ibm recovery CD for W2K- very urgent

[nvvnravi]

does anybody have w2k recovery cd? i need it for my new HD 60 g 7200 rpm.
I need it very asap.

My m/c is r31 2656 e4u.

[wireless4laptop]

You can call for ibm to ask for a recovery cd (R31)

[nvvnravi]

i called up IBM they said they do not support w2k pro anymore so they dont have recovery cd for w2k.
They also said they wont give recovery cd for windows XP since the m/c did not came with windows xp.

I dont know what to do.

any guidance from the gurus..

[MadeInJapan]

Just do a fresh install of W2K on the HDD and then go to the IBM site and download the drivers. Works very well and you don't end up with the IBM fluff. I believe too that IBM has a software installer program, so with that, it will install the correct drivers, utilities for your system.

[nvvnravi]

first of all thx to the folks who gave suggestion.
i installed fresh installtion of w2k then i had to install the ethernet driver from floppy (otherwise it would not connect to internet via cable).
Then i was able to connect to internet and updated the necessry drivers .


Now i have a Question. when i start my laptop F11 does not appear . anybody knows what to do for this?how to enable this.
This is another reason why i wanted the CDs.

[dsvochak]

There are a couple of reasons the F11 product recovery prompt will not appear. First, the service partition is still available and the master boot record has been altered. Second, the service partition is no longer available.

If you did a fresh install of W2k on the 60g drive, and have 1 60g partition, the new drive doesn't have a service partition and, accordingly, the F11 option will not be available.

If your old drive still works you could use Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost to clone the old drive to the new 60g drive. The cloned drive can include the service partition. If F11 is still not showing check this link for instructions regarding creating a recovery repair diskette:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4UFUYK

Again, if the old drive still works, you might be able to use partition magic or something similar to create a service partition on the new drive and copy the service partition from the old drive to the partition on the new drive. This suggestion is something I've never tried so I have no idea whether it would work.

On the whole, as long as W2k is installed and working, I wouldn't worry about it. I've never had a reason to do a F11 restore and never missed the option on machines which don't have it.

[BruisedQuasar]

I got a $50 IBM rebate on my factory refurbished T-23 early this month. I discovered when I went to the Thinkpad support site that as of October, 2005 IBM\Lenovo will no longer sell us recovery CDs for any pre-Windows XP version of Windows.

Microsoft now has a policy of dropping backward support and sales of any version prior to the one they currently push and they require licensed venders to stop all copying and distribution. It seems to me this is a policy similar to Chrysler or Ford dropping all factory & dealer support and repair for any model automobile prior to the ones they just released. This would mean that when a Chrysler Voyager transmission crashes at 45 to 50,000 miles, Chrysler would offer no factory rebuilts or allow dealer repair shops to repair ("support") pre-2005 Voyagers in any way. We should react to the new Microsoft policy, as we would if an Auto maker did the same.

Meanwhile, MS policy makes our Windows 2000 and the '98 series orphan Operating Systems. I feel this means we can give each other copies when our O\S fails.

Of course, this is merely my humble opinion