Putting Service Partition back

[cpn]

Okay, I have an A31 and I want to put the original IBM_SERVICE partition back. I have the recovery CD's, but if I run them they only put windows XP back. How do I take what's on the CD's and put it back into the service partition? I did a search and lots of answers about deleting this partition and restoring access to it, but nothing that I could find about putting the whole thing back from the CD's. I have a fairly good idea about how this would work, but the boot floppy image that the CD's use assume CD's and point at the CD's and not the HD. If no one else has any ideas maybe someone would be kind enough to zip up the root contents of the partition, or even just the autoexec.bat that would be great. This is for the A31 with XP. Thanks for any help you can give.

Craig

[SeanM]

They'll reload your existing C: drive if there's a partition there.

They'll only put the service partition back if there's no partition on the drive when you boot to the first CD.

[cpn]

Thanks for replying. I am pretty sure that when i tested this, the HD was blank. I will wipe it completely and try again with the disks.

Craig

[cpn]

Okay, I actually wiped the disk and this time it prompted to reload the service partition. Deleting the partitions is not enough I guess. It must see the boot manager and assume that the service partition is there. I will make a disk image of it this time, so I don't have to go through this next time.

Craig

[Big_Jim]

Hi Craig,

Did that actually put the factory service partition back on the HD after you deleted your partitions?? I just re-installed XP Pro on a G40 with the factory recovery disks and I have the ThinkVantage stuff when I hit the Access IBM key on boot, not at all like the factory screen and slow to load. There is no hidden partition either. I would like to get the factory service partition back. When re-loading the OS there was no option but I didn't delete the partition either just formatted the existing one.

Any and all help greatly appreciated.

Thanks, BJ