Thinkpads Forum

Hi again,


While reading the EULA for windows agreement, I learned it was OK for me to burn one copy of the OS for personal reinstall use and since there is little saved info on my HD, now would be the ideal time to do it....

But..but....how???????

Would you ever so kind individuals, puuleeeazzze give me the step by step instructions, so later I can light up a fresh HD with just the OS as it came the day it was new?


Look forward to your response

Powell

After you install Rescue and Recovery, you can create recovery disks from the program menu, or you're too lazy to dod that, call IBM/Lenovo and ask for a set of recovery CD because you want to be covered against hard drive failures. This is what I did because it's free and I like to have the original disks.

If you want to keep a copy of your current systems rather than IBM orginal one, you can do that as well. You will need a DVD burner at least, CD is of little use. You can compress your image partion on a DVD partion and make the disk dos-bootable, for example. You will need specialized software to do this, Norton Ghost is the first that comes to the mind.

Step by step? What system do you have and what version of Rescue and Recovery do you have installed? Even though you're making Factory Recovery Discs it still is often done from the Rescue and Recovery menu.

Assuming you have a late model ThinkPad with a CD burner, what you need is about 7 CD's to start. The program will only let you burn the CD's once, so use quality media and don't stop the process once started.

Go to Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media > Create Recovery Discs.

If your ThinkPad is older, look in Start > All Programs > Access IBM > Create Recovery Discs.

Note that you can also Create Rescue Media (1 CD). This is not the same thing. This is for booting up to do a repair when you can't enter the Rescue and Recovery workspace or can't boot up windows.

marcos wrote:because it's free

Only in some places and at some times.

Cheers,

Bill

bill bolton wrote:

marcos wrote:because it's free

Only in some places and at some times.

Cheers,

Bill

Had been sent the disks twice (for two different systems) to argentina about 18 months aparts. Called thru the local access number, had a 3-yrs international warranty. They didn't made a fuss and even paid customs tax and duties on the invoice value of $8.33.

Also pschoggens, for the factory recovery discs it makes no difference how much junk you have on your system as it copies the preload material directly from your hidden service partition. You can make CD/DVD backups of your system with Rescue and Recovery all day long and each one of those is an entire backup of your system as it exists at that time. The Factory Restore CDs will re-start you off with the system/OS as it arrived from the factory.

I preferr the factory disks too, but R&R gives you a choice at restore time to either go bare xp installation or with your latest setup and data.

The factory restore can only be done from the PDA and as long as your service partition is intact you don't even need discs as it can be run straight from the local drive. The discs are merely a (highly recommended) way of cya in case of total HDD failure. And of course to restore with "your latest setup and data" is assuming that you've kept your RnR backups up to date...