I bought a T60P (Type 2007) without hard drive. I have 2 new virgin hard drive, Hitachi Travelstar HTS721010G9SA00, 100GB AND HTS722012K9A300 120GB.
i have the recovery CDs with Windows XP from Lenovo.
Each time, I have the error PXE-E61 media test failure when I try to boot from CD1.
I have an other T60P with Windows Vista and when I switch the hard drive it works fine. if I install the recovery CD in the CD drive and boot, it ask me if I want to recover....
What is the problem and what should I do

Do you press F12 at the boot splash, and then choose the CD drive from the menu?

Go into BIOS and set SATA to Compatibility mode.
Once the lot is installed, set it to AHCI.
And for installation use F12 to select to boot from CD/DVD as Neil suggested.

I do press f12 at boot, I even change the the boot order placing cd first with no difference.

I will try that tonight and let you know.

Seems like either the optical drive is bad, or the XP restore CD is bad.
Try swapping optical drives between the two machines and see if the problem follows the drive.
Or, try booting a CD/DVD that works with one machine, in the other. If the CD fails in both, then you have the answer to the bad disk question.

After swapping the hard drive from an other T60P into this Thinkpad, it boots normally (to windows Vista). When booting with that other drive in this unit, with the recovery CD in the optical drive it ask me if I want to restore. So it seems that the drive is working fine. any way I will try an other optical drive also.

I did change Sata to compatibility in the bios. I tried then to start the installation by pressing F12 and select CD/DVD but same problem, error, media... check cable....
I swapped the optical drive with an other and same problem
What could be the problem???????????????

How many CDs do you have, total? In my set, there are 8 disks total. The ones marked CD1-CD6 are not bootable. There is a seperate Rescue&Recovery Boot CD in the set, as well as a supplement CD. To recover the system, first use the boot CD which will ask for the supplement first, then CD1 thru CD6, and finally the supplement disk again at the last.

I think you could solve all this by using an upto date windows setup disc. When you use the system restore discs, your installing a 5yo operating system, a lot of 5yo bloatware, a recovery partition filled with backups of all this outdated software, and redundant disc images so you can burn more copies of the outdated software.

If you install from a windows disc you won't waste all that disc space and the install will take minutes, not hours. You can then install Lenovo system update to get the latest drivers and select only the bloatware that you actually want. The end result is a fully updated system, and a better alternative to the recovery partition would be to make a separate partition and install the windows disc twice, then you'll have dual boot and if anything happens to make the first installation corrupt, you can boot into the other and be up and running in a minute or two, then fix the problem at a time of your choosing.

The Lenovo system is nice, but only when the software and OS are new, I always get rid of it when the system is 2-3 years old.

That's my opinion, but you should do whatever works for you, if you like the default lenovo setup, then it might be worth the time/effort to do the full restore, followed by hours of updates.

The first disk you should insert is labeled Rescue and Recovery, and not disk 1...

Thank you, now it is booting and loading windows files.

I would love to do that but I don't have a Windows XP setup disc beside the Lenovo one. I only have Windows 7 but the keys are already used by my other PC.