Am I the only person that images my manufacturer's HDD when I first get a new box? I thought that would be fairly standard operating procedure for any geek who wants to avoid this sort of crap.
Hell, I do this twice when dealing with in-laws. The first time to make sure I can restore the OEM partition, and the second time so I can restore the thoroughly sanitized install when they filthy it up with malware and browser bars.
No you are not, like others I typically swap the drive with an SSD so I can return to 'factory' easily. That generally however involves breaking the 'factory seal' on the bottom which for NewEgg is one of their deal breakers.
This is why you buy Thinkpads. They've got a great warranty system, post the whole maintenance manual online, and don't void the whole warranty for single item changes (basically you change a hardware subsystem and you can't get warranty on that bit but the whole bit is still eligible)
I'd double check that next time you buy a new ThinkPad. I broke the screen on mine recently, and chose to replace it myself after being quoted an eyewatering (nearly cost of laptop) amount to have it repaired. The tech support person told me in no uncertain terms this would totally void my warranty.
If there are no warranty stickers, and you don't make any obvious changes or damage to the machine, you sometimes get away with 'breaking' the warranty. I've had this occur for a laptop that required opening to change the RAM (voiding warranty by all supporting documentation). I restored the original RAM before warranty, and they fixed it all the same.
Maybe it's just for minor changes, simple user upgrades instead of huge replacements like the screen? shrug I've never had to warranty my Thinkpad anyways thanks to them being tanks.
Clonezilla was the first word that popped into my head when I read the original post. Also helps resale value to put the 'factory' OS back on with the recovery partitions &c.
