XP installation on T400

[deejayspinz]

Hey all,

While waiting for my new T400 to come in, I want to plan ahead for XP SP3... For those who (may) have done it, are there any special issues / things to do/consider? or is it pretty much, throw in XP disk, delete all partitions, format NTFS and install XP on new partition? Does IBM have a core partition for boot up? ThinkVantage? that needs to stay?

It will arrive with Vista Basic, and I want to make sure that I get any Vista MBR stuff off beforehand..

Thx

[Stargate199]

I would make sure that you can find XP drivers for your new lappy. If you can't find drivers, I would note recommend downgrading to XP. If for some reason that you do need xp (vista isn't THAT bad) I would create a virtual machine for it using VirtualBox or some other VM software. One thing to note is that the machine uses a SATA hard disk drive and when you pop in your XP CD and run the install, the installer will not be able to see the hard disk on its own. There may be a compatibility option in the BIOS to fool XP into thinking its a IDE drive, but you will want to change that back after installing to get the full speed of SATA back. You will have to make XP support SATA drives before you reverse that BIOS change. I have done this on Vista and I bet you could do it with XP, just google on how to do it. Otherwise wipe the entire drive clean in the partitioner so you clean out the recovery partition so XP's MBR is in complete control.

[deejayspinz]

Thx for the tips.. and the SATA one too.. I have heard other's mention this.. would be bummer not knowing that and thinking that XP cant be installed...

WRT Vista - im not convinced that it is there yet.. I had Vista b4 on my Dell 6400.. Was a new machine with Vista Prem, and was a dog.. Explorer indexed searches crashed the machine etc etc.. I consider myself a power user and this happened right out of the box.. so I was not impressed... Went back to XP within 2wks... I would consider Vista but it has too much fluff for me that I dont need.. However, I did like the file search feature the best.... but willing to give that up for a stable XP...

[Stargate199]

Windows Desktop Search 4.0 will give you the same search capabilities as Vista, but not as nicely integrated as vista. Your search box will be in the task bar instead of the start menu.