T60 recovery problem

[lemonstar]

I have a boot CD and a Recovery DVD for a bare machine I bought. Before using either I used to get a BIOS type screen showing details of the machine hardware spec.

I've booted with the CD and now I have the Thinkvantage R&R v.4 installed. I'm not really sure how to use this and I have a problem but first... how do I know if there is a recovery partition on the hard drive? I don't think there is but how do I find out?

Anyway - with the TV R&R main screen up I get 3 options:-
Quick Restore (greyed out & disabled)
Rescue Files and
Full Restore

I went for "Full Restore" and (I'm a bit hazy on this as I've been going round in circles a bit putting the CD and DVD in at different times) I went ahead (I think) with the "Factory Restore" - there was a single radio button next tot his option at the bottom of the screen. The drop down list box used to locate a backup to restore from (with options ALL, 1st HD. 2nd GD, CD/DVD, etc) showed no backups with either the CD or DVD (I don't know what it's looking for at this point). I think it then went on to copy further files from the CD first (e.g. X:\Preboot\...) then I had to reboot and put the DVD in and everything seemed to be going fine until near the end of a long copying operation from the DVD I got a "Product Recovery" dialog box up saying:-
"Product Recovery could not find the file X:\Preboot\Utils\Convert.cmd" OK

I had a search through the .iso files used to make the CD & DVD (by mounting them with Microsoft Virtual CD/DVD drive utility) and the file wasn't anywhere in the CD .iso where the files for \Preboot\Utils are being copied from. When I've re-attempted the factory restore I get the same error dialog popping up straight away - it seems to have remembered where it was in the install process.

I had a look in the forums and can see other people have reported similar-ish problems with not finding this file but I can't see a problem or a solution that is exactly the same as the situation I have. Any ideas about how to get round this? What is this convert program? I've had a look to see if I can find a copy of the file but I haven't managed to find a copy.

In the R&R I can use the Rescue files option to see what files are now on the C drive - I can see C:\command.com, boot.ini, autoexec.bat etc and 1 folder "Recovery" which I can't see into.

If I can find the convert.cmd file I can build another iso and burn another CD containing this file and try again. I am however, concerned that this might just be the first of several files that are missing.

ATM the machine starts up into the TV R&R screen. The blue ThinkVantage doesn't change this. Pressing F11 at start up doesn't do anything either (I read on the Lenovo site http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4UFUYK that it would bring up the "Product Revovery Program").

I don't really understand what state the machine is in. Any suggestions on how to proceed from here?
Some pictures of the TV R&R screen as I see it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonstar61/

[BeeJayEmm]

Sorry to hear of your problem. If your hard drive has an intact recovery partition, pressing the Thinkvantage button during boot should bring up R&R. Since pressing F11 at boot does nothing on your machine, the partition is probably missing from your drive. I haven't used v.4 but I noticed in the first photo you posted, near the bottom of the screen there is an option to "Launch advanced Rescue and Recovery". I think you may want to try that to see if it gives you the option for a factory restore (or words to that effect), which I believe is what you want to do. Correct me if I'm wrong. You won't need that missing file; the process is mostly automatic.

Some people have encountered problems restoring to a hard drive which contains data. If you try the factory restore option but it fails, you might need to format or erase the drive before trying the restore again. There are threads you can search for here that will detail how to accomplish this. Post back if you need more help. Good luck!

[lemonstar]

In the advanced R&R I tried the option to do a factory restore and I get the same error message:-
"Product Recovery could not find the file X:\Preboot\Utils\Convert.cmd" OK

What does this command do?
Where can I get this file?

[RealBlackStuff]

See this posting: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 23&start=0
You should probably get a set of Recovery CDs. Put an LF ad (Looking For) in the Marketforum.

[lemonstar]

I had already read that thread and checked my serial number against what the BIOS said - they tie up.

I put an ad in the Marketplace.

There is no information on the http://www-307.ibm.com site about convert.cmd - I'm surprised I couldn't download it there - maybe it's inside some package and not listed specifically itself.

In a couple of days I'll have a stab at installing XP from my Windows disc - I've had the machine lying around for a few days now and there's not much I can do with it.

How do I re-format the disk? There's nothing in the R&R app.

Where can I get a simple command.com DOS type OS I can boot from and run an NTFS format from?

[Harryc]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/

[lemonstar]

Thanks.

[lemonstar]

Does this convert.cmd do the same things as the windows command convert.exe - convert FAT32->NTFS? The bare machine I received had the hard drive partitioned like this:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonstar61/4962466568/

Could the FAT32 file system be causing the problem perhaps?

I don't think I'm going to get this XP restore working easily so I'm now starting to think that I should shell out and try to get Windows 7 installed - perhaps it would be best to create a single partition and go for that and forget about the recovery partition feature.

[nffc2010]

i've got Windows 7 Ultimate recovery dvds made with R&R 4 if that would help? they'd give you a fresh install WITH recovery partition.

Does this convert.cmd do the same things as the windows command convert.exe - convert FAT32->NTFS? The bare machine I received had the hard drive partitioned like this:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lemonstar61/4962466568/

Could the FAT32 file system be causing the problem perhaps?

I don't think I'm going to get this XP restore working easily so I'm now starting to think that I should shell out and try to get Windows 7 installed - perhaps it would be best to create a single partition and go for that and forget about the recovery partition feature.