Clean Reinstall of Windows 8 from Lenovo Recovery Disk Set Fails

Hello everyone, I am at a loss here. I have Lenovo H520s SFF Desktop and the hard drive failed, under warranty. Lenovo sent a service tech to my home to replace Hard Drive and Reinstall Windows 8. The service tech started the reinstallation and left, told me to follow the prompts on the screen when prompted. Well the installation failed. I called Lenovo, they sent the same tech again and this time he replaced the motherboard too... During the days for this to occur, Lenovo sent me 3 recovery disk sets for installation of Windows 8. - The install starts, and goes through but does not ever finish. I have tried all 3 recover disks sets and get the same problem. After calling Lenovo again, I was told it was a setting in the BIOS that needed to be changed, but the technician and the supervisor I spoke with could not advise me which settings to change because they were not reading the same BIOS I was when they were trying to walk me through it. All I want is to reinstall Windows 8 on my Lenovo. I have sent requests for BIOS updates to make installation easier, but honestly, they had to get it installed on the original hard drive in the first place, how is this so difficult now to reinstall Windows 8 on a clean hard drive. Any advice will help....

hi tangatangs,
Welcome to the Lenovo Forums.
From your observation, it looks like there's a problem with the recovery discs. To check, we're there any error messages when the recovery process failed (eg. Recovery process fails at disc #3 with an error preMOPS fail)?
Things that you can try:
1, Download the Windows 8 Enterprise ISO 90 day trial (you will need a microsoft account to get the download link and trial key).
2. Follow this guide on how to create a bootable Windows 8 installer (either via a disc or USB)
3. Boot into the BIOS by pressing F1 and set the following settings (if applicable):
Boot/Startup Tab:
UEFI = Disabled
UEFI Boot = Legacy First
CSM = Enabled
Security Tab
Secure Boot = Disabled
Exit Tab
OS Optimized Defaults = Other OS / Disabled
When done, insert the bootable Windows 8 installer that you have created on Step 2 and press F10 to save and exit. When the machine reboots, press F12 and select the appropriate device for the Windows 8 instaler (either via DVD or USB).
If the Windows 8 Enteprise (90 day trial) installs properly then you may need to contact lenovo one more time on how to go about getting the unit serviced (you most likely need to send the unit to the repair center for re-imaging as another copy of a recovery disc set may produce the same installation problem).
EDIT:
I've sent you a PM regarding information on your machine. Please check it out.
Let me know how it goes.
Regards
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Similar Messages

SW failures after replacing T510 HDD and re-installing software from Lenovo Recovery Disks

Please help...
I have replaced the 320GB SATA drive in my T510 after the original one started to fail. But the resinstalled software (taken from the recovery partition on the old drive) hs problems.
I used the Lenovo Recovery Partition on the old drive to create a bootable Flash Drive in order to re-install to the new drive. It initially appeared that the recovery drive successfully reinstated Windows 7 and associated programs on the brand new (also Seagate 320GB SATA drive).
All was good, I thought - Until I tried Windows Update
Other things are not working well either - e.g. YouTube clips are not playing, IE is working very slowly to name but two.
Windows update fails with the message "Windows Update Cannot currently check for updates, because the service is not running. You may need to restart your computer".
I have discovered on MS web site that there are fixes for this but the fixes I have tried do not work.
The fixes all seem to look for and check that BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) and Windows Update Srervices are running. I have checked and both services ARE runing but still I get the failure message.
When running the Microsoft Fix:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2730071
further errors are discovered stating that "troubleshooting was unable to fix all of the issues found.
"Problems installing recent updates - not fixed"
I have serached high and low and the only stuff I can find to fix windows update does not work.
If the replacement HDD was brand new.
Could it be that a BIOS update that took place at some point during the last year or two plus the recovery partition are somehow incompatible.
Could it be that the recovery partition has created an unusable version?
Advice on where to go next will be well received..
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hello and welcome,
One of the things that can cause this is migrating to an advanced format hard drive (one with 4kb sectors). For some reason this confuses Windows Update - and some other things.
This KB should help - if this is indeed the problem: Windows Update Fails After Installing New Hard Drive
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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I am unable to Install windows xp with recovery disks.

I have a Toshiba’s Satellite Pro S300-10J laptop Model#PSSB0E-02H00FDU. Some days back its operating system got corrupted. I have its recovery disks(windows Xp) and now I am trying to reinstall the windows by using recovery disks but unable to do so. Actually when I insert disk 1 it start installation process and then prompt for 2nd disk and when I insert 2nd disk it starts unpacking software image process. At the end it shows a pop up box with the following information.
Info:
                Done(Files:28339/28339 Folders: 2558/2558).
                Please remove the recovery medium!
                                                |OK|
As I remove the 2nd disk and press ok and then exit it goes shut down instead of rebooting. When I press power button to on it then it goes stuck on windows startup with a message of please wait .
Please support that how can I get rid of this situation and can restore operating system with recovery disk.

I made another attempt but nothing goes productive.
One thing is clear that the recovery disks are ok because a few months back I used same disks to refresh my notebook and did it without any error.
There might be a chance of bios setting because in my absence my sister and her friend tried to install windows and I doubt her friend made some changes in bios but she says that she didn’t made any change except boot priority and during installation got the error.
I have already rest the bios setting to default and in SATA CONTROLLER MODE I changed it from AHCI into IDE.
With recovery disks of XP Installation starts and after image loading it doesn’t restart just goes shut down and upon restarting just stop responding/hang up on startup.
I tried with another CD of XP and during installation when system restarts setup continues on ‘INSTALLING WINDOWS’ with the message that ‘Setup will complete in approximately 35 minutes ‘Installing devices’ and at this stage it hanged up. Finally it shows blue screen with an error like
Technical Information
STOP: 0X000000F4 (0X0000003,0X89936670,0X899367E4,0X805D1142)
Beginning dump of physical memory.
On several attempts the result remains same.
Need your valuable advice please..

Restore from Ubuntu using Lenovo Recovery Disk

Hi,
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad R500 2713-AA5 and I want to install Ubuntu but I don't want to lose the option to recover the system using the Lenovo Recovery disk.
Is possible to do it?

You've been around almost as long as I have.
Almost? Where were you in 1956 when we (IBM) released the first hard drive? Picture attached.
Good luck and Happy New Year!
-Jerry
Attachments:
RAMAC Fork Lift.jpg ‏46 KB

Satelite A500-ST5606 Digital Signiture Errors after restoring from the Recovery Disks.

I had to replace my hard drive, I reinstalled Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit) from my recovery disks. I get a digital signiture error the following drivers:
Display Adapters
IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Network Adapters
Sound drivers.
Also unable to update windows using windows update, I get service is not running with it.
Please advice.
Thanks

Satellite A500-ST5606
A known problem. See my message about that.
After Restoring to New Hard Disk, No Windows Update
You may need to repeat the restore and then immediately install the new storage driver.
-Jerry

I'm trying to re-install mountain lion 19.8.2 from a recovery disk and get an error when it's trying to verify my computer with Apple, any idea what's wrong?

I'm trying to reinstall mountain lion 10.8.2 from a recovery disk and I get the following error when I goes to verify my computer with apple,
An error occurred while preparing the installation. Try running this application again. Can anyone help?

Well, I'm trying to figure out how you're doing this from a recovery disk. The only way to reinstall Mountain Lion is through the Recovery HD in the computer. Hold Cmd/R as you are starting up the computer and keep holding it. Eventually you'll get a screen asking you to select the language. Hit continue to select english and you'll get a Mac OS X Utilities Menu with the second option down being reinstall OS X.

Windows wont start, Recovery Disk asking for another disk, only can with 2

My son was surfing the web when IE stopped responding. Window would not close so he held the power button until the laptop shut off. When he tried to start laptop again, could only get as far as the windows loading bar, but it would not load. After unsuccessfully trying a StartUp Repair we used the Recovery & Application Disk, holding down the C. After it appeared to run succesfully we got a boot manager missing error. So we tried the Recovery Disk again. Now it just continues to ask for additional disk but the Recovery Disk set is only two disk set. This is a L305-s5875 Satellite that we have had for about 11 months. If anyone has any suggestions we would greatly appreciate it.

Try cleaning disk with alcohol,with soft tissue paper.That is what i did to get disk to work.
Also try and hit start and F12 and then change boot menue to Cd/Dvd insted of hardrive
and then hold down c or try without holding down ckey.As a last try start cimputer and hold
gown the statr buton and 0 (ie zero) together for 1 min and see what happens.
Yours trily ,
Alex
P.S.Good luck

Recovery disk set nightmare

Dear Lenovo, I recently worked on one of your H520 desktop PC’s for a friend. The hard drive died and I had to replace it. Initially I tried the USB recovery drive I had made on the system prior but without the recovery partition on the drive (original drive failed) it could not restore the pc.
So I found out I could order a Recovery disk set via you’re tech support service (I wanted to get back the recovery partition and reset the pc to the factory install). I called and placed the order for the disk set and I thought it would work no problem for this PC just like any other companies I have worked with in the past like Acer or hp etc.
In the mail, I got the 6 disk set but I was still waiting for a new a 1TB replacement hard drive. So I plugged in a 500gb drive I had as a spare to test the install. It loaded all 6 disks and prompted me to reboot. After that a new screen, the WINPE environment appeared then shortly after another reboot. Eventually I saw a screen with a BSOD type message “your pc ran into a problem and needs to reboot” asking me if I wanted to send to Microsoft or not. In the end all I ever got to was the login screen for windows 8 but with a error box saying the following:
Install windows Windows could not complete the instillation. To install windows on this computer, restart the installation.
This box had a button that when clicked just reboots the pc , creating a loop.
Upon greater investigation on my part I was able to read some of the dos boxes that run while in the winpe environment and there were errors in bold that read as follows: THIS SYSTEM UNCONTROLLED REBOOT DURING WINPE PRELOAD FAILED
And a few lines of things like: Could not find c:\swwork\reboot.tab Could not find c:\swwork\PEboot.tag
I called support, got a case # and during the first call I was instructed that the replacement hard drive had to be the same size as the original or the image would not work. Reluctantly I politely complied and when I got the 1tb drive new in the mail I installed it and tried again. Like I suspected, nothing changed and the system did the exact same thing after the install.
I called again, this time they said it could be the disk set and sent me another one. When I received it I tried again, and it did the same exact thing.
3rd call, the next tech I spoke to told me the hard drive had to be the Exact same model that was in the pc. I had access to the dead drive and looked up the model # I reluctantly ordered the exact same model new on Amazon but in my mind I really felt this was not the cause, yet I followed your instructions. When I got the new drive I tried again but the disk set did the exact same thing.
4th call Tech support told me it was the disk set and the person I spoke to took notes on all the errors I was seeing and he told me I would get a new disk set again but with modifications by the software team to work on this h520. I got a new set of disks and they appeared to be the same exact ones I was sent prior. I ran them and the set did the exact same thing.
The last call to tech support they had no solutions to fix this and I asked for a refund since the recovery set was faulty and it never installed correctly. I was given an new case # and told I would get a call from CR customer relations. When I got the call I was informed that I would not get any form of a refund.
In the end I wound up having to buy a oem license of windows which installed perfectly on the machine. This rules out a hardware issue. Nothing other than the hard drive was changed in the system. I tried all possible bios settings thinking it may be related to that but nothing ever corrected the software errors. When I spoke with tech support I gave them all the info from the pc’s label so they should know what system and any details to what hard ware was in the machine.
I now have to recoup the costs of your 69 dollar recovery set that never worked as well as the extra cost of buying two replacement hard drives due to your tech support team. The owner of the pc had to wait for almost a month due to all the waiting for things to get mailed out etc. Other companies also don’t charge as much as you for a recover set, Acer for example is 19.
When I ordered the recovery disk set, no one informed me that the replacement drive had to be the same size and model. Even though that was not the cause of the problem I did ask how do you support those users upgrading to a SSD which is typically smaller than the original drive and was told those customers are out of luck and have to buy windows again.
I’m at a loss that you can charge for faulty software that doesn’t work. Where the user has to pay upfront and there is no guarantee it will work. I don’t believe I’m the only person in the world who has encountered this issue with your recovery disk set and I can’t imagine how you don’t see how bad this affects your company.
Lenovo, this is unacceptable. I have worked on many pc’s and never have I seen a recovery disk set go this wrong.
P.S. My name shows "whats DOS?" I know quite well how to use DOS, grew up with DOS 6.22 thank you very much.
Mod's Edit: Edited Subject line for clarity

Welcome BP.
What version Windows do you have.
32bit or 64bit???
REO
HP Expert Tester "Now testing HP Pavilion 15t i3-4030U Win8.1, 6GB RAM and 750GB HDD"
Loaner Program”HP Split 13 x2 13r010dx i3-4012Y Win8.1, 4GB RAM and 500GB Hybrid HDD”
Microsoft Registered Refurbisher
Registered Microsoft Partner
Apple Certified Macintosh Technician Certification in progress.

H520 recovery disk set nightmare

Dear Lenovo, I recently worked on one of your H520 desktop PC’s for a friend. The hard drive died and I had to replace it. Initially I tried the USB recovery drive I had made on the system prior but without the recovery partition on the drive (original drive failed) it could not restore the pc. So I found out I could order a Recovery disk set via you’re tech support service (I wanted to get back the recovery partition and reset the pc to the factory install). I called and placed the order for the disk set and I thought it would work no problem for this PC just like any other companies I have worked with in the past like Acer or hp etc. In the mail, I got the 6 disk set but I was still waiting for a new a 1TB replacement hard drive. So I plugged in a 500gb drive I had as a spare to test the install. It loaded all 6 disks and prompted me to reboot. After that a new screen, the WINPE environment appeared then shortly after another reboot. Eventually I saw a screen with a BSOD type message “your pc ran into a problem and needs to reboot” asking me if I wanted to send to Microsoft or not. In the end all I ever got to was the login screen for windows 8 but with a error box saying the following: Install windows Windows could not complete the instillation. To install windows on this computer, restart the installation. This box had a button then when clicked just reboots the pc , creating a loop. Upon greater investigation on my part I was able to read some of the dos boxes that run while in the winpe environment and there were errors in bold that read as follows: THIS SYSTEM UNCONTROLLED REBOOT DURING WINPE PRELOAD FAILED And a few lines of things like: Could not find c:\swwork\reboot.tab Could not find c:\swwork\PEboot.tag I called support, got a case # and during the first call I was instructed that the replacement hard drive had to be the same size as the original or the image would not work. Reluctantly I politely complied and when I got the 1tb drive new in the mail I installed it and tried again. Like I suspected, nothing changed and the system did the exact same thing after the install. I called again, this time they said it could be the disk set and sent me another one. When I received it I tried again, and it did the same exact thing. 3rd call, the next tech I spoke to told me the hard drive had to be the Exact same model that was in the pc. I had access to the dead drive and looked up the model # I reluctantly ordered the exact same model new on Amazon but in my mind I really felt this was not the cause, yet I followed your instructions. When I got the new drive I tried again but the disk set did the exact same thing. 4th call Tech support told me it was the disk set and the person I spoke to took notes on all the errors I was seeing and he told me I would get a new disk set again but with modifications by the software team to work on this h520. I got a new set of disks and they appeared to be the same exact ones I was sent prior. I ran them and the set did the exact same thing. The last call to tech support they had no solutions to fix this and I asked for a refund since the recovery set was faulty and it never installed correctly. I was given an new case # and told I would get a call from CR customer relations. When I got the call I was informed that I would not get any form of a refund. In the end I wound up having to buy a oem license of windows which installed perfectly on the machine. This rules out a hardware issue. Nothing other than the hard drive was changed in the system. I tried all possible bios settings thinking it may be related to that but nothing ever corrected the software errors. When I spoke with tech support I gave them all the info from the pc’s label so they should know what system and any details to what hard ware was in the machine. I now have to recoup the costs of your 69 dollar recovery set that never worked as well as the extra cost of buying two replacement hard drives due to your tech support team. The owner of the pc had to wait for almost a month due to all the waiting for things to get mailed out etc. Other companies also don’t charge as much as you for a recover set, Acer for example is 19. When I ordered the recovery disk set, no one informed me that the replacement drive had to be the same size and model. Even though that was not the cause of the problem I did ask how do you support those users upgrading to a SSD which is typically smaller than the original drive and was told those customers are out of luck and have to buy windows again. I’m at a loss that you can charge for faulty software that doesn’t work. Where the user has to pay upfront and there is no guarantee it will work. I don’t believe I’m the only person in the world who has encountered this issue with your recovery disk set and I can’t imagine how you don’t see how bad this affects your company. Lenovo, this is unacceptable. I have worked on many pc’s and never have I seen a recovery disk set go this wrong.

Welcome BP.
What version Windows do you have.
32bit or 64bit???
REO
HP Expert Tester "Now testing HP Pavilion 15t i3-4030U Win8.1, 6GB RAM and 750GB HDD"
Loaner Program”HP Split 13 x2 13r010dx i3-4012Y Win8.1, 4GB RAM and 500GB Hybrid HDD”
Microsoft Registered Refurbisher
Registered Microsoft Partner
Apple Certified Macintosh Technician Certification in progress.

Clean Reinstall/Must restore from original disks or can I use 10.4

Have pored thru the forums looking for my specific questions but haven't found them - so please bear with more clean reinstall questions ---
1) Yes - I have to do a clean reinstall - much other discussion on other forums has said this is what needs to happen for my particular sick Mac situation - so I already know this....
2) Have already used carbon copy cloner to back up entire hard drive, files et al to an external hard drive...
3) Have iMac G4 - came with OS 10.2.3 - I do not need OS 9 anymore - haven't used it for 2 years, I have the newest Tiger disks and just got iLife 2006 - can I just use those to put my system back on? Or do I need to start from my original iMac Software Install and Restore DVD - and then add on the next versions from their disks till I get to Tiger? (I have all of them - Panther, Puma, Bobcat, Lynx - you name it... Steve Jobs is getting his money's worth out of me)....
4) Someone told me I should erase my hard drive completely with disk utility first - and then do the clean install on a totally virgin hard drive - is this true? I want to do the absolute premium, totally best thing....
5) Should I write down all the info in "About This Computer" first - like serial number etc - does the above option erase all of that?
6) When I do a clean reinstall - should I name my computer and put in my user name and password etc exactly the way it was?
Thanks so much - I really have searched these forums and couldn't find the above -
madmags
iMac superdrive Mac OS X (10.4.4) Lacie external HD 150 GB

1) Yes - I have to do a clean reinstall - much other discussion on other forums has said this is what needs to happen for my particular sick Mac situation - so I already know this....
First off, there is no such thing as a "clean" reinstall. Maybe an erase and install as the rest of your post suggests:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607614
Secondly, a sick machine rarely needs an erase and install. I use it only to discover right away if there is a hardware issue with the computer as opposed to software.
2) Have already used carbon copy cloner to back up entire hard drive, files et al to an external hard drive...
Have you tested to make sure the clone is bootable?
3) Have iMac G4 - came with OS 10.2.3 - I do not need OS 9 anymore - haven't used it for 2 years, I have the newest Tiger disks and just got iLife 2006 - can I just use those to put my system back on? Or do I need to start from my original iMac Software Install and Restore DVD - and then add on the next versions from their disks till I get to Tiger? (I have all of them - Panther, Puma, Bobcat, Lynx - you name it... Steve Jobs is getting his money's worth out of me)....
You can use the Tiger disks, though I would troubleshoot your problem first before even attempting to install Tiger.
4) Someone told me I should erase my hard drive completely with disk utility first - and then do the clean install on a totally virgin hard drive - is this true? I want to do the absolute premium, totally best thing....
Not necessarily. Once your 10.2 system is healthy, frequently all that is necessary is an Archive and Install:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301270
I've seen some cases where this doesn't work, while others where it does. So the first thing is to make sure your system is healthy, then back it up, and then upgrade.
5) Should I write down all the info in "About This Computer" first - like serial number etc - does the above option erase all of that?
The only serial numbers you need are for third party applications, and any Apple pro applications. The operating system has no serial number. This would be in case, you can't restore from your clone when you are finished, and Archive and Install doesn't work.
6) When I do a clean reinstall - should I name my computer and put in my user name and password etc exactly the way it was?
We'll cross that road once we get there. I'd rather make sure you aren't just installing an unhealthy system on an unhealthy system.
Tell me more about your sick system, and maybe we can solve the issue so all that you need to do is make sure your backup is bootable and an Archive and Install.

Recovery manager won't start for clean reinstall of Windows 7

I have an HP Pavilion Elite HPE-110f that is 4 years old. Everything was fine until a couple of weeks ago started getting RAID messages on startup and other little qwerky things. Then last week the dreaded BSOD showed up. I shut down the computer and tried to restart, but got error messages that the computer couldn't start. I then tried everything I could think of - startup repair, tried to boot in safe mode, recovery from partitioned drive, system restore - nothing worked. I have the recovery media from HP but was saving that as my final option. I tried to do a clean reinstall today from the discs, but now the recovery manager won't even come up. Can somebody PLEASE help me get my OS back?

No, it wasn't an error message. It was just notifications about different things being accessed on port1. I just assumed it was startup items loading, but I had never gotten notifications about them before. I just tried again to reinstall from recovery discs. Pressed esc and got the boot menu, selected the dvd drive and you can hear it running, then it slows down to nothing and I get no recovery manager opening. I turned off the computer again and pressed f9 when I turned it on. Diagnostic show processor and memory are fine, but I get an error code of "BIOHD-8" on the hard drive. Any suggestions?

Rcovery of Windows XP from HP recovery disks

My HP Pavillion DV5000 laptop harddisk crashed and had to be replaced. During installation of Windows XP from from the two recovery DVDs the process stops soon after inserting DVD2 which gets ejected repeatedly. What can I do to get my system up and running?

jakhannew wrote:
Thanks for chipping in.
There are no messages. The error message before inserting recovery Disk 2 continues to be displayed.
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Clean reinstall of Windows 8 on Envy dv6-7210us

Hi,
I just purchased a new HP Envy dv6-7210us laptop and I want to delete all of the current partition and reinstall a clean version of Windows 8 without all of the bloatware. I have no need for the recovery partition since I use imaging software to back up my systems. I've tried using the minimal recovery option from the HP recovery program, but it still installs all of the bloatware. I even ordered the recovery DVD's (3 of them) which also reinstall all of the bloat.
I understand that the Windows 8 key is stored in the bios, but how do I get to it or will it automatically be inserted in a clean install. Or if possible, can I extract the Windows 8 installation files from the HP recovery DVD's?
Thanks

A minimal install should have been just that, a minimal install. It's strange that it was identical to a standard recovery.
I have performed a minimal recovery on my Windows 7 notebook and it appeared to be the same install from a retail copy of Windows 7 requiring me to fetch some new drivers as well. Perhaps this has changed for Windows 8.
You can try some of the retrieval methods linked to in this post. I have used Magical Jelly Bean to retrieve the product key in Windows 7. I tested the program in Windows 8 and was able to pull the product key on a test system. It appeared to be the correct key for that particular notebook.
↙-----------How do I give Kudos?| How do I mark a post as Solved? ----------------↓

Can I install OneNote 2003 from the recovery disk?

I need a clarification (both my local Toshiba dealer and Microsoft helpdesk have proven to be equaly useless)
I have a Toshiba Satellite and product recovery
Recently (per mistake) I uninstalled Microsoft OneNote 2003
It is still on my recovery CD, I have licence number but I cannot install it without reinstaling whole system and formatting my hard disc?
And I really don't want to do that.
Is there any other way?
Thanks for your help

It seems you didnt understand the whole thing
The point is that you get the software (for free) in connection with your notebook.
Its is not a full licence. Its an OEM licence this means that you can use this software only on this notebook.
Because of that you have to use the Recovery disk if you want to use all the additional (non-Toshiba) programs.
The Toshiba tools and software can be downloaded from the Toshiba page but you will be not able to download non-Toshiba software.

Dual boot Windows from Toshiba Recovery CD

Is it possible to dual boot Windows from a Toshiba Recovery CD?
I have a Satellite A45-S120 with a Toshiba Windows XP Recovery CD.
I have XP installed on one partition. I partitioned the hard drive using GParted, and installed Linux on several partitions. I want to install XP on a 2nd partition, so I can dual boot 2 versions of Windows from the same hard drive.
When I go to install Windows, the Toshiba Recovery CD says the entire hard drive will be deleted. Is this the case, or will it only reformat a partition? I went into GParted and was able to change the first Windows XP ntfs partition to hidden, and now successfully can not boot Windows from the Grub Boot Manager. However, I worry that if GParted can see the partition, then the Toshiba Recovery CD might be able to. In addition, the Linux ext partitions could not be set to hidden. Will the Toshiba Recovery CD overwrite all the partitions, or can it maybe only install itself on the one ntfs partition available?
I read at http://www.vistax64.com/general-discussion/193560-install-xp-toshiba-recovery-disk-d.html that there may be a way possible, any advice?
Specs are:
1.26 Ghz Celeron
1.256 GB Ram
40 GB HD

Satellite A45-S120
I want to install XP on a 2nd partition,
So far as I know, that recovery disc will install nothing. It will restore the entire hard drive (master boot record and all) by writing all the bytes that were on the original drive (byte-by-byte).
-Jerry

Clean Reinstall of Windows 8 from Lenovo Recovery Disk Set Fails

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