[ltp] Removing the pre-desktop area

[Syd Hancock]

> > First the only way you have to restore your XP installation (no
> > great loss) but you gain about 3.5 Gb of drive space.  (I'm
> > told you can request a replacement CD from IBM.  Has anyone
> > done so?)
>
> They took a bit of persuading (I phone them then they had to
> phone me 3 days later and I explain that I really do want them
> etc.), but in the end they did so without a fee.

I have had a similar experience this week getting an XP Pro recovery 
CD for a T23 in the UK. The laptop is still under warranty. The 
follow-up call was from a technical support guy - the moment I said 
that I knew it was unrecoverable because I had completely 
over-written the partition table there were no more questions and 
he authorised the CD to be sent out. 

Service was friendly and helpful - clearly aimed at the 
non-technical user, which is what you'd expect  - and no probing 
about how I had managed to do such a thing. I was concerned that 
they might say that I had invalidated the warranty or something.

FWIW I did it by playing with a mandrake 8.2 install - which cannot 
read ntfs partitions, unlike 9.1 - too late at night to be thinking 
straight. There's an obvious moral to this story :-)

Syd
Norwich UK