Reset to factory state struggle

[albertkam]

Hello all !

Here's my summary of my struggle of trying to bring my friend's lenovo thinkpad edge 14 back to it's factory state :

- My friend got her new thinkpad

- She asked her friend to install some softwares

- Windows 7 went bluescreen with sumthing like page fault in non page area

- She gave me her thinkpad to troubleshoot

- Im afraid this is sumthing related to h/w errors, so i did some stuffs like booting from linux opensuse dvd to do memory checking, checking the access to the harddrive, seeing that the recovery partition is still there, try running live kde just to make sure that everything can run .. this helped me concluding that the h/w is ok

- Next, i tried booting with my friend's win7 original dvd, trying to fix the startup repair, but didnt help

- Then, i want to restore to factory state, but i didnt know the way, dont have the blue button, and my friend didnt backup the recovery / rescue partition to a dvd, couldnt get into the windows, always bsod at startup.

- Next, (i think this is where i did wrong), i tried installing the win7 using my friend's dvd just to check that the win7 can be installed and run fine, and indeed the installation was successful and the new win7 runs fine without any bluescreen

- And then, i still wanted to restore this unit to the factory state. I thought i can do this once i got the new temporary win7 installed, thinking i could burn the partition to the dvd, but i still couldnt find out how to burn this.

- Later, i found out from asking around that i can boot to the recovery partition by using F11 at startup, but to my surprise it didnt work becase the MBR was replaced when reinstalling the win7 from DVD.

- After googling around, i found out i have to install the recovery software from lenovo, and then i can burn the image to DVD and can also boot to the recovery partition using the F11 key

- Next, i booted from F11, choosed to recover to the original factory state, and it said it'll boot into recovery mode so that the resetting to factory state could take place .. but what happened after that reboot is that i didnt jump to the factory state reset, but ended up in the windows recovery system, and couldnt do the factory reset thing. I tried this in another lenovo thinkpad of the same kind, and this worked fine, so i assume this didnt work because i reinstall the win 7 from the DVD.

So, currently here are the facts :
- I have a running tmp win7
- I still have the recovery partition, and i already burned this to the DVD
- I can boot from F11
- I couldnt get the reset the original factory state to work, and my sixth sense says that this has something to do with me installing win7 from a DVD

Please share your thoughts on this matter.

[BillMorrow]

not knowing the exact state of the recovery partition on your girlfriends HDD let me ask:
can you get into the recovery area.. and from there make a set of recovery CD's..?

[albertkam]

Hello again, Bill !

Yes, i got the recovery dvd after these phases :
- Install the tmp win7
- Install the rescue and recovery from lenovo, which re-enabled the F11 recovery boot at startup
- And from the rescue and recover software running in win7, i can burn the recovery partition to a DVD
- Tried booting from that DVD to restore to the factory setting, booted allright, but trying to restore to the default factory setting didnt work out fine. And it did look the same as when booting with the F11 boot.

The temporary state is that :
I can get to the menu where i can choose to reset to the factory default state either from F11 or the DVD recovery, and it told me to reboot, and after reboot, i got stuck with the windows recovery system instead of doing the factory reset. So after that reboot, there's nothing about accepting the agreement and restoring-the-system-progressbar showing up, as i've experienced in restoring other edge's unit

Thanks !

[BillMorrow]

well, i'm not so up-to-date as i should be with all the current recovery options as shipped since my last new thinkpad, which was an X300 when they were the new hot stuff..

but from memory the recovery partition SHOULD let you make a DVD or CD set to recover the system to factory spec, which really, no one really wants because they are usually loaded up with all the useless bloatware..

if you can't make a recovery set and you probably can not with a generic win7 install you could go to the lenovo (ibm) support site and download the thinkvantage utilities and from there let thinvantage install all the windows updates (as you choose) and all the correct lenovo drivers for that thinkpad..

it will take some time and a decent internet connection but you have time (its wednesday day there, right?!) but all you need to do is watch for all the license accept boxes and it should hand you a pretty near to factory OS install..

i mean, why fight when you can have a beer and watch the computer do all the work..

[albertkam]

Hello Bill ! It's morning in here right now, and enough sleep == good spirit !

Thank you for your advice on updating the windows 7 so that it resembles the factory default.
But we're having a slow internet connection here, so somehow i prefer the benefits of factory reset from the recovery partition over the updating via internet T__T

I was just thinking about the benefits if i could do the F11-factoryReset thing without any win7 DVD :
- I can restore to the original windows that came with the thinkpad anytime, when bsod happens, when the system is too broken with viruses
- I will have all the drivers, including the function buttons, camera, etc working

But it's ok i think, my friend feels ok also without being able to restore to the original factory reset thing.

All that is left now is my curiosity

Regards,
Albert Kam

[BillMorrow]

Albert..

you said:

another lenovo thinkpad of the same kind, and this worked fine

perhaps you can make a recovery CD set from this other thinkpad of the same kind and recover your girlfriends..?

[albertkam]

Hi Bill !

Sorry for the late reply.

Yea, thanks for the advice.
I didnt mention about this, but i tried that already at the very beginning, and failed.
Although i forgot what the exact message was, but it's about unable to find the restore or backup for the laptop unit.

Perhaps the recovery disc is unique for every thinkpad edge ?