Please help a newbie....

[Stingray]

Hi there,
I just bought a T61. As soon as I got it I went to the think vantage section and made a recovery CD and a DVD. It just took 1 cd and 2 dvds. Well then I went on an uninstall rampage and in my excitement uninstalled a couple of needed DLLs. So I say no problem. I will just do a restore. Well when I put the DVD in it told me that it was the wrong disc and could NOT recover the operating system to the factory state. Well thank god that the HD partition was still there and I recreated the image from there. (Pressing the blue button on start up).
My questions are:
1. Which disc did I create?
2. Should I have created it some other way?
3. I have a bootable ghost 11 cd. Can I use that to ghost the OS and the hidden partition on DVDs?
4. If the R and R discs are created the right way, do they also back up the hidden partition? In an event I have to move drives?

Thanks in advance guys...

[ryengineer]

You don't use the Product recovery CD/DVD to recover the system as long as you have predesktop area and hidden partition accessible from the blue thinkvantage button.

You only use them, lets way when you cannot use the service partition or have had hard drive failure.

So:

1. Product Recovery Disks.
2. No
3. See this thread for info. regarding HDD cloning.
4. Product Recovery disks creates all the predesktop area including hidden partition but not your personal HDD data.

[Stingray]

You don't use the Product recovery CD/DVD to recover the system as long as you have predesktop area and hidden partition accessible from the blue thinkvantage button.

You only use them, lets way when you cannot use the service partition or have had hard drive failure.

So:

1. Product Recovery Disks.
2. No
3. See this thread for info. regarding HDD cloning.
4. Product Recovery disks creates all the predesktop area including hidden partition but not your personal HDD data.

Thanks for the quick reply RY....
So basically the 1 CD and the 2 DVDs that I made are the right ones. IF incase my hard drive takes a dump this evening and there is no way to restore it. I can go to best buy, buy a new hard drive and install this CD and the DVDs, Will it create the secret hidden partition along with the front OS on the new hard drive? In which case (for future restores) the hidden partition could be used to revive the system back to factory state without the help of the CD and DVDs (as long as there is no Hard drive failure)?
Thanks alot guys... i really appreciate the help

[ryengineer]

Thanks for the quick reply RY....
So basically the 1 CD and the 2 DVDs that I made are the right ones. IF incase my hard drive takes a dump this evening and there is no way to restore it....................CD and DVDs (as long as there is no Hard drive failure)?

Yes it will. T60 takes a SATA drive. This link would serve you better in accomplishing such task.

[foodle]

At least on my T60p, the first disc you need to put in to restore to factory defaults is the CD, not the DVD. It's probably the same for your T61.