Latest information on reinstalling WinXP Pro with SP2?

[iev]

Hello!

I sent yesterday the following message to the "ThinkPad T60 series" category. No one answered, which made me realize that I had sent it to the wrong place. I apologize for this silly new-member error and I hope that someone will help me with my questions.

Best regards,

Ioannis

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I am a new owner of a ThinkPad T60. Although I am a computer engineer, I had never before a laptop. Don't ask why, I just chose not to buy one. But now the University that I am working at decided to buy me a laptop, so I had no choice

I was amased by the number of applications that come preinstalled with the laptop. I am using the laptop for 2 weeks now and I came to the conclusion that I actually need only 2 or 3 of them. A friend has an old ThinkPad with a Pentium II and 256MB and the startup times are almost the same for both machines! Therefore, I am thinking to reinstall the operating system, without all these applications of course.

Searching in this forum I found the following thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... sc&start=0

which has a link to:

http://www.4saad.com/WhatsNew/Fresh_XP_ ... /index.htm

which explains how to create a bootable CD and accomplish this task. However, it is a little bit old. The version of Windows XP Pro that came with my laptop already includes SP2. So, my questions are as follows:

1) Is it safe to assume that I can just skip the steps to integrate SP2 into the i386 folder?

2) As the laptop actually belongs to the University, I would like to keep the hidden partition, in case they need it when I finally hand over the laptop again. I assume that it is also safe to skip Step 10, that describes how to make the partition visible and merge it with another partition?

3) The second message from the end of the thread (Page 8 ) mentions a utility called "slipstreamer", which supposedly automates all the procedure. Has anyone used it successfully to create the bootable CD? I tried to use it and it seems to correctly recognize the version of Windows under the i386 folder and creates an ISO image. However, I would like to know if someone else had some experience with it. What about the product keys in this case? Do I use the same procedure as in Step 9 in the above link, i.e., look in the file unattend.txt?

4) Can I still use the Software Installer application from IBM to install all necessary drivers after my clean install?

5) Anything else that I should know about newer ThinkPads, with respect to the procedure described in the above links?

I hope that someone can provide some guidance on this, as it is the first time that I will do something that this and, most importantly, on a laptop that does not belong to me.

Thank you!

Ioannis

P.S: Since I will eventually make that clean install, I was thinking to repartition the disk and keep some space to also install Fedora Core 5. Does any one have a guide for this? I found a link somewhere, but the guide was not there anymore. Moreover, if I make this repartitioning, what will happen if I try to use the recovery disks that I created through IBMs "Create Recovery Media" application?

[mhca]

1) Is it safe to assume that I can just skip the steps to integrate SP2 into the i386 folder?

No. It says in the guide that you NEED to do that step even if you computer had SP2 preloaded already.

2) As the laptop actually belongs to the University, I would like to keep the hidden partition, in case they need it when I finally hand over the laptop again. I assume that it is also safe to skip Step 10, that describes how to make the partition visible and merge it with another partition?

I guess so... After you posted this guide I actually decided that I would try it out even though everything runs quite smoothly at the moment on my X41 ([censored] it is slow at formatting ) I will report back about the service partition.
I am personally never using this and I also have a set of recovery disks if anything goes really wrong. But I kept the partition and skipped that step.


Q. 3.: I haven't tried to make an unattended installation CD as I like to have the option to follow the installation.

4) Can I still use the Software Installer application from IBM to install all necessary drivers after my clean install?

It should be possible. I am planning not to copy over the IBMTOOLS and DRIVERS folder. I will try without them first since I want to clean up those folders.
But actually you should use System Update instead. It is substituting the Software Installer:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... VSU-UPDATE

5) Anything else that I should know about newer ThinkPads, with respect to the procedure described in the above links?

Remember to get the right Intel Chipset Support version. The one linked to in the guide is for older chipsets.






Good luck with it and plz also wish me luck on my attempt


Ps. I had a "hard error" during the install of WinXP but then I tried once more and no problem then... I think it was just my CD-drive that failed to read a file or two from the burned CD-R.

[mhca]

A little update about my installation.

About activation of Windows:
I wrote down the serial found from Magic Jelly Bean and also the one on the sticker on my laptop.
I didn't use an unattended install which I also wrote earlier and this caused problems with the activation of Windows. I used the key from my sticker during install.
At last I ended up in the activation dialog with pressing "notice me later" and if I try to enter the Windows activation today it says that I have already activated so it seems I'm fine now.


I have an "Unknown Device" in my Device Manager which I haven't found drivers for. I am not sure what it can be but any suggestions are most welcome.


I tried to skip using Software Installer but my experience now is that System Update doesn't offer quite the same updates as Software Installer. Most drivers weren't supplied through System Update so I installed both Software Installer and System Update.


Btw. I haven't checked if the Rapid Restore partition works but I didn't touch it so I guess so.

[GomJabbar]

I have an "Unknown Device" in my Device Manager which I haven't found drivers for. I am not sure what it can be but any suggestions are most welcome.

I would suspect the Audio driver, Wireless driver, Modem driver, and possibly Bluetooth driver.

You can get all that from the following site:

Software and Device Drivers - ThinkPad X40, X41, X41 Tablet

[mhca]

Hi Gom.
Thx for your suggestions but it is none of them.

But it actually disappeared after installing Client Security solution so I guess it had something to do with the Security Chip in some way, although I had tried to disable the security chip and it was still there.

Everything is working fine now except that I have to setup up CSS 7.0 properly so I will only be prompted for fingerprints or passwords when I want to.

[iev]

Hello mhca,

Thank you for providing these details on the installation procedure. They are really helpful. I hope that I will find some time during the weekend to attempt the clean install.

By the way, I created a CD using the slipstreamer tool that I mentioned in my original post. It seems to create a correct bootable CD, without the need to incorporate again SP2 into the i386 folder. Specifically, it creates the file win51ip.sp2, which is required, as stated in step 7 at http://www.4saad.com/WhatsNew/Fresh_XP_ ... /index.htm

I will probably first try to make a clean install using this CD. Of course I will have made another CD using the instructions on the above site and I will have also the recovery CDs with me. I hope that everything will go fine.

Ioannis

[mhca]

Hi again iev.

Now everything is running perfect. I figured out how to get decent security without it being annoying for me and every driver and piece of software that I need is now installed.

I then got curious if I could still use the service partition (bios was still set to normal at predesktop area) and rebooted.
I pressed the Access IBM button but all that happened was that I got the option to enter the bios setup utility or boot into Windows.

I then tried to do it on my mom's T42 because I hadn't used this utility for ages and what happens at her computer is that it boots directly into the Rescue and Recovery utility.
I really like to have those hardware diagnostic features available in case of a little accident but I have never had to use them before. I just like the thought.

So if it is possible to actually make the service partition work after a clean install, then I'd like to keep it.

[GomJabbar]

So if it is possible to actually make the service partition work after a clean install, then I'd like to keep it.

You can try the following.

Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette

[mhca]

So if it is possible to actually make the service partition work after a clean install, then I'd like to keep it.

You can try the following.

Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette

I was really close to getting very sad a minute ago.
I thought I had my whole process screwed up and had to redo it all but I'm fine again now. But it didn't work for me.

[K0LO]

But it didn't work for me.

The reason that the Access IBM button won't start up into the Service Partition is that the Windows XP Installer replaces the Master Boot Record (MBR) on the hard disk with the Microsoft version. You need the IBM MBR to make the Access IBM button work properly.

I've heard that you can restore the MBR to the IBM version by installing the Windows application "IBM Rescue and Recovery", or if it's already installed, uninstall it and reinstall. The installer for IBM R&R re-writes the MBR for the disk and should restore the proper operation of the Access IBM button. I can't vouch for this personally, but other people that I know have done a clean install and then used this method to restore the IBM MBR to their X41Ts, which are very similar to your X41.

The IBM Rescue and Recovery program is available on Lenovo's web site. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4Q2QAK

If you don't use IBM R&R or don't want it on your machine, you can always uninstall it after you have repaired the MBR.

[mhca]

Nice tip k0lo.

Sadly it was too late for me to try.
And I am not really sure it would help since IBM's MBR restore utility couldn't make it work. Can't say that R&R Windows install wouldn't help.
But now I have given it some tries before I decided to actually format the partition and use it which I had considered for a while.

More information on my try to enable it can be read here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=27393


Anyways, I personally have recovery CDs so I can always use those if I want it back to the original state.

[K0LO]

mhca:

Yes, I deleted my service partition also. I wouldn't want to restore the X41T to the factory-created image anyway; it's really crippled. If I need to restore to anything it will be to a clean install of Windows XP which runs much, much faster than the factory image.

I don't use Rescue and Recovery either. I prefer Acronis True Image for backups. It images my entire disk including Linux partitions.

[iev]

Hello,

I finally managed to find some time and make a fresh install of Windows on my T60 laptop. Overall, I didn't encounter any major problems, mainly due to the excellent advise that many of you offered in this thread.

I will elaborate a little bit on what I have done, in case this is useful to someone else.

1) I prepared a CD and a DVD through the "Rescue and Recovery" application that came preinstalled on the laptop. Just in case something went really wrong.

2) I copied all important directories from C:\ to a DVD. Specifically, I copied C:\I386, C:\DRIVERS, C:\IBMTOOLS, C:\SUPPORT, C:\SWSHARE, C:\SWTOOLS and C:\VALUEADD

3) I created a bootable Windows XP Professional CD from the C:\I386 folder, as explained in:

http://www.4saad.com/WhatsNew/Fresh_XP_ ... /index.htm

However, I finally didn't use this CD at all.

4) I created a bootable Windows XP Professional CD from the C:\I386 folder, using the tool "Slipstreamer", available at:

http://www.heise.de/ct/ftp/06/03/202/

Just download the .zip file at the end of the document. Using this tool you don't need to add SP2 again to the C:\I386 folder.

5) I did'n change anything with respect to the hidden system partition on the laptop, either in the BIOS or elsewhere.

6) Using the CD that I created with Slipstreamer (I wanted to try it out), I started the installation of Windows XP Professional. The installation found 2 partitions, one ~73GB and one ~5GB. The second one is probably the system partition and I didn't touch it. I deleted the first one and allocated less space to the Windows partition, as I wanted to keep space for a Linux installation.

7) I completed the installation of XP without any problem, using the product key that I found in the file C:\I386\unattend.txt. That way it is not necessary to activate Windows again.

8 ) After rebooting, I had no network. I used the drivers from the DVD that I had created (C:\IBMTOOLS\DRIVERS\WLANINT\DRIVERS). This allowed me to connect to the network and update those drivers.

9) As I already had SP2 installed, I just downloaded all other updates from Windows Update.

10) After installing the above updates and rebooting, my keyboard was not working. Using the mouse, I turned the machine off and again on. Everything works since then.

11) I installed the Intel Chipset Support package, available at:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62939

12) In order to install the audio drivers, I had first to install the UAA driver, using the information here:

http://www.laptoplogic.com/forums/showt ... #post16846

13) I installed the audio and modem drivers.

14) That left only one unknown device in "Device Manager", which proved to be the Atmel TPM Device. I used the drivers available here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-58054

Everything works perfectly now. My system starts with only 36 processes and uses 200MB of memory, compared to 80 processes and 440MB before the fresh installation. The only thing that I haven't tried yet is to get access again to the system partition. When I press the blue button, I just get a boot menu, which allows to either continue starting Windows or enter the BIOS. And of course I still have to install Linux, which also messes with the MBR. I will have to find more information on this, before I decide to do this step.

Thank you all for making this fresh install as painless as possible!

Ioannis