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


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