Thinkpads Forum

If fixing the MBR did not work, then you probably have to use the Product Recovery Discs (which hopefully you have made already).

Is the Product Recovery Disc made from the Rescue and Recovery program?

I have 3 partitions:

1/ XP partition (resized), primary, active
2/ Mac OSX, primary
3/ R&R partition, primary

System won't boot into R&R anymore. However, I'd like to be able to boot OSX as I do now (with modified boot.ini) AND be able to boot into R&R.

How can I do that ?

Kamika007z wrote:Is the Product Recovery Disc made from the Rescue and Recovery program?

No. If the T60 is like I think it is, go to Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media > Recovery Discs.

@Kamika007z,
I was equally frustrated as you might be now when I couldn't get things working. From what you have mentioned so far, I'm thinking you want the same partition setup as I've got:
C: boot partition
D: 2nd partition
hidden partition

If this is right, I will go through the steps on how I achieved this. You mentioned that you made the Recovery Disc. When you did create the R&R disc set, you should have ended up with 1CD + 1DVD (or multiple CDs). The first CD should allow you to boot into the recovery software (if the hidden R&R partition is unaccessible) while the second CD should contain the backup image of the factory install.

With regard to why Acronis said the backup was invalid, I've never used Acronis before as I've always been a fan of Norton Ghost except in its latest incarnations. I'm afraid I can't really help you there.

With regard to XP setup saying it can't find a disk... You'll need to have the SATA settings in the BIOS at compatability to have the XP CD or my bootable CD (or most other bootable CDs for that matter) recognize the SATA harddrive(s).

If you do end up in the R&R software after pressing the ThinkVantage button, you can always select the BIOS option to restart the notebook and enter the BIOS.

As far as I know, there's no way of getting the hidden partition with the R&R software if you all you do is a fresh XP install after wiping the whole harddrive. You will need to do a restore to factory settings. A fresh install should only be done after that (as explained in the steps below).


What you'll need to do is to do restore the factory install, then do a clean XP install and finally, use my bootable CD to regain access to the hidden partition.

1. As GomJabbar mentioned, press F1 at the beginning of the boot sequence to enter the BIOS.

2. Under Config > SATA, change the setting to Compatability mode.

3. Pop-in the CD (not the DVD) you created to load the R&R software.

4. Do a restore to factory settings.

5. You will be prompted to insert the Recovery Disc 1 (which should be the DVD in your case).

6. When it asks for the Supplemental Disc, just say you don't have it. Recovery should still continue.

7. The whole recovery process will take about 1-2 hours. When it's done, you will be back where you were when you first got your notebook. Go through the Windows initialization process and boot into Windows.

Now, you'll be doing the clean XP install and partitioning the C: drive into 2 partitions.

8. Insert your XP install disc and restart the Thinkpad.

9. Once the XP disc boots up and loads all its drivers, select the option to install Windows. It should detect the current installation under C:\Windows.

10. Select that you want to install over the existing one.

11. Next screen should list the partitions that are available. You should see C: and the hidden partiton. Delete C:. You'll need to confirm your decision somewhere along the line.

12. Now, in the unpartitioned space, create your first partition. I made my C: 30Gb. In the remaining unpartitioned space, create your second partition (~60Gb). There shouldn't be any unpartitoned space when you're done. (this is assuming you've got a 100Gb drive)

13. Select the 1st partition and install Windows on it. Format it using NTFS. You can always format the second partition from within Windows itself so don't worry about that now.

14. Once the Windows installation finishes, install the Intel Matrix Storage Drivers
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62909
Following the instructions in the above link under the heading "clean install", you should end up back in Windows with the SATA settings at AHCI.

15. Go back into the BIOS and set it back to Compatability.

16. Pop in my bootable CD and follow instructions as per before.

17. Once you're sure you can boot into Windows as well as access the hidden partition, change it back to AHCI.

18. You should be able to access the hidden partition now.


I'm hoping things will work out for you now. Since there's no way I can emulate a ThinkPad on VMWare, I can't do screenshots for the R&R portions of the steps. And since I believe you're already familiar with the XP installation procedure, I've decided to skip that too.

@thibouille27,
I'm not familiar with Mac OSX and so, I'm afraid, I won't be able to help you out there. Sorry.

cheers!

Edit: After reading through what I've typed out above, I think I may not have been all that clear. It's past midnight already and I've got to get to work early tomorrow. If you've got any queries about certain steps, please ask (before you begin) and I will try to reply ASAP.

ramian,

Thank you so much for the very elaborate write up.

I do have a problem though. I only made the R&R recovery CD on a DVD. I do not have anything other CD/DVD.

Any help would be great. I actually had bought a T60p 15" model and backed that up via Acronis and they basically are the same system, only smaller, with the exception of the Verizon wireless Sierra card and a 100GB drive instead of a 60GB that was on the 15". I restored that image and Windows runs great, however, I would like to get back that hidden partition. Any help on that would be terrific.

Thanks again, you've been extremely helpful. I'm just bothered as to why the original iso didn't help the R&R recover... :-\


Also, in step 15: do you mean set it back to AHCI?

I'm a bit confused as to what exactly your problem is now... I gather that you used Acronis to backup the entire harddrive as soon as you got the notebook and now you've restored the backup image and are able to get into Windows. I'm assuming that this would be similar to the factory install by IBM.

Would you be able to check whether the hidden partition is still there? If you had actually made an image of the whole drive, then Acronis should have backed up the hidden partition as well. You can determine whether you have the hidden partition if you go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disc Management.

If you do have the hidden partition, then just carry on with the fresh install of Windows (from step 8 onwards). This is if you indeed want the clean install and the 2nd partition.

If you don't have the hidden partition and since for some reason, you don't have the complete R&R disc set (1CD + 1DVD), I don't know of any other way of getting back the hidden partition. I also don't know if the R&R software that is available here:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-63761
will actually install the hidden partition for you if you don't have it. I will probably play around with it when I get home from work today.

In step 14, if you were to folllow the instructions in the page that I linked to, you would have to switch it to AHCI for Windows to detect and install the drivers. So in step 15, for the bootable CD to be able to recognize the harddrive, you'll need to set it back to compatibility mode.

cheers!

I restored my system's MBR to enable the ThinkVantage (aka. F11) boot option to boot the recovery partition.

As a previous person mentioned, I did it using VMWare. So in this instance I might be able to make myself useful

Below is a virtual machine anyone can download and use with VMWare Player (get it here: http://www.vmware.com/download/player/, its free).

http://www.goth.net/~prez/Restore%20MBR%20Disk.zip

I have configured it to use a raw disk (I have a T60p with the 100gb hdd), and it has the rescue and recovery disk image in it too, which it will boot. This should allow you to boot the disk (even if your laptop doesn't have a floppy drive) and then recover the MBR.

I used the 'replace MBR' option not the 'repair MBR' option. I'm not sure if this will work for people with anything other than a 100gb hard disk, but you can give it a try. This is the simple way to recover your MBR.

Right now, I have the default MBR installed, and I have my linux partition as the active partition, and GRUB installed on the first sector of the linux partition (instead of in the MBR), so my ThinkVantage button will work, but then it will hand over to GRUB, and then grub either boot linux, or hand over to Windows XP depending which OS I want to boot. Life is good, especially since I have VMWare on both linux and windows (player on windows, I own workstation for linux) and so I can boot either and have the other going in a virtual machine

PreZ

I had bought a ThinkPad T60p 15" a month ago, backed it up with Acronis and then ended up returning the machine, but I had kept the image for that machine on another hard drive.

After I returned that machine, I had purchased another T60p 14.1" model. It has the same specs as the 15" one except this one had the WWAN card built-in and a bigger hard drive (100GB), the 15" had a 60GB.

When receiving the 14.1", I split my HDD in half almost like yours, which is 32 and 55 and there was still the hidden partition. I thought everything is fine untill I pressed the Blue ThinkVantage button when the computer would boot up and I would get a message saying "Operating system missing." and would force me to press a control-alt-delete.

From here, I thought it would be best if I made an acronis backup. The utility let me select more than 1 partition to back up, so I selected C: and the hidden partition. So I selected both partitions and backed it up to a "*.tib" file onto the D drive. (The second partition I had created).

About making the CD & DVD backup: the only backup I made onto a disc was the "Rescue & Recovery Start Up Disc". The next step that the IBM backup utility was trying to create was a 35GB Image of my installation of Windows and after a while I cancelled the process because I thought it was taking too long to backup 35GB of Data, so instead I used Acronis.

Now, here is where I went ahead and used your "ThinkPad Rescue & Recovery Boot CD", where it would've allowed me to get to fix the Master Boot Record to the hidden partition. It did not work, it actually caused my system to hang at a cursor and neither boot my OS nor the R&R hidden partition entirely.

I tried to use the Acronis backup that I had made on the 14.1" model and pull it up from the D: but it kept telling me it was a currupt or bad copy.

So now I went ahead and popped in my DVD labled (as mentioned before) "Rescue & Recovery Start Up Disc" and chose "Restore your system" from there I chose "Restore my hard drive to the orginal factory state." It warned me of all files being erased, which was fine, the computer is still new, and nothing important was on it, and proceeded. From here, it did it's thing, and I thought all is well. It then rebooted to a point where it was asking for CD1 (or DVD1, I forget) and I would click on Cancel because I did not have one.

So now what I did was put the HDD into Compatibility mode (thank you for the tip) and reinstalled XP Pro from a CD that I had, booted up, and then used Acronis to use the Image I had made from a while back, from my older TP T60p 15", however, I had only backed up the C: drive. So now all is well, however, I still do not have the hidden partition that I would like to get back.

I tried installing the R&R software from the link you had provideed (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-63761) and now the blue ThinkVantage button works upon bootup and in the OS, however I still do not see the hidden partition as I used to see in Computer Management before all of this. It used to be labeled "EISA partition" or something close to that. That is what I would like to get back.

I hope this all makes sense

Thank you again and again.

@Kamika007z,
Your setup is indeed very complicated. However, I personally don't feel it is alright to use the backup made of one system on another system for a number of reasons, one being the problem of dissimilar hardware and hence drivers on the 14" and 15", the other being the issue of Windows XP licencing.
When you were creating the rescue and recovery disc set, it would not have been a backup of your current install (and hence should not have been 35Gb), but rather an image backup of the factory install. Regardless of how you had already partitioned the harddrive, if you had not deleted anything, the R&R disc-making-program would have still produced 1CD + 1DVD.

I tried installing the R&R software from the link you had provideed (http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-63761) and now the blue ThinkVantage button works upon bootup and in the OS, however I still do not see the hidden partition as I used to see in Computer Management before all of this. It used to be labeled "EISA partition" or something close to that.

If the R&R installation (from the link) had actually restored the hidden partition, you should have been able to see it in Computer Management. If not, as it is in your case, I believe the R&R software (that would normally should be in the hidden partition) would now have been installed on your main partition. I think that when you press the ThinkVantage button on bootup, instead of loading the R&R software on the hidden partition, the R&R software on your C: is being loaded. I am just speculating here, as I'm not entirely sure what the R&R install package does (I'm still downloading mine).

So now I went ahead and popped in my DVD labled (as mentioned before) "Rescue & Recovery Start Up Disc" and chose "Restore your system" from there I chose "Restore my hard drive to the orginal factory state." It warned me of all files being erased, which was fine, the computer is still new, and nothing important was on it, and proceeded. From here, it did it's thing, and I thought all is well. It then rebooted to a point where it was asking for CD1 (or DVD1, I forget) and I would click on Cancel because I did not have one.

So now what I did was put the HDD into Compatibility mode (thank you for the tip) and reinstalled XP Pro from a CD that I had, booted up, and then used Acronis to use the Image I had made from a while back, from my older TP T60p 15", however, I had only backed up the C: drive. So now all is well, however, I still do not have the hidden partition that I would like to get back.

At the point during this process, when you clicked on Cancel because you didn't have the Recovery CD 1 and reinstalled XP, did you notice the hidden partition in Computer Management?

I believe the first part of the recovery to factory settings involves the copying of the "Rescue & Recovery Start Up Disc" to the hidden partition while the second involves copying the factory install to C: from Recovery Disc 1. So, since you got to this part where you cancelled the recovery, I'm thinking, why shouldn't the hidden partition already be there?

Truthfully, I'm not really sure how else I can help you. I find it wierd that you're able to access the R&R software that is supposed to be on the hidden partition on bootup but not able to see the hidden partition within Computer Management. Since you don't have a full Rescue and Recovery Disc set, I can't think of a way of getting back the hidden partition with the R&R software on it. As I see it, you've got 3 options...
1. You could call the IBM helpdesk, tell them that you don't have the full recovery disc set and ask them to send you a copy. They might oblige and just send you the CDs for free. I think you already know how to move on from there.
2. Since you already have a fresh XP install, and access to the R&R software from the ThinkVantage button on bootup, just stick with it.
3. Try out what PreZ suggested above. I haven't been using VMWare long enough to fully understand its capabilities, but PreZ seems to have figured out something very interesting. I hope PreZ will be able to provide more details on how exactly he restored the hidden partition using his virtual machine which he has posted.

Despite having owned 2 other ThinkPads, I'm only recently beginning to understand the usefullness of the ThinkPad/ThinkVantage buttons on them as well as the capabilities of the IBM/Lenovo software that come pre-installed. Thus, I apologise for not being to help you out any further as my understanding of your problem now would just be based on speculation and I don't want to provide you with incorrect information and face the responsibility of helping you screw up your ThinkPad or waste your time. I however, am still very interested to see how this will turn out, and will try my very best (to the extents of my experience) to help you solve your problem.

cheers!

I'm still trying many things but as far as I understood things, the disk/cd to restore the mbr is flawed.

More on that soon, I promise.

thibouille27 wrote:I'm still trying many things but as far as I understood things, the disk/cd to restore the mbr is flawed.

I'd really be interested to know how/why you think it is flawed.

ramian wrote:

thibouille27 wrote:I'm still trying many things but as far as I understood things, the disk/cd to restore the mbr is flawed.

I'd really be interested to know how/why you think it is flawed.

I have also problems with the repairmbr-disk but with an other machine:
Playing around with PartitionMagic8 and DriveImage2002 and my X31 I could restore access to the prebootarea with that disk.
After recovery of an image taken with DI2002 I wasn't able to boot into the hidden area while still capable to boot Windows. Both ways didn't work (repair MBR, write new MBR) - I tried also the "old kind" MBR (I know this is for my A31p and NOT for my X31!).

In my case (but I expect it is always) the fdisk.exe (and fdisk32.exe) from the floppy (and your cd) do NOT detect any hard disc and so do not write any MBR.
Since the program cleanmbr just ran before, you're left WITHOUT any MBR. Smart heh?

However if you really restored your hidden partition but simply cannot access it, a simple test is to mark the R&R partition as being active.
Your comp will boot straight to R& partition. Not a solution but it proves your R&R partition works well.

Now, I used the following floppy http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-62978
And it worked (I think).

More later...

ramian wrote:3. Try out what PreZ suggested above. I haven't been using VMWare long enough to fully understand its capabilities, but PreZ seems to have figured out something very interesting. I hope PreZ will be able to provide more details on how exactly he restored the hidden partition using his virtual machine which he has posted.

I did not restore the partition, the partition has to already exist (which if you re-partitioned and erased it, it won't - if you did not re-partition or you left it alone when you were doing your re-partitioning and its still there, you're fine).

If the partition is gone entirely you have to re-install the whole system from the R&R CD, its the only way to get back the recovery partition.

The reason to use my VMWare approach is to restore the MBR specifically. Its basically just a VM that can see the entire raw disk drive, but also has the MBR recovery disk as an image included.

The reason I used this approach myself is that I installed Linux, and it overwrote my MBR (which I didn't want it to do, but c'est la vi). I don't have a floppy drive, so I couldn't create or boot off the MBR revovery disk provided by Lenovo/IBM.

So to get around it I got a virtual floppy drive thing for windows, and ran the rnrrepair.exe utility provided by Lenovo/IBM. This created a bootable floppy, which I then created an image of using my virtual floppy drive.

From there I just created the VM above using that floppy image and the raw disk access, and it re-installed the Lenovo MBR (which enables the ThinkVantage button), and from then on I could access the R&R partition with the ThinkVantage button.

But as I said, if the R&R partition is gone, the VM solution won't help.

Sorry - my fault:
The repairmbr-disk didn't worked because SafeGuardEasy was not installed.
The RnR Recovery Repair Diskette v1.22 worked and worked not.

For me it is repairmbr which worked (it seems).
If not then it was the other disk but I "fdisked/mbr" myself from my XP cd (repair option).

I'm dizzy already~~~~~~~~~~~

ramian wrote:@Kamika007z,
5. You will be prompted to insert the Recovery Disc 1 (which should be the DVD in your case).

6. When it asks for the Supplemental Disc, just say you don't have it. Recovery should still continue.

7. The whole recovery process will take about 1-2 hours. When it's done, you will be back where you were when you first got your notebook. Go through the Windows initialization process and boot into Windows.

So do you mean her all I would need to get back my partition would be the "Rescue and Recovery Startup Disc"? I just want to triple check. Because I did use this to do a factory install and it required another cd other than this one. Which I didn't have.

I do not have a Recovery Disc 1. The process never asked me to make one. I just went ahead and made another one using "Create Rescue and Recovery Media" and I provided it a blank DVD and told me to label it as Rescue & Recovery Startup Disc. It did not ask for another blank DVD.

Kamika007z wrote:I do not have a Recovery Disc 1. The process never asked me to make one. I just went ahead and made another one using "Create Rescue and Recovery Media" and I provided it a blank DVD and told me to label it as Rescue & Recovery Startup Disc. It did not ask for another blank DVD.

I assume your T60 is similar to my T42 in this regard. When you go to Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media, the screen that comes up has (2) options. Create Rescue Media (which you seem to have already done), and Product Recovery. It is Product Recovery that you use to make your missing disk. It spans several CD's or one CD for the Startup Disc, and one DVD for the factory software files.

GomJabbar wrote:

Kamika007z wrote:I do not have a Recovery Disc 1. The process never asked me to make one. I just went ahead and made another one using "Create Rescue and Recovery Media" and I provided it a blank DVD and told me to label it as Rescue & Recovery Startup Disc. It did not ask for another blank DVD.

I assume your T60 is similar to my T42 in this regard. When you go to Start > All Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media, the screen that comes up has (2) options. Create Rescue Media (which you seem to have already done), and Product Recovery. It is Product Recovery that you use to make your missing disk. It spans several CD's or one CD for the Startup Disc, and one DVD for the factory software files.

I went there, unfortunately, I do not have an option for the Product Recovery Disk.

Kamika007z wrote:I went there, unfortunately, I do not have an option for the Product Recovery Disk.

Well, I can see a couple of reasons why this might be the case.

(1) You can only make one set of Product Recovery Discs until you restore factory contents. If you have made a set already, then that option will be unavailable.

(2) Your Rescue and Recovery partition is not intact for whatever reason. Note that the BIOS security for the Predesktop Area has to be set to Normal or Secure to be able to boot into Rescue and Recovery. It should be set to Normal when restoring factory contents.

(3) The program for making the Product Recovery Disks is missing from the Start Menu, and may be missing from the hard drive. Do a search for C:\IBMTOOLS\utils\spi\reccd.exe. It's possible it may be in a different directory on your hard drive. If you find the file, double-click on it to run the program.

OK, I still think that their fdisk.exe are crap (no disk detected).
But I finaly found the command which helped me.

Run from the disk (or cd from Ramain, thank to him) when it says DOS Stratup, press F8. Confirm Yes until it asks for ECHO OFF (you should say no) and doe.exe (NO).

You'll be at the prompt. Now do the following: Reboot and enjoy

I just placed an order for the Recovery CD at no charge. I told them that the computer is still under the 30 day window. I'll report back as soon as I get it in to see how it goes.

Thank you to everyone... you've all been amazing.

I wonder if those files in the pe folder are sufficient to restore the MBR. It might be easier just to integrate onto a CD as the success rate of my CD actually working seems rather random. I screwed up my MBR again and tried to use my CD to fix it. After a couple of tries, I just gave up and used the original floppy which worked. Can't figure out why the CD worked before then.

I tried PreZ's method with his VMWare image, but that didn't entirely work either.

Hey all, I just wanted to say that after I received all 8 CD's from IBM, I was able to fully restore my system back to the factory settings.

However, while restoring, it gets till the Administrator account without being able to finish... it fails to some degree, but I can proceed from there on.

Now my hidden partition is back and I am now happy again. Thank you ramian and everyone else for your extensive help. Awesome forum

Thanks again.

I've tried the rnr32_rd.exe from the beginning of this post, stuck it on my floppy. when i go to start this program a small DOS window pops up and asks me for a compatible drive letter with the diskette.
I type in A or A: and it says incompatible....very odd. Any ideas ?

I'm not really sure what you're doing so I won't assume anything. You'll need to run the rnr32_rd.exe from within windows to create the floppy rather than just copying the file to a floppy and running it from there.
Once you've created the floppy, leave it in the floppy drive and restart your thinkpad. Let the program on the drive load and you should see the following screen.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v85/ramian/2.png
Then, just follow the instructions I've detailed on the 1st page of this thread.

In looking at this first screen, I don't have a thinkvantage option. This is an A31p. So I might not want to use this at all.

Here's what I know:
The f11 option does not flash at startup.
When I enter the BIOS The recovery option is shoen as [Enabled] but it is grey and my cursor will skip over it.

Thanks for your help here.
My objective is to get access to this hidden partition back, not that I want to initaite that today. I just want the f11 option to be active and verify this partition still exists.

I followed the Lenovo sites directions to the letter. When I double click this thing once I've found it it merely creates a DOS window for about a fourth of a second and thats it. There's nothing else I can do with this.