Formatting the Hard Drive and reinstalling XP

[Pearl]

Hi,

I am about to reinstall XP on a friends R31 thinkpad and plan to format the hard drive during the process.

I have rebuilt many desktop machines, but this is the first time I have done it on a laptop and though it would be smart to check whether there is anything particular to ThinkPads that I should be aware of first.

I.e. Are there any partitions that the machine relies on, that are invisible to windows that I could accidentally screw up?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Kyocera]

Do you have any partitioning software that would give you a look at the drive. I think that model has a hidden protected are, that is used to restore the machine to factory settings in the event of an OS failure. You may just have to envoke the machines built in recovery procedure. Try pressing f11 at boot up and see if it takes you to the recovery program area.
Hardware Manual R30/31