The latest:

I still haven't gotten any traction on the screen dimming issue. I've given up on that for now. However, I copied all my files from the old laptop to the new one and realized that, despite both raw disks being the same size, my stuff didn't fit. Digging deeper, it seems that IBM is keeping a "hidden" partition with 4GB of assorted junk on it that sticks around for rescue and recovery things. There's also about 2GB of assorted IBM-specific folders on my C: drive (CMPNENTS, DRIVERS, IBMSHARE, IBMTOOLS, SUPPORT, VALUEADD).

Questions:

1) I've already backed up all the C: drive junk. Which ones are safe to delete?

2) Should I back up and nuke that 4GB partition, or is it worth keeping around? I've certainly got better things to do with the space.

2a) How am I supposed to back it up? The partition is marked "hidden", which means that I can't convince diskpart or the GUI utility to assign it a drive letter. Microsoft has a Win2003 hotfix that would seem to offer the right functionality, but you can't just download it from them. If I could somehow get a copy of this utility, would it work on WinXP?

*sigh*