Thinkpads Forum

I have a T43 I am trying to wipe and restore to factory build using Rescue and Recovery v4.20.0512.00

I have rebuild ThinkPad's plenty of times using R&R but for some reason when I go to Restore your system I only have two options:

1. Restore my entire hard drive, including all personal data and settings from a backup

2. Restore only the Windows operating system and applications from a backup

I used to get a third option to restore to factory state. Any idea why it's not showing up?

Thanks

strange - I pulled the hard drive, plugged it into my USB adapter then my T60, and formatted it. The option to restore to factory image was there.

cwestwater wrote:strange - I pulled the hard drive, plugged it into my USB adapter then my T60, and formatted it. The option to restore to factory image was there.

Did you just happen to have Linux of any stripe on that drive? That has done goofy things to me till I caught on about formatting the drive using a XP or Vista install disk.

nope it was a plain old build of XP.

mgo wrote:Did you just happen to have Linux of any stripe on that drive? That has done goofy things to me till I caught on about formatting the drive using a XP or Vista install disk.

I think this pertains to my situation. I only get the two options cwestwater reports: no 'restore to factory state'. I've tried using the 'blue button' and the first of the cds I created with R&R 4. I tried "Restore my entire hard drive, including personal data and settings from a backup." Step 2 invites me to choose the location of my backup; I chose cd/dvd. I then get a dire warning: "The R&R application indicates that you have chosen to restore your system after booting from a CD or DVD drive. Before continuing, make sure that you have the appropriate backup CDs or DVDs. The backup CDs or DVDs will be used after this process formats you hard drive. If you do not have your backup CDs or DVDs, all data on your hard drive will be lost. Are you sure you want to continue?" Just for fun, I said yes and was taken to step 3: choose what you would like to do from the options below:
1. I want to save all the files that have been created or changed since my last backup.
2. I want to choose which files to save . . . since my last backup.
3. I want to choose which files to save from a list of current hard drive contents.
4. I do not want to save any files.
I'm just not convinced I'm on the right path here . . . I don't have an R&R backup; I just have the R&R discs (aka recovery media) I created. Or are they the same thing? This is all so confusing . . .

Another related issue is that this is a dual-boot system (XP and Ubuntu) with GRUB on the MBR. I can understand how that might affect what I do with the blue button, but why can't I restore to factory contents with my DVDs? Or maybe the above is the right path and I'm just scared and confused. Can anyone help me sort this out?

cwestwater wrote:snip....I used to get a third option to restore to factory state. Any idea why it's not showing up?

I feel lazy typing my own words so:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 457#397457

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 048#394048

Thanks, ryengineer. I searched--honest!--but I never found those.

I guess there's no use complaining about it here, but it seems a bit silly that the much vaunted "one button restore" solution requires somewhat more than one button--indeed, entirely different software. Seems I've found the one 'bug' that can eat the entire system (I'm referring to the pride of Lenovo's ad campaign, in which a malevolent 'virus' consumes a thinkpad). Thing is, it doesn't seem to be a particularly insidious 'bug'--all I'm doing is dual-booting . . .

So, at the risk of asking too much, do I have to wipe the whole HD (including the 'recovery partition')? Or can I format the C: partition, leave my linux partitions alone? Sorry, I just find this really confusing.

Paul Unger wrote:snip...So, at the risk of asking too much, do I have to wipe the whole HD (including the 'recovery partition')? Or can I format the C: partition, leave my linux partitions alone? Sorry, I just find this really confusing.

Paul, one possible solution is to manually reinstall Rescue and Recovery in Windows:

Rescue and Recovery 4.2 by Lenovo.

Another solution is to wipe out your primary drive, now the problem that would arise here is that formatting the entire HDD Vs. saving one portion of linux partition wouldn't make any difference since the restore disks are already going to make your linux partition unusable so it’s better if you wipe out your whole HDD.

To the best of my knowledge, the aforementioned Rescue and Recovery problem shows up only when you have an older version of R n R on recovery disks and a newer one on your HDD.

ryengineer wrote:To the best of my knowledge, the aforementioned Rescue and Recovery problem shows up only when you have an older version of R n R on recovery disks and a newer one on your HDD.

Aha! I think you weighed in on this with me before. Sorry--just checked and it was Ken Fox. But I'll try revert to R&R 4.0 (which is what my discs were made from) and see if that works any better.

[edit] Hmmm. I have R&R 4.0 installed . . . This is really frustrating! I'll call Lenovo tomorrow. They deserve to hear about this!

[edit 2] Seems I'm not the only one with this problem. Something so seemingly simple is turned on its head.