Caveat - not a Thinkpad expert. I'd take a few steps to mitigate your risk.
1) Make an image of the hard disk in case things go wrong. Make a second backup of all her data. 2) Find out what version of Office she has (e.g., 2000, 2003). Make sure you/she has an install disk available of the same version, then use Magic Jellybean to find the registration code, and save it somewhere. I'd also add that you probably _don't_ need to reinstall XP to deal with whatever her problems are... an hour or so of judicious use of Revo Uninstaller (to uninstall old, unused, or pointless programs) and MSConfig (to prevent the dozens of updater and similar programs from running on boot) should speed things up. My *guess* is that if she purchased it directly from IBM as an individual purchase, Office will probably be installed (assuming it didn't come with a separate recovery/install disk for Office). If it came separately, or if she purchased it used from a business or something or new as part of a group, it won't be. A final thought, many manufacturers (not sure of IBM) included a pre-installed trial installation of Office. Purchasers could purchase a code to activate it permanently. If this is what she has, it will reinstall as a trial version. She must have the code to re-activate it. > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:52:52 -0400 > From: "Phil Smith III" > Subject: [Thinkpad] Reinstalling XP and Office > To: <[email protected]> > Message-ID: <010d01ca1d10$6e090e90$4a1b2b...@com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" > > My sister-in-law's R51 needs XP reinstalled -- the usual cruft from 5 years > of (ab)use. > > It looks pretty straightforward; the recovery partition is there and working > (at least, Access IBM at boot brings it up). > > My question is whether "Restore to factory state" or whatever it's called > will include Office, which she bought on it originally. Anybody know? > > ...phsiii _________________________________________________________________ Get your vacation photos on your phone! http://windowsliveformobile.com/en-us/photos/default.aspx?&OCID=0809TL-HM _______________________________________________ Thinkpad mailing list [email protected] http://stderr.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/thinkpad
