Thinkpads Forum

I seem to have a problem with the recovery data on the hard drive of my T40, so I'm interested in buying copies of the full recovery set for the machine.

Thanks.

paul.

I'll be receiving shortly the Recovery CDs for a 2373-GEG. however in Spanish language. Wonder if it's any use to you

benottomex wrote:I'll be receiving shortly the Recovery CDs for a 2373-GEG. however in Spanish language. Wonder if it's any use to you

Many thanks for the offer. I'm not sure how IBM cover different languages. Spanish wouldn't do me much good in itself, but if its possible to install as English they might help.

I have managed to obtain copies of an original set, though so far, they don't work (looks like a bad copy of the first CD).

If its ok with you, I'll let you know in a few days...

Thanks again.

regards, paul.

whats happening to make you think the recovery CD's are bad..?

BillMorrow wrote:whats happening to make you think the recovery CD's are bad..?

Well, I hope its only the first CD that is bad, but...

On boot, I get an error (in the T40 I get 'a:\ramdrive.sys missing or corrupt', when tried in another machine, it was himem.sys that had a problem). I then get 'unable to use a disk cached on the specified drive', a couple of 'not ready reding drive a:' errors, then a 'write protect error, writing drive a:' I assume that since it cannot find or use RAMDRIVE.SYS it is trying to work from the read-only floppy image in the recovery CD. Trouble is, once it hits that error, the process aborts.

I have aquired another drive, so at least I've got something to experiment with without risking the working install of XP.

The guy that provided the CDs will hopefully get back to me soon - unfortunately he's a long way away...

regards, paul

If it keeps causing errors at the same spot, try checking the disk to see if it has a smudge or scratch on it. I had a problem similar to this with Office 2K. Once the disk was cleaned, the problem went away.

tfflivemb2 wrote:If it keeps causing errors at the same spot, try checking the disk to see if it has a smudge or scratch on it. I had a problem similar to this with Office 2K. Once the disk was cleaned, the problem went away.

Thanks for the suggestion. Tried that (I have a CD cleaning machine which will take out minor scratches as well). Didn't help, unfortunately.

That was also the reason I tried it in another machine - I've sometimes managed to read CDs in different drives, and then copy them sucessfully. The fact that it produced different errors in a different drive makes me think that that technique isn't going to get me far this time.

regards, paul.

Was the other machine a Thinkpad? If it was, try duplicating the disk on a PC CDRW drive. IMHO, they tend to be less sensitive.

tfflivemb2 wrote:Was the other machine a Thinkpad? If it was, try duplicating the disk on a PC CDRW drive. IMHO, they tend to be less sensitive.

I've found the same thing. Also found the DVD/CDRW combos seem to be more sensitive than the standard DVD-ROM drives in Thinkpads.

The other machine I tried was one of the desktops - tried in both its DVD and CDRW drive. I had hoped that if it got through the boot sequence without falling in a heap I could use the CDRW in the desktop machine to copy it.

paul.