Thinkpad recovery CD woe

[topper]

I have a Thinkpad X31 that I'm going to sell. It's been running Linux all its life but I'd better put it back into factory condition before sale. Hence I got out my recovery CD set, went into the BIOS and switched the Predesktop area back on (the hidden area of the hard drive where the recovery stuff goes - I'd disabled it to reclaim the space for use).

I booted from the "Rescue and Recovery" CD, which is the only one that boots - the other CDs labelled "Product Recovery 1-7" don't boot. I then click on Restore factory contents.

It tells me to proceed I need to reboot, so I say Yes. It says remove all media and power off and reboot, so I click OK and do so. I get an Authentication of system services failed message and press ESC to resume. I then sit there staring at a blank screen.

I think it's expecting to be able to restore from the predesktop area, but this is jumping the gun - I need to install the image back to the predesktop area first.

According to http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/si...GR-4k2pz7.html, "Authentication of system services failed" means "The Predesktop Area in the hard drive is corrupted. To use the Predesktop Area, restore it from a recovery CD." This is what I'm trying to do!

Does anyone have a clue about this?

[smouty]

Our PC imaging system at work deletes all partitions so we also have this issue but never use the IBM tools anyway. We just use another XP install disk even a Dell one is fine and use the product code from the sticker.
IBM used to install at lot of bloat/crap anyway and the drivers will all be out of date from the original CDs as well.

[topper]

Are the recovery CDs not supposed to recreate the stuff in the hidden partition? I don't care about driver age too much, I just want to be able to sell it as it came from the factory, and to reinstall it easily.

[smouty]

Dunno as I never use them but I doubt it. The OS install files are usually on the recovery partition and the CD is just to get access to them.

[Strolls]

Get a regular Windows XP OEM installation CD from the usual sources.

Erase the hard-drive completely & install using the CD. Make sure you get the Home or Professional version to match the sticker on the underside of the laptop. Use the license key from the sticker.

I don't trust these dumb recovery CDs 1/100th as far as I can throw them.

[topper]

I didn't see that coming. I let DBAN run and finish, and lo and behold, the R&R CD asked me for the Product Recovery CDs. Nice. So for anyone in a similar situation, trashing the partition table isn't good enough - if you want to reinstall your HPA image from the CDs, you need to wipe the whole disk with DBAN (or similar).