Formatting a Tablet PC

[pennywise]

In my first year, everyone in my class at Uni was given a tablet PC to help with our "studies". Blah blah, it's done a great job since then, but over the past month or two it has slowed down significantly, and so I want to try to reinstall Windows on it. Several things to consider:

Laptop Details:
Toshiba Portege M200
Pentium M 755
512MB RAM
60GB HDD (Two partitions, 30GB each)
Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005

- The laptop has no disk drive, of any sort.
- I have the facilities here to use a disk drive on my parents' PC over the network, if necessary.
- I have all of the disks and manuals that came along with the laptop.
- The laptops hard drive has been partitioned into C: and D:. The D: partition has 4 .GHS files, all around 2 GB.
- The laptop has a ****load of University supplied software pre-installed, which I would presume would be included in the .GHS image files.

Now, to the question. Would it be sufficient to just install Norton Ghost and make use of these .GHS files? Would I need some sort of external DVD drive for anything? I've never dealt with a laptop before, at all, so I've no idea what I need to sort this out.

Another possibility is sorting out some sort of dual-boot between Ubuntu and Windows, but since the hard drive is already partitioned in half would it be feasible/possible to split it up again for two operating systems plus a recovery partition?

Any suggestions/solutions welcomed, and feel free to ask for more information

[TheHeartSmasher]

Re: Formatting a Tablet PC

Normally with the tablets you will need a certain version of ghost installed as for some reason not all ghost images are compatible with all ghost images and that particular image might be protected so only IT Staff can reimage the machines.

I would recommend taking it into the help desk and have them doing it so if anything goes wrong which something probably will since you do not have all the drivers disc, disc drives, etc... Which is a great to keep students from tampering with University Supplied equipment.

Now if you are done with college or you own the tablet now (talk with to make sure you actually own it) then you can have thoughts of customizing the installation. Which with that current tablet setup you would need:
An External DVD Drive
Drivers disc
Correct version of ghost to play around with the ghost image
You could run Ubuntoo through a virtual machine if you like on Windows
I would recommend actually using Acronis TrueImage and do a real backup of the system.
This way you can mount the image safely within Windows and copy back over what you need once you have done a new install, without the dreaded ghost problems.
But I am guessing that you do not have all of the required Windows Tablet PC Edition, software, drivers, etc that come with the tablet which you would probably get at Graduation and they would transfer ownership of the tablet to you.

[pennywise]

Re: Formatting a Tablet PC

I don't think the tech guys on-campus have anything more than what we have, to be fair. All they have is the password to the BIOS I think, plus all the image files, drivers, etc. that we can pick up off the 'net anyway or from the tools/utilities disk in the box (there's also a recovery disk, which I would presume would be an image of the XP Tablet PC Edition complete with drivers and **** already installed).

Anyway, I'd have probably took the thing straight down to the tech guys to look at when I decided I wanted it sorted out, but with it being the summer, the attendance of the guys in their office is sporadic at best, and I don't particularly want to drive for 30 miles to discover that they've taken the day off, hence why I wanted to sort it out myself (not to mention the fact that I hate having to rely on anyone for anything in situations like this, since they almost always balls it up on me). That's probably the best plan of action anyway, since I won't be able to get a hold of an external dvd drive. I could try to mount images on my (4GB) memory pen and try to boot from it, but since I've never done that before I'd probably end up ballsing it up too :o

And as for Ubuntu, I was going to steadily make it my OS of choice on my Tablet since I don't really have the facilities to set up another PC solely for Ubuntu use at my own place. I'm going to set up a virtual machine later on this week on my main PC with Ubuntu on it just so I can get a feel for it, but in time I'll probably fire it on my Tablet and just get rid of XP altogether since I don't use it for much more than Uni work anyway (typing, coding *shudder* and the odd bit of web design).

[TheHeartSmasher]

Re: Formatting a Tablet PC

Yeah, I know what you mean about relying on others. I had the option of getting a University laptop or getting my own I chose bring my own :). Though a tablet would be nice when I use Zbrush :).

If you do mount from your memory stick don't forget to get into the bios and change the boot order if you don't have that option using F2 or F10/F11/F12.