T42 Will not boot WinXP Pro Install Disc Only Rescue Recover

[JmartinLGA]

I have several T42 Laptops that myself and a coworker ran the recovery disks in. Now, when we turn them on the go straight to rescue and recovery. When we try to boot them with the Windows XP pro install disc it will go straight to rescue and recovery.
Any Ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[Neil]

Welcome to the forum! Are you pressing F12 at the prompt and then choosing to boot from the optical drive?

Another thing. Did you complete the recovery process, or just install R&R from the disks, and then never complete the restore?

[JmartinLGA]

Thanks you!
I have pressed F12 and selected the Optical Disc Drive. I would say press any button to boot from disk and then it would stall. Is this because I may not have finished the restore?
To do a restore would one after they had installed the discs, would then at the recovery menu: click "restore factory content"?

Again thanks for the assistance!!

[JmartinLGA]

Completing the restore worked on some of the computers, but on others when I try and run the restore to factory default it states "IBM product recovery failed during the convertion phase". What do I do in this situation?

[Neil]

I have pressed F12 and selected the Optical Disc Drive. I would say press any button to boot from disk and then it would stall.

That sounds like either a faulty disk or drive.

To do a restore would one after they had installed the discs, would then at the recovery menu: click "restore factory content"?

That is correct. When you use the disks, they restore the recovery (hidden) partition, but not the OS. After that, you will boot into the recovery partition and restore factory content from there.

Completing the restore worked on some of the computers, but on others when I try and run the restore to factory default it states "IBM product recovery failed during the convertion phase". What do I do in this situation?

My guess would be a corrupt recovery partition. I would try to fix it by writing zeros to the entire disk to completely remove anything that is one it, then try the restore disks again. It may work better the second time. Or bad disk(s)/drive could be at fault.