Thinkpads Forum

Got my T61 today and was customizing it to the way I like it and decided to partition the hard drive to keep media files on a separate partition.

Booted to Gparted, partitioned the hard drive to two drives then rebooted. And that's about all she wrote. It will now never get past the MS Windows loading screen. When the bios runs a boot manager it says the boot selection failed because a required device is inaccessible.

I tried booting then hitting the ThinkVantage button too. I got to options and pushed F11 to repair or restore thinking I could just set it back to factory defaults but that doesn't work either. It loads to a point but then all I get is a black screen with a cursor arrow.

So then I tried deleting the new partition and resizing the other one back to the way it was but gparted won't let me resize it. I deleted the new one but can't resize the other one for some reason.

So now what? Call Lenovo?

And for the record.....this sucks.

did you try a bootdisk? try one of those and see if you can get that to run. Better yet, get a XP/Vista disc and format the sucker

Well, first thing first.

Always create restore/recovery disks before "experimenting" something on your computer.

I hope GomJabbar can suggest you something better. Otherwise turn yourself to lenovo...

Its not bricked, don't worry! You just messed up the partitions... which, from the sound of it, means you've lost your OS.

Fortunately, we're all lucky enough to (hopefully) have a backup CD/DVD somewhere. I know my T61 came with a Vista CD. What I would recommend doing is, reinstalling from scratch--including deleting all the previous partitions and simply recreating them from scratch.

You may also be running into problems due to the fact that its a SATA drive. Try setting the drive to "Comptability" in the BIOS, and see if that helps loosen up any problems you may be having.

Seem like you messed the MBR and changed the drive letter. Vista can not accessed the boot program because the drive letter it is installed changed.
You need a Vista Install Disc then choose to repair the partition. Then just fix boot and MBR.

Contact IBM EasyServ at 1-800-IBM-Serv 1-800-426-7378.

Describe what happened. Worst case scenario: They'll sell you the recovery CDs for about $50. Best case scenario. They'll send you the CDs for free.

I've tried booting to the Vista DVD that came with the machine but that doesn't work either. It boots and says that "windows is loading files" then soon after I get that black screen with the cursor arrow I can move around. Sure it's fun to move that arrow all over the screen but that's about all I can do. I've even waiting about 30 minutes to see if it was doing something in the background but nothing happened. Looks like I'll be calling Lenovo.

First try this: Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette. Afterwards, try booting into Rescue and Recovery by pressing F11 at IBM/Lenovo spash screen at boot up. If this works, then your service partition may still be intact. You can then try to do a Selective Restore of the Factory Contents to restore Vista to your hard drive. If this does not work, see below.

Since you have a Vista DVD, you can try to repair your hard drive. You can burn a PC Doctor for DOS CD which has an option to erase the hard drive.

PC Doctor for DOS bootable CD - ThinkPad

Note the following from the readme file:

KNOWN LIMITATIONS

- The Intel Wireless Radio test may return FAILED if the security
function is enabled in the access point.

- The additional hard drive may appear in the Surface Scan Hard
Disk utility and the Erase Hard Drive Erase Hard Drive.
But this is not an actual device failure because this CD is used
as a virtual hard drive.

- To test the CD-ROM or DVD on ThinkPad A30 or A30p, use diskette
version instead of this CD.

- Before starting several tests, Serial ATA (SATA) setting must be
changed by the BIOS Setup Utility, as follows:
SATA Controller Mode Option: [Compatibility]

Setting change is needed for the following tests:
Fixed Disks Linear Verify
Fixed Disks Random Verify
Analog Devices HDA CODEC Test

If SATA Controller Mode Option does not appear in the BIOS Setup
Utility, the setting change in not needed.

I believe you should set the Security for the Predesktop Area to Disabled before erasing the hard drive. After the hard drive is erased, you can set the Security for the Predesktop Area to Normal.

When you said you have the Vista DVD, is this the Product Recovery Disc from Lenovo or is it just a Vista DVD? I ask because the Product Recovery Disc would have all the drivers and software that Lenovo supplies. Some of this software is not available for download, such as WinDVD. I really don't know what software is preinstalled on a T61. If you only have a Vista DVD and you erase your hard drive, you will lose any preinstalled commercial software that may still be on the service partition. You should have burned a Product Recovery Disc set yourself as soon as you received your T61 so that you could recovery all the pre-installed factory software. If you do not have a copy of the Product Recovery Disc set, you can purchase that from Lenovo.

EDIT: I have not actually used the erase hard drive feature in PC Doctor for DOS. I don't know if it is powerful enough to remove partition tables and formatting. There are other utilities to do this that are available from the various hard drive manufacturers, but they usually only work on that manufacturer's brand of hard drive. Here are some.

Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Fujitsu Erase Utility

Samsung HUTIL

Yeah, Vista is a lot pickier about partition changes than earlier versions of Windows. I had the same problem and it went away after I fixed the partitions.
Fire up Gparted and remove the partitions so it is like it was originally. It should then boot Vista.
To install Linux you will have to be sure you create an extended partition with logical partitions to install linux and swap in, not a primary partition.

Are you sure you booted from the DVD? Is it in the boot list? Did you hit Any Key when prompted?

Given that it's still new and you presumably haven't invested a lot of time in settling in, it seems it would be best to reload Windows, rather than attempt a repair which might still leave some damage behind and cause you headaches further down the road.

megalosaurus wrote:Given that it's still new and you presumably haven't invested a lot of time in settling in, it seems it would be best to reload Windows, rather than attempt a repair which might still leave some damage behind and cause you headaches further down the road.

I agree with that. That would be the best route right now.

As was mentioned earlier by Rye Engineer, the moral of the story here is to make a set of recovery disks BEFORE starting to mess around with your new Thinkpad.

Well I received the recovery disks today but they won't load. It will boot up, go to "windows is loading files", then display the windows logo for a minute before going back to the black screen and arrow.

I downloaded the latest Gparted to try and restore the partitions but it won't let me change anything. Whenever I try and resize a partition or even check the drive it just gives me a blank error message and stops.

I guess now my only option is to delete the partitions, wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything.

FYI, the recovery discs erase everything anyway, so you are not losing anything.