System Restore Disappeared and Won't Install

[ArtShapiro]

The patient is a T61 6460-7EU.

I went to run System Update, as I do every so often, and couldn't find it. It wasn't in the Thinkvantage folder and showed no signs of being resident anywhere on disk; it wasn't a candidate in Add & Remove Programs on this XP machine.

So, scratching my head, I tried to find 3.14 on the Lenovo site, and failed spectacularly - has anyone ever seen a worse search facility?! Naturally, Google found it instantly on the Lenovo site.

I've tried several times to install it, including safe mode, and haven't succeeded. It (installer) stops various services, copies various files, and then starts the services. The progress bar simply stops during the attempt to start services, and the whole shebang is rolled back. Event Viewer merely reports an installation failure with no details.

So I have a couple mysteries here - why can't I reinstall and where in Arthur's name did it go in the first place?

Any sagely advice or pontification would be welcome.

Art