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[Richie London]

mate bought an ibm thinkpad last year, cant start it as its system has crashed and  thinks hes thrown the recovery disc out when he had a clear out. can he buy a copy of windows and install that on it to get it working again.

[Plomien]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

[Richie London]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

cant start the laptop at all as soon as it starts it says bla blah system32 corrupt and  to press blue button that does nothing and the letter R comes up. which also does nothing.

[cem_devecioglu]

if there is critical data on the system disk first you have to take the disk out and back up on an other system..

if not, any bootable system cd can solve your problem however from bios you need to change boot order..

[Dishevelled Den]

If all else fails Richie.


[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vIx6z04FXA&feature=related[/media]

[Richie London]

If all else fails Richie.


[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vIx6z04FXA&feature=related[/media]

well thats certainly helped him 

[TheBoy]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

Not without ringing Microsoft and begging - IBM/Lenovo use preactivation, therefore all the keys on the COAs are invalidated at the MS clearing house


To OP - tell your mate he is a silly arse for throwing that out .  He needs to ring Lenovo to buy a recovery disk.  Or buy a retail copy of XP (if he can find one).

[Richie London]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

Not without ringing Microsoft and begging - IBM/Lenovo use preactivation, therefore all the keys on the COAs are invalidated at the MS clearing house


To OP - tell your mate he is a silly arse for throwing that out .  He needs to ring Lenovo to buy a recovery disk.  Or buy a retail copy of XP (if he can find one).

 

[Dodger]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

Not without ringing Microsoft and begging - IBM/Lenovo use preactivation, therefore all the keys on the COAs are invalidated at the MS clearing house


To OP - tell your mate he is a silly arse for throwing that out .  He needs to ring Lenovo to buy a recovery disk.  Or buy a retail copy of XP (if he can find one).

Are you sure??

My Thinkpad T43 'ate' it's hard disk recently, recovery partition and all!! , and no recovery disks either!! 

Bought a new, larger h/d, loaded a copy of  XP pro from my desktop, entered the original T43's COA, and away we went. It validated OK, and all the 'windows genuine advantage' checks are all OK, and all updates have been added as they arrive??

Basically, the machine is now, 'as it was' minus the recovery partition. All that is different is the fact I get a different startup screen stating 'This disk is not certified by IBM' press F1 to reboot, or 'enter' to continue. If left alone, it then boots as normal. (assume the startup is because its looking for the recovery partition) , but it works OK!!

Try it, nothing to lose.

(there is a guy on flea-bay selling genuine recovery disk sets for certain model thinkpads, try your model no in the search box and see)

Hope this helps..

[TheBoy]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

Not without ringing Microsoft and begging - IBM/Lenovo use preactivation, therefore all the keys on the COAs are invalidated at the MS clearing house


To OP - tell your mate he is a silly arse for throwing that out .  He needs to ring Lenovo to buy a recovery disk.  Or buy a retail copy of XP (if he can find one).

Are you sure??

My Thinkpad T43 'ate' it's hard disk recently, recovery partition and all!! , and no recovery disks either!! 

Bought a new, larger h/d, loaded a copy of  XP pro from my desktop, entered the original T43's COA, and away we went. It validated OK, and all the 'windows genuine advantage' checks are all OK, and all updates have been added as they arrive??

Basically, the machine is now, 'as it was' minus the recovery partition. All that is different is the fact I get a different startup screen stating 'This disk is not certified by IBM' press F1 to reboot, or 'enter' to continue. If left alone, it then boots as normal. (assume the startup is because its looking for the recovery partition) , but it works OK!!

Try it, nothing to lose.

(there is a guy on flea-bay selling genuine recovery disk sets for certain model thinkpads, try your model no in the search box and see)

Hope this helps..

In an effort to reduce piracy, MS invalidated all the keys issued by OEMs using preactivation from a certain date (as preactivation doesn't ever need to activate with Microsoft's servers) - a lot of people were wise that the keys on the stickers were never used, so use them for their pirated versions of XP at home (particularly when MS disabled those well known corporate keys).

Is it possible, in your case, someone has called Microsoft to get it reenabled?

There are, of course, obvious ways around this restriction, but they are definately not for discussion on this forum!

[Richie London]

if the serial is on the back he can borrow a disc of the same version and install it and download drivers from ibm website

Not without ringing Microsoft and begging - IBM/Lenovo use preactivation, therefore all the keys on the COAs are invalidated at the MS clearing house


To OP - tell your mate he is a silly arse for throwing that out .  He needs to ring Lenovo to buy a recovery disk.  Or buy a retail copy of XP (if he can find one).

Are you sure??

My Thinkpad T43 'ate' it's hard disk recently, recovery partition and all!! , and no recovery disks either!! 

Bought a new, larger h/d, loaded a copy of  XP pro from my desktop, entered the original T43's COA, and away we went. It validated OK, and all the 'windows genuine advantage' checks are all OK, and all updates have been added as they arrive??

Basically, the machine is now, 'as it was' minus the recovery partition. All that is different is the fact I get a different startup screen stating 'This disk is not certified by IBM' press F1 to reboot, or 'enter' to continue. If left alone, it then boots as normal. (assume the startup is because its looking for the recovery partition) , but it works OK!!

Try it, nothing to lose.

(there is a guy on flea-bay selling genuine recovery disk sets for certain model thinkpads, try your model no in the search box and see)

Hope this helps..

i'll tell him nut i spoke to him half hr ago and he said hes gonna buy a new laptop on friday.

any recomendations for a cheap laptop?? he just wants it for going away, he has a pc at home

[TheBoy]

My recommendation...

Anything with an Intel Pentium Dual Core or better (Core2, i3, i5, i7) or a very fast Intel Celeron.  If possible, Core2 Duo or better, but there is a jump up in price.

No need to go radio rental on RAM, 2Gb is more than enough for that - be aware many companies bump up memory to make it look better, as memory is dirt cheap.

For general use (not games) the inbuilt graphics is normally enough, something like the Intel X4500 is more than adequate.

[Richie London]

My recommendation...

Anything with an Intel Pentium Dual Core or better (Core2, i3, i5, i7) or a very fast Intel Celeron.  If possible, Core2 Duo or better, but there is a jump up in price.

No need to go radio rental on RAM, 2Gb is more than enough for that - be aware many companies bump up memory to make it look better, as memory is dirt cheap.

For general use (not games) the inbuilt graphics is normally enough, something like the Intel X4500 is more than adequate.

thank you tb