Reinstall XP on T43, from recovery cd or from scratch?

[martin_nv]

The time has come to re-install XP on my T43. The task manager has 75 things running on it, which is kind of high I think. Many of the tasks seem to be Thinkpad related. Rather than research each task and manually remove each one, I'm thinking of doing a clean install from a fresh XP CD, and then loading the necessary drivers and programs afterwards.

My Thinkpad has 1.5gig of ram and a 120 gig 5400rpm drive. I have re-installed once before, using the recovery discs, about a year ago.

Can anyone comment on the extra work involved with installing XP from scratch? Was it worth it compared to loading from the recovery CD? I am assuming all of the programs available on the recovery CD will be available for download. Thanks.

PS I have two 120 gig hard drives, so I will not be destroying my old install, and i'll be saving it for backup / emergency boot purposes.

[sarbin]

both methods work well. there are proponents of both here on the forum.

if you do a recover-install, you're pretty well assured of a fully functional system even if some of the drivers are outdated. the effort is in updating required (vs all) drivers and removing whatever thinkvantage tools/add-ons you don't want.

if you do a clean-install, there will be components that might not work properly until updated drivers are installed from the ibm/lenovo matrix. the advantage is no thinkvantage tools/add-ons you don't want needing removal.

before you do either, you might want to look at: http://www.blackviper.com/ as there are a good number of services that can be disabled safely to trim your task manager down. as an example, i rarely have more than 45 active tasks and boot with 32 right now.

good luck.

[jdhurst]

The other thing to remember (in a properly set up system) is that the NUMBER of processes is meaningless except that they use some memory. I have adequate memory and have about 90 processes running. No ill effects. ... JDH

[sarbin]

i've got plenty of memory, too. i'm just a process minimalist, i guess.

[SteveS]

Because you have a T43, I would recommend AGAINST using a generic Windows CD.

“Been there, done that – bad experience”

A standard XP Pro install from CD will install the incorrect HAL for the T43. With the HAL loaded with a generic XP install, certain items will crash windows if you try to try install drivers for them (such as the security chip – TPM), and some of the power saving hardware features for battery operation will not operate with the default HAL.

Search T43 HAL on this forum for more info.

[martin_nv]

Thanks for the replies guys, and thanks for the warning there Steve, I guess I'll use the recovery CD if I wipe my drive. I'll try some more hand tuning first though to try and get rid of the sluggishness. I took another look at the list of installed programs and realized what a daunting task it would be to re-install and re-configure them all.

[SteveS]

If you have access to another T43 or T43p that still has the service partition, here is an alternative to buying a recovery CD set:

Clone the entire drive from the borrowed T43 to your drive. Install it in your machine. It will work, but the registered Windows ID is wrong (associated with the borrowed machine) and you won’t be able to get any Microsoft updates on line, as MS will view this as an illegal copy. But you can use the recovery portion to build a new image, which will read the machine ID and create a valid, unique Windows ID number.

This is done by pressing Access IBM during the BIOS boot (before Windows begins to load), then pressing F11.

Follow the instructions for factory restore.

Any personal sensitive data cloned from the borrowed T43 will be erased, as the working C: drive is essentially reformatted in the process.

[sarbin]

A standard XP Pro install from CD will install the incorrect HAL for the T43. With the HAL loaded with a generic XP install, certain items will crash windows if you try to try install drivers for them (such as the security chip – TPM), and some of the power saving hardware features for battery operation will not operate with the default HAL.

do you know of a way to force the xp retail installer to use HALAACPI.DLL during initial install? or is it a lot more complicated than that?

tia.

[richk]

Be careful with the approach suggested by SteveS above. There are machines that have intel graphics (models 1xxx) and machines that have Ati graphics. (models 2xxx) You need to use one with the same graphics as yours

[Norman Litell]

I have twice reinstalled my entire system on a T43p, once from the IBM recovery partition on the old disk drive, and once from recdovery CDs on a new drive.

The T43 is unique enough that I would strongly support the suggestion NOT to use an XP boot disk that was not created from a T43. (See a previous thread I started for someone's comments on how to do create one.).

The big problem is always the time-consuminbg process of reinstalling applications, as it is extremely difficult to restore the combination of registry and documents/settings files along with the associated program files. This is a good reason to always make sure that your critical applications are accessible via a CD or other source to reload, and that the vendor supports updates. For example, I have just reloaded TurboTax back to 2000, and Quicken still supports online updating of a new installation from the source disk.

My most recent problem though is the restore I just did to a new disk drive with recovery CDs. After the initial load, when the system went via Microsoft Update to update the original version of XP from the recovery CDs, it installed SP3. There a some compatibility problems with SP3 that have not yet been worked out -- for example, not always handling Standby and Hinernate modes properly. This was an old problem with SP2, and there were fixes for it that I had installed previously. But the problem is back in SP3 and there is not yet a fix that I can find.

By the way, if you do install from a recovery CD, you get a valid license that is recognized by Microsoft for the update and their "authentic Microsoft" validation process. You can get the authentication codes via a software package that has been mentioned in these posts (forgot the name of it, but you can search and find it here in the T43 section).

[Cyberbeak]

I have a relatively new T43 with no drive at all. Yesterday, I purchased a WD 250 Gb. in hopes that all I would have to do is install a fresh copy of XP Pro and let nature take its course.

From what I can gather from the exchange above, I have three choices:

I could contact Lenovo and buy the 'specific re-installation CD' for my machine (assuming it exists and Lenovo can find it) in the belief that it will leave me with no problems after I install XP (beside a 2010 error).

or
look around here for someone with a T43 (no luck - I'm in a private business)

or
pop off the keyboard and fix myself a little black planter.


Do I pretty much have a bead on it?

[citizenNB]

Hi,

choice four: Buy the Recovery CDs at ebay. Click!


citizenNB

[Cyberbeak]

CitizenNB,

What a spectacularly good idea !! I went out and did just that. Thanks for finding it on eBay.


Footnote: I spent 1+ hour on the phone with IBM tech support this afternoon. Depending on who you speak to;
-I don't need the recovery CD to install an OS on a new drive,
-I need exactly the same CD that was used on the original machine (serial number and all),
-I need to find the firmware update CD for my model and all will be well,
-There is no incompatibility problem with a T43. That has been a persistent rumor for years.


That's why I always go back to IBM for my machines. Who else could be that creative?

[citizenNB]

Hi,

-There is no incompatibility problem with a T43. That has been a persistent rumor for years.

that isn't 100% right. The error 2010 is a small complication and there are just a small amount of drives which do nit produce this error. Your drive works, but you will get a small massage everytime you boot your ThinkPad.
Read here, e.g.

I had exactly the same WD drive in my T43p. But after I while I got the chance to buy a original low priced and used IBM Hitachi 7k100 100 GB. That's why the WD moved in a external usb case.

[debniak]

Quote from SteveS above: "A standard XP Pro install from CD will install the incorrect HAL for the T43. With the HAL loaded with a generic XP install, certain items will crash windows if you try to try install drivers for them (such as the security chip – TPM), and some of the power saving hardware features for battery operation will not operate with the default HAL."
-------------
My Experience Installing generic XP Pro (SP3):
You can force the correct HAL (ACPI) during the very early stages of a regular XP install (non-recovery CD).

More info here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299340

However, I didn't find it necessary to do this. XP Pro (SP3) installation disk installed the correct HAL, I think. In Device Manager it is listed as:
ACPI Uniprocessor PC

Anyway, all my device drivers from the IBM website installed just fine and I have no "bangs" in Device Manager (those yellow exclamation marks or question marks).

So, those telling you that you'll have problems with a generic XP installation are not necessarily correct. Everything works on my T43. I had to do it this way because my T43 came with no recovery partition and no disks (I bought it used) and someone had put Vista on it (bad idea).

It runs great now. My only question is what software can use the TPM 1.1 chip? Can anyone suggest a disk encryption program that will work with it?