Thinkpads Forum

OK. First of all, a little bit background on the machine: I bought this T60p from ebay and it turns out that this is a mobile workstation for Lenovo Singapore employees, so everything was preinstalled with the IBM e-client version of Windows XP.

Yesterday I browsed through the Lenovo Thinkpad official download section and found ThinkVantage rescue and recovery tool. I downloaded it and installed. After the reboot, it goes directly to the Rescue and Recovery screen. Now everytime I boot it goes to that tool and I can't boot into XP any more. Does anyone know a way around that? Either bypass or uninstall ThinkVantage R&R?

I also tried booting from a XP installation disc, but the installation program says it can't find any hard drive on the machine...I wonder if it's because I installed Ubuntu (dual-boot with my previous XP) or because Lenovo made modifications to the harddrive boot sector or whatever?

Any help is well appreciated.

Does the ThinkVantage tool gives you any options like these? Can you boot in the Safe Mode by pressing F8 from the menu during the boot?

kevinjieu wrote:snip...I also tried booting from a XP installation disc, but the installation program says it can't find any hard drive on the machine......snip

You need to switch HDD settings from SATA to Compatibility mode in the BIOS for that.

Thanks for the reply. I don't have the screen you have shown (My version is 4.1). This is the first screen I got when entering Rescue and Recovery Here


Also, when for the BIOS settings, if I set to compatibility would it compromise the performance?

Thanks a lot.

ryengineer wrote:Does the ThinkVantage tool gives you any options like these? Can you boot in the Safe Mode by pressing F8 from the menu during the boot?

kevinjieu wrote:snip...I also tried booting from a XP installation disc, but the installation program says it can't find any hard drive on the machine......snip

You need to switch HDD settings from SATA to Compatibility mode in the BIOS for that.

If you press "Launch advanced Rescue and Recovery" then you'll see similar menus as I posted earlier, you're in the simplified mode at this moment.

If you press "Full Restore", your system should be put back to out of the box factory state as it was when you received it for the very first time.

ryengineer wrote:If you press "Launch advanced Rescue and Recovery" then you'll see similar menus as I posted earlier, you're in the simplified mode at this moment.

If you press "Full Restore", your system should be put back to out of the box factory state as it was when you received it for the very first time.

I tried Full Restore to factory condition but it told me that the recovery function has been removed. I guess it's because this is a laptop for Lenovo employees and they disable the recovery function?

The hidden service partition is either still present (which I strongly believe after carefully reading your posts) or has been removed.

I suggest if you've a floppy disk drive then give following a try:

Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette.

Otherwise if your machine is still under warranty then call IBM Support Center at: 1-800-565-3344 (24/7!) or 416-383-3344 in Toronto to request a set of Product Recovery disk.

You can change compatibility to SATA AHCI, following guide will tell you how-to:

Installation instructions for Windows XP - ThinkPad T60, T60p.

The changing of SATA compatibility mode works like a charm. Thanks a lot.

The machine is still under warranty but I don't know if Lenovo will give me recovery discs - since I bought it from ebay. I will give them a call and find out. By the way, do you happen to know where in Toronto is Lenovo's office? Is it at College and Spadina?

ryengineer wrote:The hidden service partition is either still present (which I strongly believe after carefully reading your posts) or has been removed.

I suggest if you've a floppy disk drive then give following a try:

Rescue and Recovery - Recovery repair diskette.

Otherwise if your machine is still under warranty then call IBM Support Center at: 1-800-565-3344 (24/7!) or 416-383-3344 in Toronto to request a set of Product Recovery disk.

You can change compatibility to SATA AHCI, following guide will tell you how-to:

Installation instructions for Windows XP - ThinkPad T60, T60p.

Lenovo's sales office is in Brampton, IBM and it's lab is in Markham, all warranty and support matters are dealt by the latter. Helpdesk (1-800-565-3344) is in Montreal. If your machine is IWS (International Warranty Service) eligible then there shouldn't be a problem:

International warranty service (IWS).