#OS#
Restoring to factory status

The IBM PREDESKTOP area is fine.... but can I really use it??? I wanted to experiment further....

I was worried because I read in certain posts that if you use the PREDESKTOP area to restore the system to factry defaults, it will delete all partitions on the HDD and bring it to the same state as it started from the factory..... yes this made sense.... but I wanted to test it....

I called up another techy friend (Shekhar)... though he did not have the answer....but agreed that this was the only time that I could test this.... a test like this can not be done at a later date.... so it was choice between Now or Never!!!

I entered the PREDESKTOP area and clicked on restore to factory settings.....
The setup started and the next 1.5 hours, my machine was busy installing XP and select apps again......

After it finished, I booted the machine....it came up nicely..... AND...
1. The NTFS partition was still 25GB...... which is good news
2. FAT 32 was not visible...... I was initially clueless what happened to FAT32 ....but soon learnt that after the instalation process the recovery software hides all other partitions.

I booted with KNOPPIX again and tried to unhide the other partitions....... and it worked....

So this experiment was also successful.....