Another T42 Fresh XP SP2 Install Guide with working USB2

[jroad]

So, I just did a clean install of XP SP2 on my T42 after upgrading to a new drive. After some research, here's how I did it:

This excellent guide lays the groundwork to follow:
http://www.kylefarnung.com/index.php/20 ... tom_oem_wi

Now, this guide must be adapted for T42:

* I didn't download the T60 drivers nor the T60 hotfix. In fact, I didn't bother integrating any of the T42 drivers into the nlite installation.

* Notice how the drivers he recommends to integrate for nlite are the network drivers. This is so you have network capabilities in your new install so that you can download the rest of the drivers. What I did as an alternative to this, was to download the drivers beforehand and burn them onto CD.

* Ignore the drivers section and the T60 specific hotfix.

* For the key I used the Keyfinder utility. When trying to figure out which key to use: I ended up with 4! 1) One from the unattend.txt 2) another from the Registry 3) one from the bottom of the unit 4) and one from KeyFinder. I chose Door #3 [KeyFinder] and it worked fine for me with no activation.

* I only grabbed the i386 folder from the previous install.

* So, what happens after installation with no extra drivers? I had a minimal working (no network) system that could read from CD (No USB - USB only works once the chipset drivers are installed). So, now I installed the drivers that I had previously burned onto CD.

* The first driver you should install is the Intel Chipset Utility, but I had a problem with the version available from the Thinkpad Downloads area:

But not to worry--The only real issue I had was I now started having some flaky USB support. I tried using different USB drives and I would sometimes get a Windows message saying that they were unrecognized and may not work properly. Some drives showed the error others didn't. I read various threads about similar issues and the mostly seemed unresolved or thinking it was a hardware problem.

Now, I never had a USB issue before so it seemed to be a chipset/driver issue. What I finally did was download and install the latest Intel chipset for the 855 chipset. That version is 6.3.0.1107. This is a later version than the one available from the Thinkpad downloads site. After installing this, USB works fine!

So, to avoid this issue altogether I would suggest to just use 6.3.0.117 in the first place, rather than the older version on the Thinkpad downloads site.

* I have now imaged the drive with Acronis True Image so now I can easily restore to a customized, clean install of XP SP2.

Hope this helps!

[PatrickE]

Thanks for this guide. I'll be attempting this sometime in the coming week on my T42.

[jhin82]

jroad,

so you did not integrate the hotfix KB896256? The gudie is now using SP3 which I don't want, so I want to make sure that for T42's the hotfix is not necessary.