Missing option to create recovery CDs

[S]

Hello everyone,
I have been reading your helpful forum, but I still have questions.
My wife's office was getting rid of this ThinkPad R40 and I would like to prepare it for a non-technical relative who is leaving town. I would like to send them off with updated recovery disks and the original recovery partition just in case. If I act quickly enough I can order disks from IBM for $45. Does anyone know if they would be updated with Service Pack 2 etc.? The sticker on the bottom of the R40 says the Win XP Pro license is good for 2 CPUs.

Some of you have talked of creating recovery disks from your thinkpad's hidden partition. I have confirmed the usefulness of my recovery partition by returning to the factory state. Now I would like to make my own recovery disks, but I do not find the option for that anywhere pre boot or on the start menu. I've done a very thorough search for the file reccd.exe but cannot find it anywhere on the main C: partition. I don't even seem to have some of the directories that some of you have under IBM tools. Though, I was able to use something under IBM tools to install a program called PCRecSA.exe . Is this a newer version of the same thing?

My goal was to make my recovery disks and then make a modified version of them with Service Pack 2 and other updates slipstreamed in and things like MSN, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, Windows Live Messenger, and Windows Media Player removed. I was also hoping to not put my recovery partition at risk before I accomplished all of the above.

So, in the BIOS I see where I can make my recovery partition visible. Is there a way to copy all of the files off of it and then hide it again and have it still work as normal? Or do I only get one shot at that? I read that it is a non-DOS partition. Do I need any tools other than using Disk Manager to assign a drive letter in order to read it?

My C: partition does have an I386 directory as well as IBMTOOLS, DRIVERS, SUPPORT, and VALUEADD. Under IBMTOOLS I have APPS, DRIVERS, License, OSFIXES, REGISTER, and Updater. Could I or should I use all of this to cobble together my own install disks?

I may be getting ahead of myself. Does the hidden partition even have install files as opposed to backed up files or a Norton Ghost-like drive image? Does anyone know which kind of back-up disks would be created with PCRecSA.exe? How about reccd.exe? Or the $45 disk from IBM? Is that at least install files? Can I download reccd.exe? Would it even be usable for me?

Sorry this is so long. I wanted to be complete. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

[Terrahawk]

As far as I am aware, the R40 cannot make a recovery CD in the same manner that newer machines can - I have a set of R40 recovery CDs and they perform pretty much exactly the same thing that the hidden partition restore via the Access IBM does. None of my R40s are able to write the hidden partition out to CD or anything like that - the closest I have seen to it is using Rescue and Recovery.

From what I have seen, it would be difficult to upgrade the recovery software with SP2.

It is possible to back up the hidden partition to CD but that requires a bit of tricky work if you don't have a floppy drive and a FAT32 partition with plenty of space.

[S]

Thanks Terrahawk.

I think I can wrangle up a floppy drive and a hard drive with a FAT 32 partition if you can tell me which software tools to use and a few general steps to take. Would the proposed back-up be non-destructive?

Also, as I mentioned I have that C:\I386\ directory as well as several other Windows XP Pro install disks including a slipstreamed version I already like. Could I backup my IBMTOOLS directory, do a generic install of Windows using the CD Key stuck to the bottom of my R40, and then use the IBMTOOLS backup to install the drivers and all of the ThinkPad specific utilities?

If that won’t work, could I use my favorite generic Windows install and the $45 recovery disk from IBM to install the drivers and tools I need by hand? Does that recovery disk have install files or an image?

[Terrahawk]

There exists a post on the topic of backing up the HPA (hidden protected area):

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=33820

You'll need at the very least, a hard drive with a FAT32 partition and a way to boot into a FAT32 capable DOS prompt (a Windows 98 boot floppy or CD will be fine).

Failing that, you can indeed use any old OEM Windows XP install CD and download the drivers and utilities straight from IBM's web site. The $45 recovery CDs do not have a nice set of files on them where you can extract what you want - they are more like a version of the hidden partition that is on CD - it's like a recovery image rather than a set of install files.