a31p restore question

[simonhand]

Hello everyone, I am a newbee to this forum and I like what I see to this point.
I have an Ibm Thinkpad that was given to me and a few dollars for a hDD and a New LCD and it is working like a charm. It is a 2653 H6U. (A31P) It runs better than my AMD asus board and I switched to it and am scrapping out the Asus.
My question is this: I approached IBM tech support for a restore disk for this machine and they said no go as they no longer supply restore disk for Win2000 which came with this unit. I want XP anyway but would like to have the restore disk to install all the applications that this machine is capable of. There is a ton of them
and they are not exactly all user friendly. I could of course upgrade to XP after initial install with all the apps. I then asked if
the restore cd for XP would work on this machine and got stonewalled on that question and suspect they would have next
asked me for a serial number which would of course not apply to XP. I have a legal XP disc and could insert the numbers but I could not get a answer from IBM. Can anyone tell me if I could use the xp restore disc part#01r6024 on this machine with my
COA numbers or if it even asks for them during install. I know this computer will accept XP as I have installed it and it works great. I want to put in a larger HDD and do a complete correct install.
Hopefully I haven't bored you to death with my explanation.
Thanks for taking the time to read this novel.
Nick[/img]

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum, first of all!

Original XP restore disks for A3x series will ask you for a COA. I am in possession of these, and am speaking from experience. And you won't be able to throw in numbers from the retail or upgrade version.

You're better off loading a regular retail copy of XP and then adding drivers and applications from the Lenovo website.

Should you decide to go with W2K, I have original restore disks for A3x machines as well, and would gladly burn you a set.

Enjoy your ThinkPad...H6U has been my first, the one that had started the addiction, many moons, and hundreds of A31Ps ago...

[simonhand]

Thank you very much for the fantastically fast reply. I was
afraid the answer was what you stated.
And yes I would dearly love to have a copy of the restore disk.
Please let me know how I may obtain them. I emailed you for
that info.
Regards,
Nick