Could somebody explain to me all this business with recovery

[borgit]

cds? I am a proud owner of a brand new t42p 2373ktu, and i did not receive the windows xp cd with my purchase. I noticed there is a recovery partition, and i read other posts on this forum how this could be used to recover your windows. However, my question is what happens if i decide to wipe my drive? How can i recover the stuff now? There is got to be some stuff on cd's. Its really pathetic that for a 3000 dollar laptop they cheaped out on the cd. I for one do not like all this recovery cd crap. Give me the original cd that's what i say, especially since i paid for it. Anyhow, so is there any way to obtain the recovery cd's? Thanks for any info.

[brewt]

You can burn a copy of the recovery cd's (7), or if you're in the first 30 days of purchase, call up IBM to get them sent to you for free, or lastly call them up and pay, IIRC, $45 for the cd's.

[AtmosMan]

Yeah, I think there is an option in IBM Rescue and Recovery to "Create Recovery Discs" or something like that (I don't have R&R, so I don't know exactly what it's called .) They are the same discs you would get from IBM if you asked them for the recovery CDs.

[egibbs]

You can also copy the contents of c:\i386 off to a bootable CD to make a pseudo WinXP install disk - if you search the forums a bit you will find complete instructions.

Note that this will not create a retail WinXP install CD - it will still be an OEM install, which has subtle differences. You did not buy a retail version of WinXP, you bought an OEM one. M$ got tired of people using OEM Windows disks to install their latest OS on every machine in the house, so now the disks have to be machine specific. Don't blame IBM, blame M$.

Ed Gibbs

[skanky]

You can also copy the contents of c:\i386 off to a bootable CD to make a pseudo WinXP install disk - if you search the forums a bit you will find complete instructions.

Note that this will not create a retail WinXP install CD - it will still be an OEM install, which has subtle differences. You did not buy a retail version of WinXP, you bought an OEM one. M$ got tired of people using OEM Windows disks to install their latest OS on every machine in the house, so now the disks have to be machine specific. Don't blame IBM, blame M$.

Ed Gibbs

so if i burn the \i386 folder, it will create a OEM cd but the key on the bottom on the machine is a retail key?

[ZPrime]

No, the \i386 folder on a Thinkpad is for the IBM OEM version of winxp. the cd key on the laptop is also an IBM OEM key. It *may* work on other OEM copies of XP, but an OEM copy of XP will only actually *ACTIVATE* on the brand of machine it was sold with.

If you got your hands on a dell OEM cd and installed it on your laptop, the key on the bottom may be properly taken during the install (I haven't tried this). however, even if it did take the key during the install, you wouldn't be able to activate that copy of windows because it's looking for a Dell and you have an IBM.

I can also tell you that the OEM copies of XP *can* be ghosted across machines without issue - they aren't as anal as "retail" XP about changed hardware. They simply check to make sure they are still on the proper brand of hardware... at least, I think that's what's happening. I've got 5 T42s for a client and rather than configure each one individually, I set one up and then ghosted it and am having no problems thus far. It hasn't even ASKED about activation, but then again I don't know if OEM copies ever do ask about activation.

I've been using a legal volume-license (activation-free) copy of XP since it released, hence my sketchiness on how the OEM versions work.

[skanky]

weird, when i tried it, it wouldnt recognise my key from the bottom of my TP, using a cd i made out of the I386 folder.

:/

[borgit]

In the IBM Rescue and Recovery wtih Rapid Resote menu, all i can see is an option to "Create Diagnostic disk", but these are 5 floppy disks that it wants to create. These are not CD's. How can i create those 7 cd's that someone above is talking about?