Configuring Office365 on difficult XP computer

This entry will have no value to anyone else.  It's a specific situation for my own notes.  On the computer named Vostro1500-INTE, the Outlook 2010 has consistent trouble with configuring the Office365 account.

I tried all these things.

• Create new mail profile
• Setting the login/email address to username@domain.onmicrosoft.com
• Set DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 instead of internal DNS
• Create and connect to VPN without split tunnel

In the end, I found that the fix was to 1) create a new Windows profile and 2) disable the crappy Trend Micro antivirus.  Of note, I recreated the profile at first wihtout disabling AV and I had trouble configuring email - so perhaps disabling the AV was necessary.

XP downgrade process for Thinkpad T61

The ThinkPad T61 downgrade process isn't entirely clear, but here's the easy way to do it . . .

In my case, I received 8 CDs from Lenovo/IBM. Six were labeled as recovery CDs, one a supplemental CD, and one was a "rescue and recovery" CD.

I was able to do the downgrade from Vista to XP by this process:

Put in rescue and recovery CD (not disc 1 of 6)

Hold down F12 on bootup (this gets you the boot options screen)

Boot to the CD

From the rescue and recovery manu, choose "restore your system"

choose "restore my hard drive to the original factory state"

choose "I do not want to save any files"

Choose all the obvious options

It'll ask for each of your six CDs, and that's it. It takes forever, but it works.