Rapid Recovery Error

[Dan Davies]

I tried posting this on the T42 board, but maybe it should be here....

I had to wipe out my T42 and went to use the recovery cd's. It loads up to the Rapid Restore control screen. However, when I click on Restore factory contents, it goes through the warning screens and the 'accept these conditions', but then it pops up a window that says, "There was an error during initialization". I click OK and it just goes back to the control screen. So I cannot start the process of restoring!

Any suggestions?

[Harryc]

Any time I've seen this it was one of two things. Either the Recovery discs are defective, or you need to completely wipe the hard drive before reloading it. For the latter, use something like Activekilldisk.
http://www.killdisk.com/

[Dan Davies]

The HD was completely wiped according the DoD standards. So I guess it must be a defective CD

Is it possible to get just that utility to start the process? I have all the other disks.

Dan

[Harryc]

You can't order individual CD's from Lenovo, but a member here could burn a copy for you. Try posting a request in the Marketplace forum.

[Dan Davies]

Ha! Fixed! Thank you to the people who replied via the forum and via pm. They directed me to the possibility that it might not be the RnR disc, but a consequence of the wipe system used. My employer required the use of the DoD-standard wipe, which apparently wipes out the MBR! So the Recovery CD could not run!

I finally found an MBR repair tool that does not require the use a floppy (what is up with that?!) - it was kludgy, but did the trick. Recovery is happily running right now.

Thanks again to all who replied!
Dan