IBM Thinkpad r31 cannot recover windows OS from hidden..

[Sparkland]

Here is the story.

My 21 year old daughter caught multitudinous trojan viruses on her laptop. Consequently neither the "thinkpad" or the "f11" keys work to access the hidden portion of the disk.

We had to reformat the visible portion of the hard drive to get rid of the viruses completely. I know dumb move. Anyway that is where we stand.

I tried to re-install XP pro from a re-install disk I had with my Dell desktop but when it came time to register windows it told me the key I used from the bottom of the laptop was invalid. Obviously because I used the copy of windows from my Dell. Called MIcrosoft and they said that was a no, no.

I tried downloading a file from IBM to use with a floppy USB drive to re-activate key F11 but that did not work either.

Does anyone have any good ideas how to get this computer up and running again? The idea of repurchasing windows XP pro for $299 seems crazy when it is on my laptiop, just not accessible.

Not sure if the viruses may have messed up the entire hidden part of the drive also. Sorry for this convoluted message--but my daughter is irritating me. Going to sites where she has no business going and not keeping her computer virus software up to date.

We do not need the IBM software necessarily if that would be included in the option.

Thank you for your help.

Brad (a humbled father and computer tech, ha, ha.)

[GomJabbar]

You can try the following, but you need a floppy drive. It worked for me after a Windows installation disabled the recovery area.

Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette

[Sparkland]

Thank you, but I have tried that and it still will not work.

One thing that bugs me is that when I select F1 for Bios setup utility there are several options. I can select and maneuver each of them except one.

It skips over the "IBM Recovery Program Prompt" every time. The "enabled" part is kind of grayed out. It that part of my problem?

Thanks, Brad

Would it just be better to buy the rescue disks from IBM for $50? dollars and be done with it?

[GomJabbar]

The security for the pre-desktop area must be set to Normal or Secure in the BIOS to be able to boot into it. If it was set to Disabled, it is possible it was written-over.

[MobileGuru]

Why not purchase the recovery discs for this machine from IBM? As long as the OS that was preloaded was XP, there is still a chance that the discs are still available from them, and they would be much much cheaper to purchase. I'd strongly suspect that any backups made (and likely stored on the recovery partition) would be equally infested.

MG.

[Sparkland]

I paid for the disks from IBM.

Since I am out of warranty they said any other work would be billed at the rate of $150-500. Glad I only need discs.

Brad