Restore to factory settings

[instromaniac]

I wanted to restore my T43p to factory settings but ran into several problems.

I installed ubuntu, resulting that the grub installer had overwritten the MBR, so I couldn't launch the IBM recovery program. I also only burned the first 4 restore discs, so the set isn't complete.

The grub boot manager did seem to give an additional windows option in the list, from which it launched the IBM recovery program. I did this, started the recovery, it formatted the C partition and the linux partitions, but then gave an error.

So I was left with an empty HD, save the hidden recovery partition. Searching these forums I found out the MBR might have given the error, so I tried fixing it.
To no avail unfortantely. I burned a CD with the iso found on the IBM site for fixing the MBR, but that didn't seem to work. Then I made an image of the floppy (with virtual floppy drive) and burned it to a CD.
This didn't work well either: it didn't boot at startup so I booted with a DOS startup disk, removed the disk and entered the disk with the MBR repair util, started the MBR repair util (mbrfix.exe) but it gave an error like this:
SafeGuard easy couldn't be found

So what I did now is installing XP from an OEM XP install disk I still had lying around here. Worked perfectly, but I can't seem to activate it with the winXP activation number provided with my Thinkpad.

So I don't really know what to do now. Ideally I would like to recover the Thinkpad from the hidden partition. Is there a way, since I have winXP running again, to make the recovery disks again, even though it's another windows copy running on the Thinkpad? Will these recovery disks be an image of the recovery partition, or simply an image of what's currently installed on the C drive?

[Zeitgeist]

Before installing linux you should have burnt the recovery CDs. Try to get them from IBM/Lenovo or from a forum member.

[carbon_unit]

You can try telling Lenovo that there was an error creating recovery cd's. Maybe they will have pity on you and send a set.