IBM Netvista 63U 8307 non-proprietary hd config OK?

[treycarroll]

Hi-

I think that I just made a $250 mistake- please tell me otherwise.

I got a little trigger happy on ebay and won a IBM Netvista 63U 8307 with no OS installed just the COA sticker and the hd has been wiped. Now that I check out the manual, it looks like the these computers come configured in a dreaded proprietary configuration (essential system data are stored in a special partition). Does anybody have any experience with these IBM Netvista's? Do you have to use the propietary config or can you just do a normal XP install and dispense with all the drama?

TIA,

Trey
-----------------------------------------------

 

[IBMan]

google search it, if there's any special drivers you need to install, download them an integrate them into a new bootable cd, you can use nLiteOS to do this. I do this with all my friend's computers.

www.nliteos.com

 

[treycarroll]

Hey IBMan-

Wow- nliteOS looks very cool. Like you recommended, I did google and found that the drivers for the machine are available- but I don't think that I will have to use nliteOS for this. In the past I have just always installed windows and then the drivers- it didn't seem to take took long and I'm a little unsure that I have enough experience to use nLiteOS anyway.

The driver issue was not really my primary concern- it is that the thing will be a "Paper Weight" and won't even boot. Here's why:
A very techie friend decided that he would help out his girlfriend with her Compaq computer that was perpetually crashing - so he wipes the drive and reinstalls windows. The thing never ran again. On those old computers data that was essential for boot was stored in a small system partition- (things better put on the bios chip right?) Anyway, I'm afraid that IBM does something similar and that this machine will never boot!

You seem to be very knowledgable about these IBM machines- does nLiteOS actually recreate these partitions or am I OK to just do a regualr install without it?

Thanks man,

Trey

 

[IBMan]

nlite does nto require much experience at all, run it once, 95% of it is self explanatory, u just need to know how to burn an ISO image to a CD, also, my IBM laptop had a recovery partition where when i turned on the computer i had the otpion to hit F11 to start system recovery which would reinstall the "image" of the OS, after a while i actually formatted over the partition because it took up a lot of HDD space, if yours is set up this way it should eb fine to get rid of it, also, i could send you a copy of my ghost floppy disk and you can clone the hard drive so in case you do lose everything you can just restore the image. and it will be back to normal, it should be fine, is it really old? how old.? also just out of curiosity wat are some sys specs?

nlite does not recreate the partition, you'd need a copy of your OS on a CD wat it does is it takes your installation cd and copies it to your hard drive, what you then do is tell it what you want to do with it such as integrate drivers, make an unattend CD, integrate service packs(like if you have XP SP1, and you want to install windows with SP2 automatically you can add SP 2 do your installation with this program) you can remove certain programsl ike Internet explorer if you use firefox, stuff like that, then you would install windows using this new cd you create.

 

[treycarroll]

Whew - that's a relief! It sounds like it will work just fine without that system partition. That's a real load off my mind- as I don't have $250 laying around to waste.

It was a pretty good deal- a corporate lease that they were getting rid of. The specs are 2.5GHZ P4, 512MB ram, 40Gigs, CD Rom.

I'm going to checkout nlite. It souds very cool. Thanks for the tip and for the info on the system partition.

 

[IBMan]

you can keep the system partition on there if you wish, its a big enough hard drive i guess