Vista Business, X60s, ThinkVantage and service partition

[bilalmuddassir]

For the 2GB RAM 100 GB disk in X60s I have, I am wondering about

a. Service Partition for WinXP SP2
b. ThinkVantage software from a.

Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor tells me I can get Vista Business edition on this machine. I have an upgrade from my school. Whether or not there is value in upgrading to bells and whistles of Vista is another issues but before that I have to ask:

a. Will I lose access to service partition if I upgrade to Vista?
b. Lenovo documents mention I uninstall some ThinkVantage components, will SystemUpdate get me Vista compatible versions post installation of Vista or will I never be able to use those components once Vista is in place?

Any comments are welcome. Thanks.

[ryengineer]

snip.........a. Will I lose access to service partition if I upgrade to Vista? b. Lenovo documents mention I uninstall some ThinkVantage components, will SystemUpdate get me Vista compatible versions post installation of Vista or will I never be able to use those components once Vista is in place?.......snip

a. You can leave the hidden Service Partition untouched while upgrading to Windows Vista (The service partition would require some extra tools to make use of and would only restore your machine to the factory state of Windows XP and not Windows Vista) or since you would already have a set of Product Recovery disks burned in advance (I suppose) so you can format the whole hdd, do a clean install and make use of recovery disks whenever you would like to go back Windows XP. FYI and to be precise, this is what recovery disks contains and can do.

b. Yes. Nevertheless access to third party softwares like diskeeper, Norton antivirus, roxio media etc. from lenovo preload won't be available to download. Following link will serve you better too:

ThinkVantage Technologies downloads .

[bilalmuddassir]

a. I don't have recovery media and if I get USB cdrw can I burn recovery disks from the hard drive or will I have to purchase from Lenovo? I remember I had to call Lenovo for 7 CD set recovery media for my older T42 machine...

b. Related to this, assuming Lenovo sold X60s with Vista factory installed, can I purchase recovery disks with Vista OS from Lenovo and use them to create service partition that then has Vista?

c. If all ThinkVantage tools are available via download for Vista (Lenovo is shipping newer laptops with Vista so they should be available), I don't care for the third party tools as I can get them from respective vendors.

[ryengineer]

a. I don't have recovery media and if I get USB cdrw can I burn recovery disks from the hard drive......snip

Yes, you can, via a USB burner or X6 Ultrabase.

b. Related to this, assuming Lenovo sold X60s with Vista factory installed, can I purchase recovery disks with Vista OS from Lenovo and use them to create service partition that then has Vista?

If your thinkpad was purchased with Windows XP then it's unlikely. However, it was possible last year for Windows Vista capable PC's eligible for an upgrade from Moduslink. Those customers were entitled to receive Product Recovery disks for Windows Vista upon request. At this moment lenovo is offering Downgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP for customers who bought their machines with either Microsoft Windows Vista Business or Microsoft Windows Ultimate operating systems.