Thinkpads Forum

Hey All,

2 Issues

This is maybe the second time I've had this odd occurance pop-up on me. Upon bootup, I get an error from the systray stating that Active Protection has failed to start, stating that I need to go to PC Doctor Dos and run the Diagnosis for the Active Protection sensor and if it fails, contact IBM.

I restarted and went to the ThinkVantage recovery partition and clicked on diagnostics and it then gave me this message:

"Error - no diagnostics seem to be available on your system... cannot continue!"

After restarting twice, all was well again. I had this problem about a month ago once, restarting it fixed it. This time, it persisted twice.

Also, anyone know how to fix that error from the diagnostic partition? I would like to get BOTH issues resolved.

Thank you in advance

anyone? please?

TIA

Well, i read this yesterday and thought if I'd ever read any post's relative to this problem and honestly don't think I have, in any forums here.

I was going to suggest calling tech support, see what they come up with, probably they will tell you to reinstall to factory, kind of the standard fix all sofware problems solution. You could try a system restore (from windows) back to a time before the problem, personally I always do a factory reinstall before calling tech support. Did you uninstall any ibm programs or install any new AV or anti-spyware software?

Yeah, good point. I will try to perform a factory restore. I have the 6 CD set that they sent me back when I wanted to restore my HDD to all factory defaults.

Question about that the full system restore: when performing a full restore, does it remove EVERYTHING off of my HDD? I have a partition set for storage (drive D), would that be erased as well?

Thank you

If you use the CD set they sent you, I don't think you've got a choice about keeping your other partitions. If you made your own recovery CD/DVD set using R&R, I think that option is available to you.

I have recovered my t60 a couple of times now using the factory set, due to different HD's i use. There are options to keep files on the current drive.

Hmmm... I've only recovered using the factory-provided CD set once and didn't quite notice it. Perhaps the one I tried didn't come with this option.

I did create a recovery set which consisted of 1 CD and 1 DVD. Does that sound right?

Also, if you use the product recovery CD's that IBM/Lenovo send you, where can you access those options?

Thank you!

Yes, the CD's you create from your system are basically the same thing you'd get from lenovo.

I say basically because when I first got my t42 the set I made from the system did not contain sp2, when I ordered a set bout a year later the set contained sp2 with some updated drivers. But right now I don't think there is any difference with whay you have and what they would send you.

You'll be fine with the set you created.

I had my 2623DDU for about a month now and have had no problems until today when I got the same "active protection failed...run PC doctor dos etc." as listed earlier in the thread. It happened immediately after a reboot required by the installation of the latest batch of windows updates and went away on a 2nd reboot. I wonder if there is a connection to the installation of the updates??

The only other thing I did is to install the 1.09 bios about a week ago but the problem only happened today for the first time.

What are the chances that windows updates may be responsible for the "active protection failed...."javascript:emoticon(':?:')
Question

Could be a good clue there If thats the case a "windows" system restore should fix that problem provided you created a restore point before installing the updates.

rudi wrote:I had my 2623DDU for about a month now and have had no problems until today when I got the same "active protection failed...run PC doctor dos etc." as listed earlier in the thread. It happened immediately after a reboot required by the installation of the latest batch of windows updates and went away on a 2nd reboot. I wonder if there is a connection to the installation of the updates??

The only other thing I did is to install the 1.09 bios about a week ago but the problem only happened today for the first time.

What are the chances that windows updates may be responsible for the "active protection failed...."javascript:emoticon(':?:')
Question

Yes that is what I exactly got! Upon startup it quickly displayed a bubble stating that there was an issue with Active Protection.

However, I'm unable to run diagnostics on my notebook because apparently, everything works with the ThinkVantage recovery partition, except the diagnostics.

Can you try running diagnostics by booting up, then pressing the blue ThinkVantage button and test it to see if it has any errors with your Active Protection?

Thank you

I ran the PC Doctor test no problem found, active protection passed, however my thinkpad refused to shut down this morning. I did a hard stop (held down power button) and then tried to do a system restore to a date 2 days ago. It did not work maybe because of the windows updates I installed.

Otherwise system seems OK but I am concerned about the ability to perform a successful system restore.

If this continues I may restore a Acronis image I made a couple of weeks ago.

Let me know how you make out.

A while back I removed my hidden partition because I used Acronis disk utilities in order to resize the partition and split my HDD in half (just about) for backing up purposes. This ended up killing my recovery patition, so I tried restoring the MBR for the hidden IBM diagnostic partition, but it ended up killing my ability to boot into the OS entirely.

I called IBM, got the 6 CD restore disks (I didn't make a backup at that time to DVD so I had to get these) and restored my system. During the installation, some parts failed to properly install, but I got about 99% back loaded onto the machine. The parts that failed were some odd CMD-based scripts. From here I repartitioned, again lost the ability to boot to the IBM recovery partition, then installed the R&R 3.1 update, and once again, I was able to use it again. So now I find out that the Active Protection system gave me that error, and I boot to the hidden partition only to find that the "diagnostics" section states: "Error - no diagnostics seem to be available on your system... cannot continue!"

I made all my backups that were important to me the other night. Now I just want to know a good plan of action to take.

Also, rudi did you try uninstalling and reinstalling the Active Protection software to see if that helps?

Thanks

I also have a bad APS on my X41 motherboard.

Windows will detect APS at work for about couple minutes. If I move the PC, I can see the APS at work realtime. Couple minutes later, it will disable itself.

Diagnosis shows that the APS is bad. But how come it works for couple minutes then disable itself?

Weird.

I think if you ran a diagnosis on your machine and it reported it being bad, then I would have to think that the APS is, in fact, bad on your system.

Also, it looks like the sensor is not behaving properly.

Kamika007z wrote:I think if you ran a diagnosis on your machine and it reported it being bad, then I would have to think that the APS is, in fact, bad on your system.

Also, it looks like the sensor is not behaving properly.

Maybe. Anybody know where the sensor is located?

This is a replacement motherboard from a dealer--not from Lenovo. It already passed the return period. Everything else works like new though.

I have not uninstalled and reinstalled the aps system because the problem happened only one time and I am in a situation where I have a U.S. machine and I am in Prague until the end of September. I will do the minimum necessary to keep the computer running until I am back home where I have access to Tech support and replacement parts. For the moment my priority is a working system.
I have a complete acronis backup as well as data backups but I am not anxious to use them unless I have major problems.

I have also created a backup in R&R but I do not have confidence in it as I am not sure where it is stored but I have 30 Gb data and apps on my hard drive and the backup files might be on the service partition but it is only about 10 Gb.