Vista with XP Downgrade and no recovery discs....

Hey there folks ... this is some stuff from over on lenovo's forums and my own experience of late.

Source: http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=Special_Interest_Windows&thread.id=1225

One person posted this over there to begin the thread:

I had the exact same experience both with a recently acquired T500 and a T61.

The reply to this quandry from a Lenovo representative was:

After this many said that after making the XP Pro recovery discs they restored the OS installed on the hidden partition and it was NOT VISTA ... it was XP Pro.

Then one fella posted that he was finally able to discover a number he could call and get the discs sent to him. Here was his info.

However, the catch is this ... some of the people the posters got on the phone would insist that they pay $50 to send them the Vista DVD restore discs, whereas other people said they would send them the DVD restore discs for free.

So ... apparently Lenovo does not have a clearly defined "cross-board" policy on this yet.

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So then ... here is the process I went through. First you have to call Lenovo at the number above and set up a "case". You should have your model type and serial number for this.

With my T500 the representative I talked with took a while to understand exactly what I was asking. After a little discussion back and forth he finally got what I was saying and asked for the Product Key on the bottom of the laptop proper. When I read that to him he agreed to send me the DVD discs, which I should be getting at the end of the week.

With the T61, however, I got a representative who said that I had to pay the $50.00 for the DVD discs to be shipped to me. Strange thing was, the T61 was purchased direct from Lenovo while the T500 was purchased from an eBay reseller. Anyway, he took some arguing with (not heated, but persistent) before he contacted a supervisor who gave him the nod to send the recovery discs to me for free.

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So folks, if you purchased a machine with the Vista and XP Pro downgrade option, and also find that neither Vista DVD discs were shipped with your computer NOR that the hidden partition contains the Vista operating system, and then contact Lenovo ... you may encounter someone who will not send you the recovery discs for Vista for free, you should calmly and clearly state that you simply did not get what you paid for and should not have to pay another $50 for what you already bought. If need be, call again and get a hold of someone who will!

Good luck!

 

I was going to order with the XP downgrade, but I thought I read somewhere that the XP downgrade was reserved for orders of x number of computers only (I think it was more than 10 or something like that??). Implying that a single computer order could not get the xp downgrade.

 

i ordered 1 computer. i got xp. no worries.

 

I recently started a thread but things got funny there except for this one guy who was genuinely helpful and cleared up some of the misleading suggestions.

Anyhow, what the Lenovo rep told me is that if you've got the XP downgrade AND there is a Vista sticker with a S/N at the bottom, no problem, you get the Vista disks. Apparently some units have a XP sticker, no Vista S/N, and are not eligible to get the recovery disks for free.

And I did receive my disks yesterday.

 

Yeah that is a bit strange. I lucked out on my purchase. I purchased Vista Busniess x64 with downgrade rights, the a new box appeared below the OS box asking if I wanted the XP restore disks for free. I checked that box in a heart beat. When my laptop arrived, I had Vista installed and XP on disk. I made restore disks for Vista and now I have both OS's on disk.

 

This is the option I selected. Are the XP downgrade disks complete disks, meaning they are set up as a complete restore with drivers etc, and not just XP OS?

Are there directions somewhere to install V64 and XP on the same computer? Is this recommended?

 

I saw this somewhere on their site too ... but the option was available for me for the single T61 I purchased.

While I was not told this by a Lenovo rep per se, this is essentially what he checked - whether or no the Product Key was theirs. When it was he went ahead and arranged to have the discs sent to me for free.

 

And ... they arrived in the mail today! Only took 3-4 days. And no mix up in the requests. Good job Lenovo!

 

I would assume the disk is complete. I have not used it yet.