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    T500 - Vista with XP downgrade

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by happyfirst, Sep 23, 2008.

  1. happyfirst

    happyfirst Notebook Enthusiast

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    Just got my T500. It did not have any dvds. It booted into XP.

    Questions:
    1) Shouldn't I have a way to burn a Vista and XP DVD for later recovery?
    2) I booted using the thinkvantage button and I see that under "restore your system" I can restore it back to it's factory state (I'm assuming XP).
    3) Where is Vista?

    Now the biggie. I want to use Server 2008 64. If I just install it, will I loose the thinkvantage button at boot? I don't want to loose the ability to return the notebook back to it's factory state.
     
  2. jonlumpkin

    jonlumpkin NBR Transmogrifier

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    Your restore data is in a hidden protected area. It should be possible to install server 2008 without losing the ability to restore to Vista/XP with the ThinkVantage button. You should have an icon in your start menu that you can use to make a backup of the recovery record to CD/DVD (although you can only do this once). I used this tool to recover the 10GB that the hidden partition was wasting on my system. I would recommend using this to make a backup BEFORE doing anything else.