Thinkpads Forum

Hi Guys,

I had downgraded my T60 from vista business to windows XP. Before I had downgraded to windows XP I took care not to delete the hidden service partion and i can still see the hidden partition healthy and active. I had burned rescue & recovery cd and a product recovery dvd Infact the Thinkvantage software 4.0 i guess, had given my option of burning 1 cd(rescure recovery cd) and 1 dvd (product recovery dvd).

So now i got stuck with the problem of restoring the sytem to the default factory settings using those cd & dvd. I had booted the system with rescue & recovery cd and choose the default factory system restore and I could see a the processing dialog working..for hours(i patiently waited for 4-5 hours) but nothing happened it didn't restore from the hidden service partition nor it asked to keep the product recovery dvd1.

I gone through the lenovo/ibm site...gone through the rescure recovery manual but couldn't find the clear procedure to do a complete factory settings system restore.

Is not possible to do the factory settings system restore back to (originally shipped vista) if we downgrade T60 to windows XP.

Any help is appreciated and Many Thanks in advance.

I have done this with my T42 (I imagine the T60 is the same).

When you boot from the Rescue and Recovery CD you end up in Rescue and Recovery. From there choose Restore Factory Contents. Insert DVD when prompted. After all files are copied it should tell you to remove CD or DVD and reboot. When you reboot, you will be back in Rescue and Recovery. From there you need to choose Restore Factory Contents again. This time it will restore everything from the hard drive (after some reboots).

hi GomJabbar,

Thank you for your valuable suggestion. Yesterday night I tried to do the same procedure but it didn't work. Here is what i did.

I booted with rescue & recovery cd choose the system restore --> default factory settings and clicked to next..next to proceed. After the final next a dialog with "Processing request. Please wait...." has come and was there for long time for 3-4 hours I understood that nothing is happening as there was no signs of dvd drive working nor the hard drive working (no sound no hdd light blinking). so i rebooted(after 3-4 hours) with harddrive..as usual nothing happened and it booted windows XP it didn't set back to factory setting where vista should have been booted.

2nd attempt

I had installed ThinkVantage software on XP and rebooted the system with harddisk. While booting i had pressed the Thinkvantage blue button, so eventually it opened Thinkvantage rescue and recovery window, there again i choose restore system --> with default factory settings. Now this time it has given an error message showing "X:\preboot\utils\.." file not found(I forgot the exact file name which it was complaining).

Now i have no options left to do a complete sytem restore..Sorry for the big reply but this is my sad story. Please help me in restoring the T60 with default factory setting so that i can get back my vista business.

Thank you for your time and patience. Any help is much appreciated...

You have, by now, almost certainly scrapped your mbr.
Time to get hold of a floppy drive and give the Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette a go to see if it will allow you to access the service partition.
If it doesn't work you will need to call support and get some recovery discs.

hi Andy,

sorry for the late response as I will trying to find out the way to restore my T60 back to vista and tried few failed attempts to restore it back.

First of all before i say anything, i will admit thought i am not much experieced in internals of computer hardware and OS, I had basic knowledge of that.

I am still able to boot XP from my harddisk, so i hope my HDD mbr has not been corrupted and is perfectly fine and also i could see the service partition healthy from the disc managment.

Probably i way not able to present my problem clearly.

My T60 had been shipped with vista after couple of weeks of usage i though to downgrade it to windows XP. before I had downgraded it to XP I had burned the "recovery & rescue starup disc" CD and the "product recovery disc" DVD(still i had those cd and DVD safely and ready to use).

Now after a couple of months of use I want to restore my T60 back to vista. So for that i had downloaded Thinkvantage rescue and recovery software from IBM and installed on windows XP. As per instructions I had rebooted T60 and entered into rescue and recovery mode my pressing Thinkvantage blue button.

The rescue and recovery application got launched from bootup of harddisk and I had choose full restore. Then it showed this error dialong "x:\preboot\utils\convert.cmd" not found.

I did the whole procedure by booting the RR cd and choose full restore. It was showing the "Processing request. Please wait.." for long time but didn't do anything when i reboot I could see XP booting so it didn't format nor restored Vista. Its booting XP with out any problem.

Please advice me if I am missing any step or procedure to have a succesfull restore. I appreciate any help or suggestion. Looking forward for your reply.

Thanks & best regards,
Ram

ramsowji wrote:hi Andy,
...snip...
before I had downgraded it to XP I had burned the "recovery & rescue starup disc" CD and the "product recovery disc" DVD(still i had those cd and DVD safely and ready to use).
...snip...
Ram

Could you clarify which discs you created and how many discs you created?

Please have a look at this site and let us know which of the options you used in the first picture. If you did both, please post how many discs you created with each option.

thanks in advance

Is your T60 still in warranty? If so call IBM and tell them that you made your restore discs and they are not working right. They might send you a new set for free.