Customised WinXP installations from Factory Recovery

[pksw]

I got IBM to restore the predesktop area on my t41p, and have successfully backed up the HPA to a spare hard disk.

I'm now experimenting on the spare hard disk with customised WinXP installations. I took the hard disk out and used Acronis to image the drive, part way through the "Factory Restore" process.

At this stage, all the files have been extracted and copied to a FAT32 partition, but windows has not booted yet. This allows modification of all the scripts, selection of which programs/drivers get installed etc.

Incidentally, Service Pack 2 is included in this new Factory Restore. My original T41p predesktop area only restored to SP1. However IBM apply the SP2 as a patch during windows installation, rather than a true slipstreamed installation. They even remove the "uninstall" option for SP2 in the registry via a batch file.

I have total control over which programs or drivers get installed by modifying batch files (or simply deleting subdirectories containing programs I don't want installed).

The default programs which install include:
Adobe Reader 5.0
IBM DLA v4.60 (Sonic Solutions)
PC Doctor
WinDVD Creator Plus
Win DVD 4
Access IBM Message Center
IBM Java2 JRE 1.4.1
Norton Antivirus 2004
IBM Record Now v6.7.0
ATI Hydravision 3.25.006

I don't use any of these outdated programs, especially the awful Norton Antivirus (which uninstalling often still leaves traces in the registry and in subdirectories).

Has anyone else created customised installations? I like to keep WinXP running lean - with minimal extra programs installed. After a while, WinXP can get really slow to boot up/shut down if too many programs are installed.

I'd be interested to hear from anyone else's experiences with selecting what to install/leave out etc.

Eventually I'll erase the predesktop area and replace it with an Acronis Recovery area, and be able to quickly recover a "virgin" WinXP installation with IBM drivers included. If I get to it, I'll create multiple bootable paritions, and be able to keep the DOS PC Doctor and maybe a tiny linux partition that contains only a DVD player for quickly booting into a movie player.

[Danny Manabat]

That's a nice topic.

I have an R40 and T42. I used to have a T40 but I sold it.

The recovery image of the R40 is lost but I have recovery CD's of the T40 and T42.

I'm planning to re-image the R40 using the T40 recovery CD, then I'd try to "peek" inside the recovery partition using Fedora Core 5. Perhaps I can customized the recovery partition to "look" like R40 recovery partition, minus those pre-installed software that I don't like. Norton Antivirus is one of them.

With Fedora Core (as with other Linux variants) you can see the contents of the recovery partition.

Share your experience. I wont be doing mine until after December.

Good luck!