Restoring the IBM ThinkPad R50e! - Cleaning and Windows XP Install

At the beginning of this year, I acquired an IBM ThinkPad R50e from a thrift store. It ended up coming all the way from Taiwan! Today, we revisit this laptop to get it cleaned up and restored to factory settings!

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Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

Outro Music: Silent Partner - Bet On It
Source: YouTube Audio Library

Some materials in this video are used under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which allows "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, and research.

#MichaelMJD #WindowsXP #ThinkPad

[dormcat]

Native Chinese speaker from Taiwan here; at 5:16 the correct translation (of the first part of the upper left corner) would be:

救援與還原 Rescue and Recovery
- 回復概觀 Restore overview ("Responsibility")
- 救援檔案 Rescue files
- 從備份還原 Recover from a backup ("Edible reduction")
- 還原出廠內容 Restore default factory settings ("F than content") < this is what you're supposed to click on

Most, if not all, notebook computers of any recognizable brand with Windows XP or later OS would have a preinstalled recovery partition (assuming the HDD was a factory original, or a replacement/upgrade with all partitions migrated properly). Restoring factory settings should be only a few clicks away as long as the HDD is mechanically stable.

[Tularis]

As an ibm partner we always joked the “R” was the “Rubbish” series. Also all the Lenovo coa stickers I have seen say Lenovo Singapore and I am in the UK 🇬🇧

Also rescue and recovery was a great piece of software where you can restore the pc back to factory settings without the need for restore cds. You only need the cds to repair / restore the rescue and recovery environment.

[christiandaone]

The comment section of these videos are so chill I love it

[kbhasi]

4:21 My R52 has an English image on it, so I could help you translate that if you wanted to DM me!

EDIT: "The Flying Scotsman" did a video a while back where he restored his R52 using the factory image I sent him, so you could check out his video!

[MrBreadoflife]

AS a former IBM support tech, IBM Drivers are usually on the IBM partitions or were likely in the SWTOOLS folder on the windows partition you wiped out lol..As a side note most IBM laptop configurations had multiple drivers types. That laptop likely had 2 different types of ethernet and wireless adapters installed on them depending on the model #.

[namelessjade]

I really enjoy your videos, especially the ones where you restore old hardware. Keep up the great work!

[jaiden]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
You forgot "{" at line 42

[VicViperTPilot]

These thinkpads were tough laptops. Mine is still rolling along just fine, albeit with some quirks (cd rom drive doesn’t always read discs). Still pretty good for playing old games on it.

[abhishekp]

I had the same laptop, it came with 512 MB ram and Celeron M.

[sonicgr]

"Hard Guarantee", "Edible reduction"... I'll be laughing for the rest of the week!

[rexracer]

The « R » serie is made in Singapore by... Lenovo Singapore, that’s why there is a Singaporean key ^^ I’ve two Lenovo R500 and it’s written on the bottom of the computer :)

[henryatkinson]

Love these things. My T30 from the same era is still gling strong.

Also all the Lenovo/IBM windows keys say Singapore on them.

[BAIGAMING]

1:53 This is what washing vegetables looks like for computer geeks

[Jerkwad]

You went through quite a bit more trouble than I would've, hanging onto the old partitions. Kudos.

[DavidWonn]

19:28 I have a simple solution for the lack of a Windows key (which virtually all pre-Lenovo, authentic IBM Thinkpads lack.) You can google some registry edits that allow you to remap existing keys. My favorite tweak is to remap the Caps Lock key to become a Windows key.

After you do that, look into a simple software from the 1990s called WinKey. It allows you to map your new Windows key + other key(s) to launch virtually anything. For instance, I’d have the Caps Lock (masquerading as Windows key) + K launch osk.exe, which would bring up the on-screen keyboard in the event you ever need to turn on the real Caps Lock. And then feel free to make numerous other Windows key shortcuts at your leisure.

[LunaManar]

I know this is an older video, so maybe you tried this already, but I did notice that the Wi-Fi indicator on your (physical) LED panel isn't lit. I have the successor to this laptop, the R60, and even if Wi-Fi is turned off in Windows, if the drivers are installed it should show up as amber, and when turned on it's green. There is a "hidden" Wi-Fi physical on-off switch on the front of the laptop just under the edge. If it's not all the way switched on, your Wi-Fi drivers will install but the antenna won't power on and the LED won't be lit at all, so you won't get an icon in the system tray. The switch is hard to see as it is the exact same black color as the rest of the shell.

So enabled/switched on = green
On but disabled = amber
Physical switch off = dark

Just in case you hadn't already found it and given it a try (I couldn't make myself read ALL 300 comments to find out if someone else had mentioned it yet).

[hysel]

That brought up memories from 15 years ago:)

[realw]

Michael and Enderman are very close to reaching one hundred thousand subscribers.

[sriramsundar]

Could you make a video about Windows XP SP3? And can you compare it to Windows Vista SP1? They both came in the same year, 2008.

[thatoneuser]

I'd like to see more tech experiments (upgrade marathons) etc. done on this machine, like the Dell Latitude.