Lenovo 3000 c200 xp reinstall advice please

Hi all,

I have a brand new Lenovo 3000 c200 and wish to reformat the hard drive and remove all the Lenovo bloatware that I do not want and never did want !
I have my own spare genuine xp pro disc with serial number (from my old dead laptop) and wish to use it for the reinstall.

Apart from trying to save any mobo drivers is there anything else I need to know, like did Lenovo hide some really important system files on the hidden partition that will be needed for a fresh reinstall ?

Any help would be great as I simply cannot have an os that I did not install myself from a blank drive !

Cheers

 

You'll probably need the SATA drivers for the install. I had to set the drive to get windows to install. Make sure you burn off the recovery discs first.

 

Hi,

Thanks for the advice.
The reinstall is now complete and my c200 is now performing the way it was supposed to in the first place.

However, I was hoping the reinstall would have cured a problem that I had as soon as I tried the laptop out of the manufacturers box, when browsing the internet or clicking to my computer the mouse cursor would freeze for a few seconds and the system would appear to hang. This problem is still present after the reinstall but at least ive found out whats causing it, its the drivers for the realtek audio device. If I unistall them the system is great, if I reinstall them I get this weird system / mouse hang problem.

Any ideas anyone ?

Cheers

 

Fixed it !

The realtek audio chip is on the high def audio bus, the agere dial up modem is also on the high def audio bus. Uninstalled the modem drivers and disabled modem.

Everythings perfect now, super slick fast system with no crapware or bloatware

Correction: problem back again ! Looks like im going to have to jump in the phone queue at lenovo support.

 

Hmmm,

Not wishing to give up so I tried the realtek driver again and now its fine ?? At present its a very slick, fast system and the gma 950 graphics can handle the game "Rome Total War" which has really surprised me.

Providing the audio chip doesnt cause anymore problems I can see me being very happy with this new laptop.

 

Hi ihbw, I had that pointer problem on a new c200 also. It developed after a few days and many standard customizations to the system I had made, not out-of-box. Thought maybe it was related to the drivers from some app I put on. Due to that and other problems I was having, I did a factory Recovery, only that time, custom-rejecting install of Symantec, Diskeeper Lite, and Lenovo System Update. The pointer problem was gone after that, but it's still too soon to know if it might crop up again after I dig into customizing it just like before. If you find out any more about this issue, please post it.

The only Lenovo-provided program I want to keep is Access Connections (and ability to make Recovery backups *manually*), but I'm not comfortable with OS reformatting/reinstalling. So I left processes and start-ups that were clearly related to AC running, but must have turned off some others that were required without knowing it. Because it no longer automatically pops up balloons when a wi-fi signal is in range. I did enable the balloons. Wish it was easier to identify what various Lenovo or Lenovo-preinstalled software processes actually do, but googling them often does not produce much if any info.

Sorry to ramble -- since you didn't keep any of the preinstalled programs you probably haven't tinkered with Access Connections or individual Lenovo services/apps/processes. There just aren't many peop out there yet to discuss c200's with!

 

Hi Limbo,

Thanks for the info, and its nice to hear from someone who has the same machine.

Ive been using it all day and it is now Awesome ! The sticky cursor problem is definitely related to the realtek hd audio drivers or the device itself, im now using driver 5.10.0.5307 and have the internal dial up modem uninstalled and permanently disabled in bios.

Im sure the Lenovo care software does a good job but im a techie and cannot use a system unless it has a clean install performed by me and me alone.

Now that I can actually use the soundchip without causing problems it really does do a good job of playing high quality audio files and next week im going to give some sound recording software a try with my guitar and see just how good it is.

Im also running adobe cs1, publisher 2007, frontpage 2003, Corel draw x3 and quite a few more without problems.

Btw, the best way to test the pointer problem is to go to mycomputer and double click on your hard drive, this would always freeze the cursor for a few seconds when I had the problem, I also had the problem show up when browsing webpages and links.

 

It's great that you were able to isolate the problem like that. Unfortunately we can't use the same solution, since (embarrassed to admit) dial-up is the name of the game around here! (In my case, I'm too much of an addict even on dial-up, can't trust myself with anything better lol.)

If the problem comes back, I wonder if tech support knows the audio driver is what's behind it and will be able to offer any other suggestions. But for me the issue developed later, wasn't there at first. And I'll be installing all the same things this time around, so we'll see. Similar to your method, when it was happening I could best duplicate it by clicking fast between folders, properties, etc. in Windows Explorer.

There have been some mysteries with this machine but there are many things I really love about it. (Including the screen! As long as color depth is reset to highest.) It's everything we want and is so solidly built, so I really hope it all works out. It's good to hear a techie say it has met his or her standards!

 

For anyone out there having this issue who stumbles upon this thread: After setting about customizing two different C200s for others, I've seen now that for me anyway, the sticky mouse issue was definitely caused by *updating* to the realtek HD driver recently posted on Lenovo's site (5.10.0.5307, to "improve sound quality/equalizer adjusted"). The one the system came with is 5.10.0.5282 and worked fine. After updating the sticky mouse issue appears and gets worse, and leads to other problems like eventually could barely play DVDs. And rolling back or doing System Restore isn't enough to stop it. Ihatebloatware, if you had this issue out-of-box rather than after updating, maybe 5.10.0.5307 version happened to already be in your system when it arrived.

For anyone whose system came with 5.10.0.5307, no copy of 5.10.0.5282 is on Lenovo's site but there is currently a fully compatible version of it on hp's site and maybe it can be found on membership driver sites. For those who updated to 5.10.0.5307, uninstalling 5.10.0.5307 & software and reinstalling 5.10.0.5282 & software won't do it apparently. I needed to start over by doing a Lenovo factory-state Rescue & Recovery (pre-.5307 state would probably work too, if you have a Recovery backup from then), so that "pristine" 5.10.0.5282 state would return. Same as doing a reformat could accomplish I imagine.

Will probably post this seperately too, along with a couple other c200 bug discoveries I've made. Maybe they don't apply to everyone but seeing as these things happened for me on two in a row, I'd say they will apply to many.

 

In reference to this comment:

When you did the clean reinstall, did you burn the recovery discs? How do you get the SATA drivers to work with a clean reinstall?

I want to do a clean reinstall of XP on mine, but dont want to be stuck without something that I need.