Windows Xp Pro Files On Hidden Ibm_service Partitn

holymakeral · Joined: Sep 27, 2004 Posts: 21

Grr! As a corporate customer, I love IBM pc support. Now, as a new personal customer, it is another story.

The question is: How can I get the xp installation files and device drivers copied out of the hidden IBM_SERVICE partition on to a hopefully bootable cd?

The story: IBM puts a system restore partition on the boot drive. The idea is you hit F11 during boot and go thru the process that re-installs your system in a like new state. They do not suppy either the xp cd or a means of making one from the restore partition with the computer even though you have paid for a license of xp.

The problems:
The restoral partition does not include Service pack 2.
It overwrites your hard drive and so anything less than slash and burn total re-install is not possible. I can't do a maintenance re-install on top of the existing install.
I don't have the motherboard device drivers that are hidden in there (but they may be available elsewhere, so this is a lesser issue.)
It ties up over 2 gig of space on the hard drive.

I have the original cd key on a sticker on the machine. I also have an end user copy of XP pro with service pack 2 slip streamed into it. What I suspect is that the OEM key on the machine will not work with the end user cd and so this route is useless. I can't use the end user cd key because I use it on another machine.

The IBM support on the phone says I must use the hidden partition and can't understand why I might possibly need an independant installation cd. (It is not in their scripts, I guess.)

Can anyone tell me the secret for extracting the xp pro install files from the hidden partition? Or how to ask IBM so as to get them to mail it to me?

ejward · Joined: Jan 06, 2003 Posts: 7054

Can you see the hidden partition if you boot from DOS? Or, when you hit F11, do you get a DOS type prompt? If you can see the partition within DOS somehow here's what you could do.

Within Windows, repartition your HD to give you enough free space to create a 4GB partition. Make the partition "Primary" and FAT32. When you boot into DOS, it'll show up as a C: drive. If you can see the hidden partiton from DOS, you should be able to copy the contents to C:. Or, aybe the hidden partition becomes C: and the one you created becomes D: .... you get the idea though. You can then boot back into Windows and use whatever you need.

goretsky · Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2004 10:29 pm Post subject:

Hello,

Most of the time IBM is pretty good about sending out recovery discs, especially if they are aware you've done a wipe or reformat of the hard disk drive and erased the recovery partition volume.

After giving them the FRU number (IBMese for "model") of your computer plus whatever other information they need for shipping purposes, they should get a disc (or set of them) off to you.

As a rule of thumb, you can generally find all the device drivers for your particular model of IBM computer by going to their web site and doing a search on the FRU number. On ThinkPads, it is located on the bottom of the laptop.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky