G40 Factory Service Partition

[Big_Jim]

First off I have read the pertaining posts and haven't found a really good answer. Is there a way to restore the IBM Factory Service Partition?? I have a G40 and purchased the factory recovery CDs. The previous owner destroyed the service partition and put an XP install on the drive. I would like to bring it back to factory spec but when I re-installed XP Pro it did not give an option to replace the service partition.. I DID NOT delete the existing partition just formatted it. At that time it did not present me with any options for restoring the factory partition. When I hit the Access IBM button on boot I get a Thinkvantage screen after downloading R&R from IBM.. Before that it was just Fn key options.. I would really like to get the factory service partition as it runs much better than the Thinkvantage stuff. Anybody who has knowledge of the G40 series please help. Shoud I delete the partition and try the install again looking for more options? Takes me about 2 days to add the software I use and update so I'm not overly anxious to do it again.

Any and all comments greatly appreciated!! Thanks, BJ

PS--LOTS OF KNOWLEDGE ON THIS BOARD

[R32]

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.

Other option is Load everything you need and do a Rapid Restore to back-up everything so that you can restore it rapidly.

Hope it helps....

[Big_Jim]

I read that post but was kind of looking for more info or someone who has actually done a G40 as he was speaking of doing it on an A31..

Wished I knew if it worked for all recent Thinkpads..

Thanks for your reply!! BJ

[cpn]

Not sure if this is true for the G40, but as I posted earlier on my A31 I had to wipe out the IBM boot manger from my drive before I was prompted to put a service partition back. I used a disk editor to zero out the first 2 sectors of the drive, because I didn't have anything else to do it with. Anything that can boot your PC and replace the MBR should work. If I had my tools available at the time I was trying this I would have used Gilles Vollant's "bootpart" to do this. Make a bootdisk and put the program on it and boot your pc with it. You can download it at:

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Let us know how it works out.

Craig

[Big_Jim]

She's a "no go" to get that partition back on a G40.

At least everything I have tried will not work. The factory CDs just don't give you the option to put the Factory Service Partition back on..

If I put in a larger HD before I get rid of this laptop I will post results of that install.. But right now I would bet it will yield the same results..

BJ

[Big_Jim]

An update. I (with some tech help) was able to restore the Factory Service Partition.

You have to use a utility named PSAUTIL to do it. I believe what it does is erases some special boot code on the first part of the HD that the recovery disks are looking for when you boot them.

Anyway it works, so you can restore the HPA on a G40.

BJ