Rescue/Recovery left me stranded, with no R&R application

[drc_t42]

I hope the experts here can rescue me from R&R and help recover my sanity. I've read though the many helpful postings about R&R here and elsewhere, but I am stumped.

Summary:
After a factory restore, the R&R app is not found on the C: drive, yet the R&R 3.1 installer refuses to run, complaining that there is a newer version already present.

The Blow by Blow:
I had to replace the hard drive on my T42. Fortunately I had a copy of the recovery CDs that had been made some time ago. The old drive was a 40GB drive that shipped with the T42. The new one is a 100GB Toshiba.

I booted up the System Recovery disk, got the R&R startup screen, selected Factory Restore and proceeded to feed in the 6 CDs when asked. After a couple of hours and a few detours, my system was restored back to factory fresh, or so I thought. Factory-fresh in my case meant WinXP SP2, so I spent another hour or so installing SP3 and various other Windows updates.

After investing a lot of time on the recovery, I decided I should run Rescue and Recovery and do a backup.
To my surprise, there is no R&R app on the system (at least not that I can find). Under Start/All Programs, there is no R&R application in the Access IBM folder, nor in any ThinkVantage nor Lenovo folders. I fired up Add/Remove Programs, and there is no R&R seen in the list of installed software. So the "factory restore" procedure did not restore everything that shipped on the T42.

I restarted and hit the Access IBM button. After a short delay, the R&R startup screen appeared, presumably this is loaded on the hidden partition. It's R&R Version 4. This seems odd, since according to IBM web site, V4 is not supported on the T42. I hadn't noticed at the time, but back when I started the system recovery, the R&R GUI was version 4.

I rebooted to Windows. Since there is no R&R app installed on the C: drive, I visited the IBM web site and downloaded the R&R V3.1 installer TVTNR31. I chose V3.1 since its readme states that the T42 is supported, whereas the readmes for V4, 4.1, 4.2 do not list the T42 as a supported system.

The 3.1 installer (TVTNR31) didn't do much. After another hour of googling, I found that the installer merely copies the required files into IBMTOOLS/DRIVERS/TVTNR31. Hidden in that folder is the actual installer. Alas, it fails with an error: 'newer version of this software is already present on this system'. I don't know what is triggering this error, as I can't find any evidence of R&R present on the C: drive. Perhaps the 3.1 installer looks on the hidden partition and sees V4 there?

Other tidbits:
- I did not erase the replacement 100 GB drive, nor reformat it prior to the Factory Restore. (I don't know how).
- my T42 must have been a 'newer' build, as it has a 4.45 GB FAT32 hidden partition named SERVICEV001. I've learned on this website that early T42s had a smaller hidden partition with different stuff in it.
- I suspect that R&R V4 was installed on the machine some time ago by the previous custodian of the machine. He must have made the set of recovery CDs using it. That might explain why there are vestiges of V4 lurking. How he got V4 installed is unknown.

I've thought that I might try erasing the magic SERVICEV001 partition and then run the R&R V3.1 installer again. If it is failing because it's finding R&R V4 on the hidden partition, maybe the installer would then proceed to completion, install the app on the C: drive, and also reinstall everything that needs to be on SERVICEV001. But I don't know how to manipulate/erase the hidden partition (since it's hidden!).

Or perhaps I should erase the entire drive (how??), and start the Factory Restore procedure again. Frankly, I'd prefer not to spend another 6 hours to do so...

Suggestions gratefully received.

Thanks, Dave

T42, Model 2374, 1GB.

[craigmontHunter]

I have loaded RNR 4 on my thinkpad t41, si I think it is supported (if not, it works). I also know that there was a change from R&R 3 to R&R 4, with a diffrent compression or file system so that is is not compatible. I think that the previous custodian of your machine may of upgraded to R&R 4, which updated the hidden partition, and if you did a true factory re-install, with disks created after the partition was updated, you may have the R&R 4 partition and no software related to it in windows. If the previous owner did a clean re-install, you may have just the original image with a updated partition. If I have confused you, just try to run R&R 4, it should run.