Recovery Partition

[tran1binh]

Okay, so I'm ordered my T400 a couple days ago, and I was planning to do a format and install XP. The more I read into though, seems like half the threads said it was the way to go, and the other half said the factory state OS is much easier and reinstall creates a LOT of hassles. I'm still not completely sure what the recovery partition does. My understanding is that it holds a copy of your out-of-the-box state of your OS. My question is, can I install XP on the C partition without wiping the recovery partition (Q, I think it was?) and if there turns out to be problems, I just press the blue button, follow the instructions, and the laptop goes back to factory settings. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

[Harryc]

Well, you can try. When you install XP it will overwrite the boot sector on the drive. That boot sector is required for the R&R partition to work. In order to recover it, you need to rebuild it with a diskette. Let us know if it works .

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 54483.html

[Stargate199]

Yeah, XP will rewrite the MBR and the R&R partition will not work because it is Vista based. Before doing this I would make a set of recovery CD's using the R&R software preloaded onto the machine, then feel free to install XP. This way you still have R&R and you can delete the R&R partition gaining back 10GB of space on the drive.