Is it possible to restore a T41?

[donturner]

I recently acquired an IBM ThinkPad T41 because I wanted a dedicated machine to run my CNC mill. Upon booting I found that the previous owner has installed Linux on it and removed the recovery partition. It didn't come with any recovery CDs.

Is there any way I can restore this T41 to its original state with Windows XP?

I'm happy to pay for recovery CDs but about an hour of Google searching didn't yield any way to obtain such CDs. Is this machine destined for landfill?

[donturner]

Just in case it helps anyone else I did eventually find some ISOs that allege to be the original recovery CDs here: https://archive.org/details/IBMThinkpadT4041RecoveryCDs

Can't vouch for them as I currently have no CDRs to burn them to and my attempts to convert the first ISO into a bootable USB drive have failed thus far.

[MikalE]

Not sure what the attraction of a USB thumbdrive has been lately. I still burn .ISO's to disc and load from that.

You can always buy a brand new copy of Win XP with the COA and download the drivers from here.

You can also download a complete .ISO with SP3 and it will auto-activate as it did on my systems. MS now considers this abandonware and there is no longer a paid license required.

https://getintopc.com/softwares/operati ... 3-6689179/

This is a clean download with no bug, trojans, malware, or other hidden nasties. I've reloaded two systems with this disc and it just plain works right out of the box. You will of course need the IBM drivers that you can download from this site at the top of the page. Click on the 'Drivers' link.

[JPOESQ]

PM me if you run into a dead end. I have the original factory CDs and an Acronis backup of my original configuration.

[cadillacmike68]

Someone on the forum has a posting of many restore disc sets. I can't remember his name, but I can look it up later. I might even have a T41 or T42 set. I'm pretty sure a T42 set will restore a T41.