Lost Thinkvantage key
Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2006 4:52 pm
With the intent of reinstalling from the factory partition, I tried to repartition my drive by booting a Windows XP (full) CD. I deleted C and recreated it.
Tried to reboot with the blue key down and NOTHING.
Resurrected it by running FDISK from another old system and setting the boot to the factory partition. This got me to the save/restore window, where I was able to sit through an hour of windows install, but thinkvantage key still wouldn't work on reboot. So, I created the restore DVDs and started over again by smashing all of the partitions on the drive and running from the DVD.
This got things back.
So, I went and sprung for Partition Magic. Repartitioning the hard drive to a smaller windows partition with two others for data and pictures. This works fine.
But now when I try to boot with Thinkvantage key, it presents a DOS-looking screen that says to press F11 to get the restore utility. When I do, I get a failed boot that says NTLDR is missing...
Any ideas?
This strategy works fine on my T23, but the restore utility is alot more primitive...
Thanks!
Tony
Tried to reboot with the blue key down and NOTHING.
Resurrected it by running FDISK from another old system and setting the boot to the factory partition. This got me to the save/restore window, where I was able to sit through an hour of windows install, but thinkvantage key still wouldn't work on reboot. So, I created the restore DVDs and started over again by smashing all of the partitions on the drive and running from the DVD.
This got things back.
So, I went and sprung for Partition Magic. Repartitioning the hard drive to a smaller windows partition with two others for data and pictures. This works fine.
But now when I try to boot with Thinkvantage key, it presents a DOS-looking screen that says to press F11 to get the restore utility. When I do, I get a failed boot that says NTLDR is missing...
Any ideas?
This strategy works fine on my T23, but the restore utility is alot more primitive...
Thanks!
Tony