and everything will be peachy.

To comment on what someone else said about people wiping to do their own install, and about the time the IBM/Lenovo Engineers have put in making the OS stable; you have got to be kidding, right? Sure they spent a lot of time, but they have also bundled useless and bloated software no one wants to run (since everyone has a different opinion and preference) and that expires or bugs you to buy it every time it runs (Norton, Diskeeper Lite, etc...) The right way to have done this would have been to give users the OPTION to chose whether they want the IBM/Lenovo default install (Noob option) or a CUSTOM install where advanced users can choose WHAT gets installed on the hd of THEIR new computer. Give us a list and let us CHOOSE!!!! That way no one will want to wipe and start from scratch!

Wow, really got carried away there... Hope there was some useful info in there for you though...

Thanks for the reply, it could prove to be an useful reference for others in the future. As mentioned, though, the problems have been resolved and everything's running just fine (& legally ).

You are most welcome!

Correct, I did notice that your problems were resolved, but since the purpose of these posts being "permanent" is to help others with the same/simmilar problems I decided to go into a little bit of detail.

Also, I reinforce the fact that EVERYTHING I posted about XP, install and keys will result in a 100% LEGAL configuration!!! (except running OSX86 of course )

ssimon wrote:To comment on what someone else said about people wiping to do their own install, and about the time the IBM/Lenovo Engineers have put in making the OS stable; you have got to be kidding, right? Sure they spent a lot of time, but they have also bundled useless and bloated software no one wants to run (since everyone has a different opinion and preference) and that expires or bugs you to buy it every time it runs (Norton, Diskeeper Lite, etc...)

Put the recovery partition visible and changeable, read the scripts a bit and mod them. Then you'll have best of both worlds
I'm sure it should be doable....