A. A possible annoyance of some Thinkpad installs is that they
come pre-partitioned in 2 Gigabyte chunks. If your machine (or the machine your
are configuring) has a large hard drive this can add unwanted drive letters. To
complicate things further, these machines come with "Disaster Recovery
CDs" and users sometimes request the preload.
To load the preloaded image onto a single partition do the following :
NOTE : We will be wiping the drive, be sure to back your user's data
1)From a working single partiton NT machine, format a floppy disk.
2)Copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to the floppy.
3)Edit boot.ini on the floppy and make sure that at least one of the selections
looks something like :
\[boot loader\]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
\[operating systems\]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Partition 1 on first disk
2Windows NT Version 4.00"
4)Boot to a floppy with a Win9X command interpreter (your can make one from
Windows95 by formatting a floppy from DOS using the "format a: /q /s"
command. This should be a different floppy from the NT floppy you made in step 1
and 2. Copy Fdisk or pqmagict.exe to the floppy.
5)Use either PQMagic or Fdisk to create a single primary partition on the drive
(no need to format the drive)
6)Boot to your recovery CD and initiate a recovery. Do NOT take the defaults.
7)The recovery procedure will detect partitions.
8)When asked if you would like to overwrite your partition info do not. When
asked if you would like to format the partition, select yes.
Note : The formatted partition will be formatted FAT (not FAT32)
9)The recovery procedure will copy its files and eventually try to reboot.
Note, if you try to boot at this stage, the machine won't boot. Why?
Because a 6.0 Gig FAT partition isn't bootable.
10)Boot from the NT floppy you made in step 1. If the floppy points correctly to
the NT install, NT will boot.
11)Run checkdisk if it hasn't already run.
12)From the command prompt convert the drive to NTFS (convert c: /fs:ntfs)
This conversion will happen at the next reboot.
13)Check your boot.ini to make sure it looks right.
14)If you want, Run rdisk /s and Disk Administrator and let it make its
signature.
15)Reboot.
You now a have preload on a single partition.
Thanks to Matthew Ramadanovic for this
