Thinkpads Forum

I called the LENOVO and they said it might take me $15~45 to get it!!! Has anyone else ever got that for less or free? I am in Chicago, IL. Thanks!

If your recovery area is intact, you can make them yourself with Rescue & Recovery (a ThinkPad utility) for the cost of the blank disks. Use the "Search" function above and you'll find multiple posts detailing the process.

They will send them out for free if your machine is pretty new and you give them a legitimate reason why you can't burn your own using the process mentioned in the post above.

pae77 wrote:They will send them out for free if your machine is pretty new and you give them a legitimate reason why you can't burn your own using the process mentioned in the post above.

I just get my laptop and the Rescure ware crashed each time the system starts. Also I could not upgrade it successfully. Finally I remove it whole. I called Lenovo and told them that. They only say that they no longer send out recovery disk for free, whatever the reason is, after they work for Chinese company...

Just call back and try your story out on another representative. Some of them apparently are not smart enough to understand which situations qualify a customer for a free set.

I can tell you that they just sent me a set for free within the last week, so they definitely still do it. (But another question, not relevant to your issue, is whether they sent me the right set since my machine type isn't listed on any of the disks they sent.)

I actually got them for free. I told them that I was trying to restore my box to factory settings and it wouldn't. It actually didn't work. I got a very 'direct' error message - "cannot restore to factory settings" or something like that. I'd gotten the machine a couple of weeks back.

Told all of the above to the rep and had my discs in 3 days for free. You should call again and try a different rep (although, I've found that they record each call details in your history and might refer to your prev. call and still charge you.) Try your luck though.

They are still sending out free discs. I requested mine last week (I was having a legitimate issue creating my own set) and recd them today.

My DVD drive died in the first 12 hours of use, actually when I was creating the recovery media. I connected an external drive and tried to create them, got a message that I had already created them. Called Lenovo and within about 15 minutes they confirmed that there was a set being couriered to me, the dvd drive might take a day or two longer due to no stock in Australia but that's not a major issue for me. Full marks for excellent support from Lenovo Australia.

If I have that recovery disk can I erase the 15GB partition that comes with the HDD?

arlab wrote:If I have that recovery disk can I erase the 15GB partition that comes with the HDD?

15GB is a big number for Service Partition unless you've a 200GB+ drive, I suggest you read the following:

When a Byte is not a Byte.

You can delete it if you want to (which I don't recommend) but ThinkVantage Blue Button won't function when lets say you're on a vacation, away from Product Recovery disks and your Operating System gets infected with a virus or worse for some reason refuses to boot.

ryengineer wrote:You can delete it if you want to (which I don't recommend) but ThinkVantage Blue Button won't function when lets say you're on a vacation, away from Product Recovery disks and your Operating System gets infected with a virus or worse for some reason refuses to boot.

Using the ThinkVantage button erases all files from the HDD?

arlab wrote:Using the ThinkVantage button erases all files from the HDD?

Pressing Blue Button will boot you into a secure area called Predesktop console which gives you numerous options identical to the following:

Rescue and Recovery.

Newer versions of Rescue and Recovery uses "Simplified Interface".

Restoring your machine to factory state wipes out your primary partition and or entire HDD if selected.

ryengineer wrote:You can delete it if you want to (which I don't recommend) but ThinkVantage Blue Button won't function when lets say you're on a vacation, away from Product Recovery disks and your Operating System gets infected with a virus or worse for some reason refuses to boot.

That's why I made a backup of my recovery disks, the originals stay in a safe and the copies travel with me

Having said that I haven't decided whether I will remove the partition or not.

uberT wrote:They are still sending out free discs. I requested mine last week (I was having a legitimate issue creating my own set) and recd them today.

Same here .... no charge back in September a few weeks after receiving my T61.

...Wow that sucks. I had to order mine for $50. Those [censored]!

They said they would send me some too.

Pocket Aces wrote:...Wow that sucks. I had to order mine for $50. Those [censored]!

You need to learn how to lie better then. I called them and gave them a sob story about not having the battery connected and a power failure and they sent me new disks. In the same call I was able to talk the guy into a set of disks for Vista Home Premium as well.

With Lenovo/IBM, whenever you call and get someone who is either ignorant, unhelpful, unfair, or not willing to comply with a reasonable request, simply say "thanks" and "never mind," and call back. Odds are, on the next call, you will get a better more helpful support rep who will give you what you want.

Well, I got 3 identical sets sent DHL to me, free. No use really for the other two.... if anyone wants to PM me we can work out the shipping costs if someone needs them.... mind you, they are for the T61 in my .sig and may not work on your unit.... there are 4 discs.... 3 DVD's + 1 CD....

I got a bunch of disks with the t61p. I thought that was standard procedure.

-er

You were lucky to get the discs!...My T61p is just over a month old and came with no discs. after creating the first set, i updated using Lenovo update, and it created a new version of R&R and told me to create a new set of discs as the old set would no longer work....Does that mean you need to dissable any further updates to R&R if you get supplied discs ,or have deleted the service partition?

To find out...... pay Lenovo $95 and they will give you the answer! Good old tech support which Lenovo must supply for at least one year, does not seem to exist anymore!
If enough of us complain, maybe they will do something about their lack of commitment to their legal obligations, let alone loyal customers!

hippy chick wrote:To find out...... pay Lenovo $95 and they will give you the answer! Good old tech support which Lenovo must supply for at least one year, does not seem to exist anymore!
If enough of us complain, maybe they will do something about their lack of commitment to their legal obligations, let alone loyal customers!

I've noticed your mentioning it various times in the forum which will be considered misleading unless you tell others the full account of your buying an ineligible International Warranty Service (IWS) machine from the US or calling US support from the U.K.

You can pardon my ignorance if that's not the case.

I have not had any problem getting free hardware support for my new T61p under warranty. Haven't tried for any software issues.

As far as I can recall, unless you have an international warranty, you are only entitled to free support within the country from which you purchased the machine.

just like EJR, I got a set of disks in the box with my 61p.

Another explanation that works is if you tell them you had HDD failure, and replaced the current one with a larger capacity one, but still need the recovery media, as the previous drive failed prior to recovery disks being made.

And like stated above, just keep calling back until someone buys the story, and sends you the disks.

Took me 3 tries with the 41p before I got someone to bite.

Not that I'm advocating making things up, but the trouble with that story is that if the original hard drive failed, you would be entitled to warranty replacement of that hard drive and it would look weird if you failed to ask for that and/or they might offer you that and it would look pretty strange if you refused a free hard drive replacement.