Thinkpads Forum

Has anyone tried to create the recovery disks for a t61p? I have tried the create rescue media and it goes through the first two screens ok, then it says that the recovery files are not found and stops the creation. any advice or solutions to this? TIA

Felipe Diaz

Call Lenovo and tell them your having problems, it happened to me, they sent some CD's out ASAP.

did they charge for the cd's or sent out free of charge? i don't mind paying cuz i would also want to buy the thinkpad abgn card also


edit,

I just called them right now and they are sending them out, should receive them by wednesday next week. No here is another question, with the recovery cd's, will i be able to reclaim the HPA and use all 160 gigs of the hard drive or will there still be a HPA area? i have looked in the BIOS and there is no setting to make the HPA area visible and reclaimable , has anyone had any issues with this

If it's still in warranty period there is no charge for the CD's.

Kyocera wrote:If it's still in warranty period there is no charge for the CD's.

That depends on the country, its not universal.

Cheers,

Bill B.

Kyocera wrote:If it's still in warranty period there is no charge for the CD's.

Sadly that policy is no longer in practice now. One has to pay $45 + applicable taxes regardless of in or out of warranty machines. However, since most IBM employees are so generous they still send them out free of charge if asked in a appropriate manner.

diaz1023 wrote:snip.........No here is another question, with the recovery cd's, will i be able to reclaim the HPA and use all 160 gigs of the hard drive or will there still be a HPA area? i have looked in the BIOS and there is no setting to make the HPA area visible and reclaimable , has anyone had any issues with this

There is no Predesktop area option coded in the BIOS of *61 series machines, only *60 and prior series had it.

ryengineer wrote: There is no Predesktop area option coded in the BIOS of *61 series machines, only *60 and prior series had it.

ryengineer, how then would you go about removing the HPA on a *61 series machine? And, if you remove it is that likely to give you problems later on other than not being able to restore to factory state from HPA?
thanks,
DenTP4rm

billb wrote:

Kyocera wrote:
If it's still in warranty period there is no charge for the CD's.

that depends on the country, its not universal.

His Location says CA, that means California USA .

ryeengineer wrote:Sadly that policy is no longer in practice now. One has to pay $45 + applicable taxes regardless of in or out of warranty machines. However, since most IBM employees are so generous they still send them out free of charge if asked in a appropriate manner.

That's not good , what if someones HD crashes or is acting up and they call and the machine is still under warranty? What if the CD's that one created don't work? Hint Hint Hint What if someone on the board who read this and had a set and just happened to burn an extra copy and.........

Whenever I have had to deal with tech support over the years in the top 5 steps of their troubleshooting tree for any problem software or hardware related is to reinstall to factory. Now if for some reason or another you can't make CD's (this actually happened to me and others last year sometime) due to a problem with the program then you are entitled to a free set, NQA. There was a problem some users (like me) were experiencing with brand new t60's that would error out when trying to make the CD's. Got to tell you if I had called and explained this problem and they told me I had to buy a set, I would not have been a happy camper.

Kyocera wrote:snip........Got to tell you if I had called and explained this problem and they told me I had to buy a set, I would not have been a happy camper.

The policy was changed merely because customers started to manipulate it. Users are also limited to make only 1 copy of these disks via Rescue and Recovery too but are not restricted to duplicate it to as many copies as they want through a DVD burner / software etc. for personal usage. Chances of 3-4 sets of these disks failing are very minimal but again probability of you getting a non lenient rep everytime you call is too.

DenTP4rm wrote:ryengineer, how then would you go about removing the HPA on a *61 series machine? And, if you remove it is that likely to give you problems later on other than not being able to restore to factory state from HPA?.....snip

I am only aware of one way of removing it in *61 series i.e. a clean install. During the installation of almost all modern OS today, you can wipe out that partition. Other than that I have no knowledge on how to remove it.

ryengineer wrote: I am only aware of one way of removing it in *61 series i.e. a clean install. During the installation of almost all modern OS today, you can wipe out that partition. Other than that I have no knowledge on how to remove it.

ryengineer
I can see what I assume is the HPA on my T60p in Disk Management section of Computer Management. (It's called SERVICEV001). I just discovered I don't have any right click options though. So is the only way to remove this thing doing a complete new install? What if I booted from a cloned drive and put this one in the Ultrabay SATA adapter? Couldn't I delete the HPA then?

The T60 does not have a HPA, but rather a FAT32 service partition. In the BIOS setup menu, go to Security > Predesktop Area > and DISABLE security to reclaim this space.

GomJabbar is correct.

@ DenTP4rm, you initially asked me about *61 but you seem to have a T60p.

the one thing is that I don't see any option to claim the hpa in the bios on my t61p. you guys also mentioned that a clean install will help remove the hpa, will using the recovery cds help me do this or would I have to purchase a retail version of vista business? TIA

The recovery discs will retain the restore partition.

so can i purchase an upgrade version of vista business or do i need to get a full version to remove the hpa? TIA

ryengineer wrote:GomJabbar is correct.

@ DenTP4rm, you initially asked me about *61 but you seem to have a T60p.

Ryengineer you are correct, I do have a T60p. I was asking about the complication of deleting the HPA on a T61 as I'm weighing the pros and cons of a getting another T60p or moving on to a T61. Not being able to delete the HPA on the T61 sounds like a bit of a liability. In the process I got curious about how I would go about eliminating the Predesktop area on my T60p. Thanks to GomJabbar for the tip.
DenTPr4m