Sandwich 2.0

Anyone who has recently ordered a Thinkpad with Vista knows how much space is taken up with things that Lenovo thinks you need. Fed up with having a good 6gb of my precious hard drive space being taken up with the recovery partition I decided to get rid of it and reclaim my hard drive. Little did I know that Vista’s “Improved” boot loader would freak out and die. This guide is for those who want to get back that 6gb of space and successfully get Vista up and running again.
I highly recommend that you either print a copy of this guide or at least view it on another computer if you attempt this due to the fact that you will not be able to access it while working on your laptop.

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for anything that might happen to you or your computer for following this guide.

Note: If you feel uncomfortable doing anything in this guide I highly recommend that you do not do it. If you still want it done get someone else who knows what they are doing, to do it for you. You may be sorry otherwise.

Step 1: Gather all the resources you will need.

1. You will need to burn a LiveCD of GParted to edit the partitions. (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php)
   • This part is simple enough. Just download the latest version and burn the ISO to a CD using one of the many available CD burning programs.
   • Note: If you need a CD burning program or help burning a ISO file see this guide : Burning ISO Images
2. You will also need to make a LiveCD of Windows XP using BartPE (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/)
   • Just make a ISO image with all the default options and burn that to a CD using your CD burning program yet again.

Step 2: Remove the Recovery Partition

1. Reboot the computer with the GParted CD that you burned in the CD drive. When the Thinkpad is rebooting press F12 and you should be taken to a menu. Select the CD-Rom drive from these options so that GParted will be loaded.
2. As GParted loads just follow the directions. When you are going through the prompts all the default options should be fine.
3. Once GParted is loaded you will be greeted with a screen that shows all the different partitions on your hard drive. If you have left your Thinkpad partitions at the default then there should be a small 6gb partition and a larger partition following it.
   
4. Now our objective is to remove the smaller of the two partitions. Select the smaller partition and click on the trash can to delete it. Now click on the green check mark to apply this change. This should take but a few seconds to complete.
5. Now that we have removed the small partition we want to enlarge the main one that has Vista on it. Select the large partition. Now click on the “Resize / Move” button (the green arrow). You should be greeted with a new window.
   
6. Click on the black arrows and make the box grow to take up the whole gray area. Once that is done confirm it by clicking the green arrow (in that window) to accept changes.
7. Now you should be back in the main window. Click on the green check mark to apply the new size of the partition. This may take upwards of an hour and a half so go do something to kill time. Make a sandwich or something.
8. Now that you have had a delicious sandwich and GParted has completed resizing it is time to restart the PC but make sure to remove the GParted CD first.
9. When you boot up windows will come up with a message saying that a file canot be found so it cannot boot. Do not worry thats what it is supposed to do.

Step 3: The BIOS Is Your Friend

1. Restart the computer and while it is at the Lenovo screen press F1 to go to the BIOS.
2. In the BIOS go down to the option that includes “SATA”
3. Change the mode from “AHCI” to “Compatability”
4. press ESC untill it asks you to save. Select “yes”.
5. Now put in the BartPE CD that you made and restart

Step 4: Windows Fixing Windows

1. Now boot up BartPE. Do it exactly the same way that you booted up Gparted. Except that when a dialog box that asks about network support shows up click no.
2. Now that BartPE is up and running its time to do some magic. Click on the orange “GO” button (its like the start menu) and select command prompt.
3. Type in each one of these commands in order followed by enter after each command:
   • C:
   • cd \Windows\System32\
   • bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C:
   • bcdedit /set {default} device ospartition=C:
4. Now that that is done take out the BartPE CD and reboot.

Step 5: Party Time!!

1. Go back into the BIOS and re-enable “AHCI” mode.
2. Restart once again
3. When Windows boots it should start with a black screen with text this is chkdsk let it run its actually making things better.
4. Once that is done doing its thing Vista should boot!
5. Congratulations!!! you have removed the recovery partition and reclaimed your hard drive.

I hope that this guide has been helpful and that you have had much success. If you have any questions or comments just post them in the comments section and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible.