Recover to factory state

Message

mikjay · #1 Post by **mikjay** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:22 pm

I have a Thinkpad T42 and I was wondering if somebody could help me out of this mess.

Awhile ago a friend gave me a distribution of mandrake linux which I installed alongside my other partitions. I think it's possible it messed with my MBR because when I went to reformat (pressing the blue thinkpad button at startup) rescue and recovery didn't come up. I booted into windows and made a few disks that I thought would help, but I aborted on the 6th recovery disk because I didn't think it would take that much space for the installer. I rebooted with my disks, and quit after the 6th disk. Now I don't have anything, it boots up to R&R every time I reboot. I installed a copy of Windows XP courtesy of my school, but none of the IBM preload stuff is available. Am I going to have to send this in or does anybody have any ideas?

intargc · #2 Post by **intargc** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:24 pm

I second this question...

I have come into a similar problem. I had 3 of the 7 disks and then my thinkpad took a turn for the worst (a virus that I can't seem to track down keeps blue screening me) and I couldn't boot up to finish the set. So, figuring that the 3 would be enough, I went ahead and tried to recover. I don't know why I thought 3 would be enough, but hey, I had no choice anyway...

I'm trying to figure out how to recover my laptop without the recovery disks. I read that if you press F11 upon bootup, that it would take you to the recovery partition. However, when I do this I only get 3 options.

ESC to resume normal startup
F1 to enter the IBM BIOS Setup Utility
F12 to choose a temporary startup device

If I choose F12 I get these following options:

2: Legacy Floppy Drives
3: ATAPI CD0:HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD DRI
5: IDE HDD0
6: PCI LAN

Am I missing something? Please help... I'm screwed!

christopher_wolf · #3 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:33 pm

There should be a way to boot from the hidden IBM area via the BIOS; that does a factory re-image of your entire system; so you can put the factory image on the HDD from the IBM Service Partition. You can't do that if you have gotten rid of the partition or if it got fiddled with somehow (some Linux installs can do this, but there is a way to stop it from doing that). HTH

intargc · #4 Post by **intargc** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:36 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:There should be a way to boot from the hidden IBM area via the BIOS; that does a factory re-image of your entire system; so you can put the factory image on the HDD from the IBM Service Partition. You can't do that if you have gotten rid of the partition or if it got fiddled with somehow (some Linux installs can do this, but there is a way to stop it from doing that). HTH

I did install Slackware... However, I made sure it didn't touch the Windows partition or the hidden IBM area (It's not so hidden when you're in Linux

) But, do you think me trying the restore wiped it out? I read that it was going to remove all partitions, but I figured it just meant the Linux and Windows one since IBM software is aware of the recovery partition...

#5 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:42 pm

There are seven recovery disks if you were using the "create recovery cd's" from the R&R. If the MBR is corrupted you need to get that fixed to boot anything properly.

intargc · #6 Post by **intargc** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:44 pm

Kyocera wrote:There are seven recovery disks if you were using the "create recovery cd's" from the R&R. If the MBR is corrupted you need to get that fixed to boot anything properly.

Indeed. That's what I said. However, I went ahead and tried to recover with just the 3 but to no avail. Did this wipe out my entire HDD?

#7 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:49 pm

Not if the recovery partition is there and the securtity setting is still"enabled" in your bios. The recovery partition should still be there.

Check this out, read through because it describes repair of MBR:

http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4UFUYK

christopher_wolf · #8 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 9:58 pm

One time, I put a SuSE install on a T41 and I *thought* I had missed the Hidden Partition as well; turns out I didn't, luckily I had a copy of the R&R disks.

3 CDs into it; I don't know what it could have done. The first CD is mainly a prep disk...It could have erased the HDD first and then tried to load everything back it was expecting through the rest of the disks. So it may be that you are stuck with a scrubbed HDD and only a partial recover.

intargc · #9 Post by **intargc** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:03 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:One time, I put a SuSE install on a T41 and I *thought* I had missed the Hidden Partition as well; turns out I didn't, luckily I had a copy of the R&R disks.

3 CDs into it; I don't know what it could have done. The first CD is mainly a prep disk...It could have erased the HDD first and then tried to load everything back it was expecting through the rest of the disks. So it may be that you are stuck with a scrubbed HDD and only a partial recover.

Yeah... it looks like that's what it did. The recovery partition is there, but there is no possible way to get to it. However, my Linux partition is gone and the Windows partition is back to its original size.

I'm very sure I missed the hidden partition because I was always able to mount it under Linux and browse it with no problems. However, I think trying this 3 disk recovery messed me up for good...

#10 Post by **Kyocera** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:08 pm

Intargc: Do you have the recovery CD's?

christopher_wolf · #11 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:11 pm

Well, if you don't have a full set and can't do a self-contained recovery to the factory image, you could try calling up IBM and asking them for a set of recovery disks and even telling them that your system went nuts in the middle of making the full set of recovery disks; they may send you another set free of charge.

intargc · #12 Post by **intargc** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:17 pm

No, I don't have the recovery disks...

I'll try calling IBM again. When I called them a little while ago, they said my Warranty was up and they would charge me a minimum of $180 and a maximum of $550 for any further technical support. I said "Umm, No thanks, I'll stick with Linux" and the guy laughed and helped me out a little bit telling me things like "Try F11. That will get you to where you need to be." So, he was nice enough to give me a small hint before hanging up... I'll call them back and see if I can get the disks.

Thanks for the help guys.

intargc · #13 Post by **intargc** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:43 pm

I called and they're going to send me the disks at a charge of $45. That's still better than buy XP all over again.

christopher_wolf · #14 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Wed Jan 25, 2006 10:46 pm

I would actually go along with that since I would hate to get a standard copy of Windows XP and then mess with it to get it as close to an IBM OEM XP version. Plus, I would have to pay for some of the utilities that you can't download from the IBM Site.

afd · #15 Post by **afd** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:16 pm

mikjay wrote:I have a Thinkpad T42 and I was wondering if somebody could help me out of this mess.

Awhile ago a friend gave me a distribution of mandrake linux which I installed alongside my other partitions. I think it's possible it messed with my MBR because when I went to reformat (pressing the blue thinkpad button at startup) rescue and recovery didn't come up. I booted into windows and made a few disks that I thought would help, but I aborted on the 6th recovery disk because I didn't think it would take that much space for the installer. I rebooted with my disks, and quit after the 6th disk. Now I don't have anything, it boots up to R&R every time I reboot. I installed a copy of Windows XP courtesy of my school, but none of the IBM preload stuff is available. Am I going to have to send this in or does anybody have any ideas?

Is it booting up to RR even after you installed XP?
If you have the OS setup and all you want is the IBM stuff, you can download all of that throught the Software Installer (http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4ZKMCT) you may have to download Access IBM seperately, search the IBM website to find the version for your TP.

To anyone who does not have product recovery discs, I highly reccommend following this guide: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=3827

Recover to factory state

Recover to factory state

Re: Recover to factory state

Who is online