Selective factory restore on a T43p?

[tysong]

My T60 has a selective factory restore capability that works great -- you can actually pick which software is and isn't installed then the machine does all the work for you.

My T43p claims to have a selective factory restore capability as well, but it never prompts you to select which programs you want installed. Is there a keystroke combination you have to know? Is there a hidden menu somewhere? I'd like to know how to do a selective factory restore on my T43p.

Anyone know how?

Thanks,
Tyson

[CZOLG]

I tried custom restore on my T43p (model 2668-peg) but it just did not work.
Later some member of this forum pointed out that it is not possible on T43's as those systems are too old.

[pksw]

I did it a while ago, but when I factory restored my system using the recovery partition, at one stage I recognised that the process was hard disk format (to FAT32 and installs DOS), then copying the installation files to the partition, then pkunzipping the files to another subdirectory.

At the next boot it installs windows from the unzipped files. As I have a bootable USB stick (or you could use a bootable CDROM or USB HDD) I interrupted the boot process off the HDD, booted off the USB stick, and then studied the subdirectories on the IBM HDD.

I saw the installation directories for Norton Antivirus 2003, and other ancient programs - I simply deleted what I didn't want, then booted off the laptop's HDD.

WinXP installed, and this time without all the crap like Norton, Adobe Acrobat 5.0 etc.

You may want to give this a go. If you want me to post the subdirectory structure I could look it up. I even managed to copy ALL the setup files from the HDD to the external USB HDD, so if I ever need to reset the system, I'll simply format the drive, then run those files in DOS.

[tysong]

Thanks!

If you could post the directory structure, that would be great.

I did it a while ago, but when I factory restored my system using the recovery partition, at one stage I recognised that the process was hard disk format (to FAT32 and installs DOS), then copying the installation files to the partition, then pkunzipping the files to another subdirectory.

At the next boot it installs windows from the unzipped files. As I have a bootable USB stick (or you could use a bootable CDROM or USB HDD) I interrupted the boot process off the HDD, booted off the USB stick, and then studied the subdirectories on the IBM HDD.

I saw the installation directories for Norton Antivirus 2003, and other ancient programs - I simply deleted what I didn't want, then booted off the laptop's HDD.

WinXP installed, and this time without all the crap like Norton, Adobe Acrobat 5.0 etc.

You may want to give this a go. If you want me to post the subdirectory structure I could look it up. I even managed to copy ALL the setup files from the HDD to the external USB HDD, so if I ever need to reset the system, I'll simply format the drive, then run those files in DOS.

[pksw]

Code: Select all

 Volume in drive G has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 3440-10F6

 Directory of G:\

08/06/2000  10:00 AM           118,784 IO.SYS
18/05/2001  10:53 AM                78 MSDOS.SYS
20/02/2003  11:00 AM       524,288,000 CVTAREA.TMP
16/11/2006  10:42 PM    <DIR>          IBMTOOLS
08/08/2002  12:24 PM               122 CONFIG.SYS
12/11/2002  04:02 PM             2,832 AUTOEXEC.BAT
26/08/2001  09:23 AM    <DIR>          IBMWORK
19/02/2003  09:58 AM    <DIR>          VALUEADD
06/05/2002  03:43 PM    <DIR>          SYSPREP
19/02/2003  09:58 AM    <DIR>          I386
19/02/2003  10:00 AM    <DIR>          SUPPORT
20/02/2003  08:59 AM    <DIR>          WINDOWS
17/09/2001  01:02 PM               173 BOOT.INI
20/02/2003  09:02 AM    <DIR>          Documents and Settings
20/02/2003  09:11 AM    <DIR>          Program Files
               6 File(s)    524,409,989 bytes
               9 Dir(s)  104,805,171,200 bytes free

The main location of thrid party applications that get installed is in \IBMTOOLS\APPS

The directory structure is:

Code: Select all

 Volume in drive G has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 3440-10F6

 Directory of G:\IBMTOOLS\APPS

16/11/2006  10:42 PM    <DIR>          .
16/11/2006  10:42 PM    <DIR>          ..
16/11/2006  10:42 PM    <DIR>          NORTONAV
16/11/2006  10:42 PM    <DIR>          UPDATER
16/11/2006  10:42 PM    <DIR>          IBM_JRE
16/11/2006  10:43 PM    <DIR>          ACROBAT
16/11/2006  10:43 PM    <DIR>          AIBMMS~1
16/11/2006  10:43 PM    <DIR>          DVDPLAY
16/11/2006  10:44 PM    <DIR>          DLA
16/11/2006  10:44 PM    <DIR>          RECNOW
16/11/2006  10:46 PM    <DIR>          PCDRWIN
16/11/2006  10:48 PM    <DIR>          ACCESS
16/11/2006  10:48 PM    <DIR>          DVDAUTH
16/11/2006  10:49 PM    <DIR>          HVISION
16/11/2006  10:50 PM    <DIR>          ACCSUPT
16/11/2006  10:53 PM    <DIR>          NORTON
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
              16 Dir(s)  104,805,171,200 bytes free

ACROBAT contains Acrobat 5
DLA the IBM Direct Letter Access for CDROMs
DVDAUTH WinDVD Creator
DVDPLAY WinDVD Player
IBM_JRE IBM Java
NORTON Norton AV 2004
NORTONAV as above
PCDRWIN PC Dr for Win
RECNOW Some CD Burning software

I deleted the above subdirectories, as they are rather outdated, and obviously they didn't install.

If you want further control over drivers and IBM software like EasyEject etc, they are in \IBMTOOLS\DRIVERS

The trick to be able to modify the files on the IBM hard disk is when the system reboots during Factory Restore is to boot off a CDROM or USB Stick/USB HDD then see if the hard disk is formatted with the DOS file structure.

There is a long autoexec.bat and lots of other files, which installs WinXP and then all the applications. I managed to copy all these files over to my external USB HDD, and the next time I put in a bigger hard disk in my laptop I'll just format it, copy these files on to it, and then reboot the system.