I don't buy this stuff on eBay, prices are nothing special, quality is questionable, service is marginal. Newegg has everything you need, i.e. $16.00 w/free shipping per GB DDR2 667MHz SDRAM
Hi Everyone,

Tonight while I was reading this forum I was playing with the IBM Thinkpad and I wanted to look at the Bios settings since I couldn't get it to access my router, in the process I hit the Access IBM blue button by mistake and a screen saying Recovery of something like that came up, I thought that since I had formated the drive this was simply the Recovery from after I installed WinXP English version and a downloaded recovery program from the IBM website, this Recovery was something like a backup program. After the Recovery program came on the screen I hit a few buttons and after about 5 minutes a bar started to fill across the screen, a program was being installed, I waited and after about 45 minutes I could see it was preparing the drive and installing the IBM software, it completely installed everything that was originally on the PC, the only problem is everything is in French. Now my problem remains, I have on order 8 Cd's with the Recovery for this PC, how do I get rid of this (apparently hidden and protected) French copy of the IBM software and WinXP Pro or as they say Windows XP Professionnel?

One forum I was reading said the OS can be changed in the Bios, I find that hard to believe, they were telling someone that IBM wanted $35 to convert it in the Bios. Others said to use Fdisk to format and partition the drive and install XP from scratch, problem is this does not get you the IBM software and drivers.

I need advice on using the recovery disks I will get in a few days from IBM, these should be the same as what's on the hidden partition in the existing hard drive. There may be some instructions included with the CDs.

Computers sure are FUN, and full of suprises.

Thanks
God bless
Brandy

Good night.Quote from: Computer_Commando on May 06, 2011, 11:14:05 AM

Newegg has everything you need, i.e. $16.00 w/free shipping per GB DDR2 667MHz SDRAM

I can see anyone living in the USA buying from Newegg, but here in Canada even with a dollar 4 to 5 cents above USD I have paid about 50% higher than their advertised price, it's too bad because I really would like to buy from them, who wouldn't they are honest, fast and reliable but for some reason unknown to me they also cost us more.

Thanks
God bless

Brandy

PS If you know how I can get good prices from Newegg please let me know.

I was under the impression that newegg had opened up in Canada...

Thanks again,

I did what you mentioned and downloaded all the drivers, Dell really has things well setup, I am impressed. Once they get the service number everything is almost done by itself. As for the yellow question mark all I can see is that it's for a sound system that isn't attached to the computer at this time, it won't go away even when I remove all the cards, even the CD/DVD drives. It's working fine besides the question mark issue. I bought 4 GB of ram, 2 for the Dell and 2 for another old computer we have here, hard to believe but not one set would work in either computers, I bought them on Ebay, wrote the seller and she asked for more info about the computer, I gave it to her but the info matches what I received and what I need. What do you think? She asked to be given a chance to find memory I need, I have no problem with that, I'll wait and let you know what happens, I only paid $16.00 per GB DDR2 533MHz SDRAM.

Well I still haven't received any money back for the dead memory, I am still answering questions, the memory has been returned for about two WEEKS now, I have a few days left to escalate to the next PayPal level, hope I get my money first.

As for the IBM Recovery disks, I received them and was able to change the laptop from French to English, quite easy but a long procedure, the set is made of 8 CDs which take a while to load, then the steps to recover begins, the longest part is the updating of the computer, there are hundreds of updates between 2004 and now, the WHOLE procedure used about 19Gb on the HD. I wouldn't want to have to pay for the time involved in salvaging the ThinkPad, costs for the recovery disks was only $28.00. I am sure the work will be appreciated by the new owner.

God bless
Brandy

Thanks
Brandy