Thinkpads Forum

I'm on my second attempt to do a factory restore on my ThinkPad T40p. I started by reading the instructions posted in the FAQ section. On my first attempt I used the product recovery CD's that came with my ThinkPad. Halfway through the install of the second disk I got the following error message: Error: 1802 – image file invalid or corrupt. I tried cleaning the disk but that didn't work. I tried swapping out the optical drive with a drive from another ThinkPad and still got the error message. So I ordered a new set of product recovery CD's from IBM.

On my second attempt, using the new CD's from IBM, I started with the Rescue and Recovery CD and was able to get to the R&R menu screen. I selected restore factory contents. A number of files were installed from the CD to my hard drive. However, I never got asked to install the product recovery CD's. Once the files were transferred from the R&R CD, the system rebooted and following the reboot an operating system not found message appeared. I booted up cold from the R&R CD again and it just took me back to the Rescue and Recovery menu. I've done this a number of times and I'm stuck in a loop and never get to the next step of installing from the product recovery CD's. Could someone please tell me what I'm missing here? Thanks in advance.

An update: I made a third restore attempt using a Rescue and Recovery CD from my newer ThinkPad (T61p). Once again I'm able to get to the R&R menu, selected "Restore your system" and files were copied from the CD to the hard drive. At the end of the process, I got the following message:

"Please remove the CD from the drive. Power off your machine and power it back on to continue the restore process."

I followed the instruction and powered back up with the CD drive empty. All I get is a blinking dash on the screen. The hard drive light is on but nothing happens. If I power back on with R&R CD in the drive the process described above just repeats.

Any ideas of what I can do to restore my machine?

I'm not an expert on R&R, but 2 things you could try:

1. When installing from CD's, try with another hard drive, if you have a spare one. If it works, there might have been a problem with the 1st hard drive, either not seated properly, not formatted properly or boot records not correct (though I'd think the CDs would have fixed that) or actually a bad hard drive. The first ones can be fixed, not the last one, except with a new drive.

2. With another computer, make a Live CD of Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Then try to boot from that CD with your T40p, and see if it boots properly. That could check connections to your optical drives, and the use of the computer in general. You could also look at the hard drive from Linux, if you didn't do #1, and see if you can figure anything out.

If you haven't used Linux, Mint and Ubuntu are a lot like Windows, can sometimes help in discovering or solving problems, and might even let you use the computer, for internet for example, until you solve this problem.

The T40p uses the HPA and PARTIES if I remember correctly. Restoring those older ThinkPads is a little different. Never had one to restore myself. Note that my experience with a T42 is that you have to Restore Factory Contents twice. First time copies the files from the CD's and boots back into R&R. Second time restores your system from the files on the hard drive.

See if any of the following links is any help.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21238
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=751
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16077
http://groups.google.com/group/ibm.ibmp ... f946520409

Thanks for the suggestions. The product recovery cd's I received from IBM were for a T42p and did not work correctly with my T40p. Lenovo technical support specified the wrong part number. I received a replacement set of cd's from IBM and these worked and I was able to restore my ThinkPad to a factory state.