? regarding Recovery CDs & people's diff. preloaded soft

[Matt_]

I have read through some of the threads regarding Recovery CDs. I just recently received my 2373-CWU, and I am planning to call to request the recovery CDs. But there is something I am not clear on. I had made the assumption that all the people who order, say, a certain model of T42 are going to be sent the same set of recovery CDs. But then I realized, duh .. one person may have ordered a certain version of MS Office and someone else may have ordered a basic version plus some other preloaded software that he purchased. So is each set of recovery CDs that is sent out customized for what was pre-installed for that particular thinkpad ?

[n3il]

Recovery CDs are, for the most part, all the same (ie 1 for T42(p), 1 for the r50(p) etc). M$oft Office etc will not be "preloaded" - a cd will be shipped with the machine.

[Raindrop]

Recovery CDs are, for the most part, all the same (ie 1 for T42(p), 1 for the r50(p) etc). M$oft Office etc will not be "preloaded" - a cd will be shipped with the machine.

I recently requested a set of recovery CDs for my T40. The CRS asked me the model and serial number of my machine and they "built" a specific set of CD's for my machine as ordered. Not sure that it would be different for any of the newer iterations.

~Greg

[n3il]

No "building" going on - you aren't that special!!!!

Recovery CDs have part numbers and as such are ordered...
http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-46479

Other than a possible change of part number (or in VERY exceptional circumstances an update of a driver etc) the T40 Rec cds you have are identical to the cds that any other T40 owner has.....

[Raindrop]

No "building" going on - you aren't that special!!!!

Recovery CDs have part numbers and as such are ordered...
http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-46479

Other than a possible change of part number (or in VERY exceptional circumstances an update of a driver etc) the T40 Rec cds you have are identical to the cds that any other T40 owner has.....

You are probably right in the fact that I am not anything special, but did you ever consider that IBM probably doesn't have the CDs pre burnt sitting on a shelf waiting for someone to order what they need. It would seem much more efficient to have a "disk image" library of the various CDs that they burn/"build" the correct recovery CDs. It might also be interesting to see what version of driver's etc that the original T40 systems shipped with versus what came on my machine. Not positive but I don't know that when the first T40s were released that they had XP~SP1 available.

[n3il]

XP SP1 released ~ 9th September 2002.
T40 Announce date ~ 12 March 2003.

IBMs recovery cds are "produced" by Modus Media and are ordered by part number. Of course, under normal circumstances these CDs may not be "on the shelf" they may be "produced" as and when required, but there is no distinction between the CDs that are shipped with different models of the one machine type (eg CDs are the same whether your machine is 2373-92G or 2373-72G) . There are distinctions of course between OS (not so much an issue nowadays - 99% of preloads are XP) and Language. CDs sent will be latest "version" (part number) available. As I said there MAY be some small changes between versions (in exceptional circumstances) but theses changes are across the board (not specific to a Machine Type/Model). In fact, the recovery cds for a ThinkPad R50p are exactly the same cds as those for a T41(p).

[Matt_]

Thank you both for your replies and the information; it helped me in finding the correct FRU number for my T42 2373-CWU; when I had called several days ago to request the recovery CDs, I was sent a 5 CD set for an R50p.