Custom recovery mode from RnR Partition on x41t

[maxcreations]

Is there any way to make factory reset from recovery partition with custom options of what needs to be installed? E.g. make factory reset with no additional software from Symantec, etc.
Sure, I can make a clean install of OS and then spend some time to install all drivers and ThinkVantage software, then create a backup and save it somewhere, but wondering if it possible to make from recovery.

Also, what is the latest SystemUpdate that works on XP and 7 (If the first statement isn't possible)?

[w0qj]

Hello, just saw your email!

You can download ThinkPad System Update for Windows 7 here (sorry, no Win'XP support apparently):
http://thinkpads.com/support/Thinkpad-D ... /X41t.html

Note: These are from Thinkpads.com and not directly from Lenovo/ThinkPad website.

Good luck!

[theterminator93]

From what I've seen of most (recent) factory recoveries, they take a system image of the C drive and save it to the recovery partition. Since it's just a hard disk image, there isn't a way that I'm aware of to update or add software to it. With the Windows 7 or newer recoveries you could use the built in tools to install drivers or Windows updates to the .wim file, but since we're discussing XP I'm not sure it's possible.

The only thing I can think of would be to somehow interrupt the script that runs when you go through a new restoration, as it builds the image, just before it captures. Then you can run updates as you please. After that, you would need to find the script that was running and resume it so it can capture the image and finish the recovery partition setup.