10 year old IBM Thinkpad 310ED

[carnett]

My daughter gave me her IBM Thinkpad 310ED running windows 98SE with 32 MB of ram, a 2.01 GB hard drive and an Ali Pentium CPU. She asked me try and fix for her. When I was finally able to boot up, I found she had really messed it up not corrupt, just badly messed up to the point of having to format the hard.
This computer came with an internal CD-ROM and an external floppy drive.
I do not have the boot CD, however, I do have the original IBM Thinkpad Recovery CD-ROM Boot Diskette. I also have the original Microsoft floppy Boot Disk for Windows 98 Systems.
My question is, would it be safe to format the hard drive and one of these boot disks to reinstall the operating system? Or, would I better off using these disks without formatting the hard drive?
I might add that I am using this as a learning experience.
I would appreciate any assistance from any quarter.

[patio]

The Restore CD will when run will automatically format the drive and take the machine back to Day One status...
The problem with this is ALL her data and Programs installed after that will be GONE.
Do you have a backup strategy for the stuff she may not want to lose ? ?

[gertvandelft]

I have the same old 310ED thinkpad but iI am missing the software.Is it possible you sent my message to the author. Maybe he will make copies of the software

[Salmon Trout]

This thread died 7 years ago. You will need to search online for a recovery disk. There are companies that sell ISO disk images.