Jump to content

Major headache of a problem!


Teh_Tech

Recommended Posts

Hi! :hello: sorry if this is in the wrong place (if somebody would like to move it to the relevant place if not) but I am really under pressure!

I have a problem, or rather my girlfriend has a problem and this makes it a huge massive problem for me (them with long-term gf's / wives should understand what I mean!)

Anyway, my gf has an IBM Thinkpad T30 (yeah well old I know!) but the hard drive suddenly packed up the other day, now I managed to grab everything off the hidden service partition to install windows XP, but now we have another hard drive (same size as the old 1, 40GB) I cant get the service partition to work!

I have tried to format the partition with NTFS, FAT & FAT32, but nothing seems to enable the F11 ket to boot from service part from startup (and yes, it is enabled in the bios!)

Now, being as windows XP is going to need re-installing anyway, I thought I would update it to SP3, another problem there as the recovery files are either .CRI or .IMZ files, I have tried to extract the IMZ files with WinImage, but aparently they are passworded so cannot extract them!

I have found out that dumping the contents of the service partition to the main partition and then booting will recover & install Windows XP, but I'd like to be able to either somehow restore the service partition to how it once was on the old hard drive, or ideally somehow be able to extract the windows XP file so I can make a normal bootable install CD for it.

Can anyone shed some light on this, or even help me please as I promised her I'd have it done for her, and the longer it goes not fixed, the longer she uses my computer, and then I have to wait for her to go to work or be in bed before I can catch up on my own stuff!

All ideas, help, critisism and whatever else will be most welcome as I am running out of paracetamol for the headaches she keeps giving me!

Thanks all in advance!

EDIT: I have just found out that once Windows XP has setup on the latop using the files grabbed from the service partition, that on the c:\ drive there is an I386 folder, can I just bung this into an iso and add the win*.* files that are in the root directory of the main setup cd?

Edited by Teh_Tech
Link to comment
Share on other sites


The reason why your F11 wasn't working was because that info is kept in the Master Boot Record (MBR) so if you did anything that changes how the HDD knows where the partitions are (like however you formatted it) that information was likely lost.

I don't know about the I386 folder tho.... Is this the one located in c:\windows?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason why your F11 wasn't working was because that info is kept in the Master Boot Record (MBR) so if you did anything that changes how the HDD knows where the partitions are (like however you formatted it) that information was likely lost.

I don't know about the I386 folder tho.... Is this the one located in c:\windows?

Hi and thanks for your reply Tripredacus!

I guess what with it being a newer hard drive then it wouldn't have worked lol!

Erm no, the I386 folder is in the c:\ drive, and I habe looked at it, and it looks just like the ones that ya get on the CD, there is 5,396 files & 5 folders, total size being around 569MB, I am at the moment in the process of copying over the I386 folder to a spare USB key so hopefully I can add it with the WIN51, WIN51IP, WIN51IP.SP2 and WIN51IP.SP3 files from my copy that I have from the CD, after of course I have slipstreamed the Service pack into it!

Forgot to add, its the Windows XP 2002 build, SP0 so hopefully I can manage to acomplish what I neeed to to get my gf off my back so I can concentrate on other projects I am doing :)

I hope this has helped :)

EDIT...

Right, I can hapily say I have sucessfully managed it!

The I386 was the right folder, as I have run nLite on it and sucessfully integrated SP2 to it, copies the WIN51, WIN51IP and WIN51IP.SP2 files to the root folder, added to MagicISO, and exported the boot image from a working XP CD to the new MagicISO image and saved it!

Booted up all ok in virtual machine, and it seems to be installing right, and as an added bonus the CD key was added into a UNATTEND.TXT file that was part of the original I386 folder (the laptop is so old all the text on the COA sticker has all but vanished!)

So let this be information if anyone else happens to have an old IBM Thinkpad with a service partition, this is how to make a fully working XP CD :thumbup :thumbup

Edited by Teh_Tech
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...