240X service partition on HD or not?

[emeu1]

Hello,

my 240X (2609-62G) was originally shipped with Win2000 (according to Lenovo's website) and a 12.0Gb disk.

The previous owner has installed WinXP (which I plan to remove to install Win2000 again).
In WinXP I see that the hard disk is splitted up in the following two partitions:

7.32Gb for WinXP (C: drive)
3.91Gb seen by WinXP as "basic, unused, unformatted" (D: drive)

Any chance that this 3.91Gb partition is the service partition?
My A31 came with a hidden service partition from which the originally shipped OS could be restored, don't know if 240X's were also shipped with a service partition preloaded with an OS?

How can I check if "D:" is the service partition and contains Win2000?
WinXP only reports that D: has to be formatted before it can be used.
So I cannot see if there is data on it.

Kind regards,

Erik

[tim S]

I think the 240 series was released before the advent of service partitions, which are usually accessed by an "Access IBM" button.
Chances are your unformatted partition is part of the drive that wasn't recognized by the original BIOS. Partition software like Easeus free partition manager, might tell you if there really is any info in D:
Tim S