Thinkpads Forum

I installed vista onto an external HD on my T60 to see how it ran. Worked great, now, I've disconnected the USB HD, and I had a vista boot manager coming up everything I restarted the computer. Followed some directions on another forum to remove it (booted off the vista dvd again, and ran a program from the command prompt), and now, the boot manager is gone and windows is working fine, but a few things have been changed on the laptop.

First, not a big one, but a change, I can see the second partition "IBM_Service" in "my computer" in windows, which I didn't think I could before. Second, and this is the one thats a problem, when the computer is starting up, and I hit the blue thinkvantage button, it no longer loads the IBM recovery program (not sure of the exact name of it), it just gives me a "Startup Interrupt Menu" with three options, pressing esc to resume startup normally, f1 to enter the bios, or f12 to load the boot menu.

So, my question would be, anyway to fix this WITHOUT using the restore disks (obviously preferable), or, if I have to use them, do they restore everything back to factory, including the service partiton?

Sounds like wiped the ID of the special partition, or possibly the information on it as well with the Vista partition manager. The recovery partition might also work off a setting in the MBR, and you might need to completely redo it with the IBM software to correct it.

So, my question would be, anyway to fix this WITHOUT using the restore disks

This package creates a bootable diskette that can be used to repair a corrupt boot sector on your primary hard drive. This package can also be used to reenable the F11 function as long as the service partition has not been removed from your hard drive.
download for a bootfixer for the t60 on the lenovo site, check this

if I have to use them, do they restore everything back to factory, including the service partiton?

Yes.

Wow, well, I'm pretty ticked at lenovo support right now, I called them Saturday, spoke to a guy who didn't really offer much help other than just saying "use the recovery disks". Looks like that software would have been just what I needed

Thanks anyway Kyocera, I'll keep that link around in case of anything for future use. Luckily I've only had the laptop for a week so I lost nothing except for some time doing the recovery (which takes a surprisingly long time) and setting the laptop back up (which since I haven't had it very long didn't take too long).

That's kind of the standard answer when they run out of troubleshooting steps on the phone, so in future tell them you already did it. It will definately fix a lot of software issues, gotta admit.

I would have figured that, but there was very little trouble shooting. I described the problem, he put me on hold for about 2 minutes, and then came back and told me to use the restore disk.

You can't really blame him. Besides going through some very precise and technical partition managing programs in linux, there are almost zero options for restoring a super custom factory restore partition without using the lenovo tools to rebuild it which also does the entire thing.

own6volvos wrote:You can't really blame him. Besides going through some very precise and technical partition managing programs in linux, there are almost zero options for restoring a super custom factory restore partition without using the lenovo tools to rebuild it which also does the entire thing.

I can only assume you didn't see kyocera's post with a link to this , a whole utility designed to do exactly what I needed done.

I have lost the F11 option as well, so this sounds like it might help.
Have posted a thread on this in the X60 Tablet section ..