Thinkpads Forum

I am trying to use the XP Tablet Restore discs from IBM to restore a fresh HD. I moved the CD to the boot drive. The computer can't find an operating system on any of the discs. I stuck the discs in my A31 to check them and I can't find any OS either.

I have 6 CDs numbered 1-6 of 6, is there one missing that is used to boot?

I've just looked at a set of recovery cds here, there are 6 recovery cds and another one marked rescue and recovery - the boot cd. I think you are missing this one.

Oh crap. So are there any volunteers that want to burn me a copy of the R&R disc that goes with this set? Please.

Check your PM.

Now I have the RnR CD. I have performed the necessary steps to do a full system recovery. I'm using an external USB bootable CD drive.

I set the USB CD as the first bootable device.
I use the RnR boot disc and select full factory recovery.
It copies a bunch of files, and tells me to remove the disc and reboot.
When I click restart it has an error, and wants to debug, but it seems related to removing the disc before clicking restart. It really seems inconsequential.
It restarts into the RnR files it has copied to the HD.
It asks if I have a suplimental disc, and I select no, then it asks for the first recovery disk, which I insert and click OK. This happens 5 more times. While the 6th/ last disc is in it finished copying it begins the recovery process with 2 progress bars "Preparing the hard drive, please wait" and "Total Progress." After about 30 seconds a message comes up "Product Recovery failed to restore your system." When the message comes up there has been no progress. I have tried again, after clicking OK. I have rebooted and tried again. I have reformatted the HD and started from scratch. I tried on another HD altogether. It always fails at this point. I have been working on it for the last 9 hours, non stop.

To recap, the USB CD appears to be working perfectly, and the HD boots into RnR. The options are all there, and even under custom factory restore I can de-select software such as Semantec Client Security. Everything appears to be working until that point.

The recovery discs list my machine type 6365 as one of several supported. The only thing I could imagine is if there is a White list of machine serial numbers (that would be in the thousands) listed in the recovery media, or something like that, that prevents it from restoring XP on my originally Vista machine. I can't imagine this being the case, but anything is possible. I have been informed RnR is finicky, and if there are ANY HD issues it will not work, but I can't figure it out.

One thing is for sure, if I get this working, I'm going to use imaging software to back it up.

So, any ideas?

Check your PM.

Turns out having a 5 in 1 flash memory reader with a Sony MS, installed in the PCMCIA slot was the cause of the failure.

Once that was removed everything proceeded normally. It was a bone head mistake.

OE, Please remove operator, press any key!

So can you do the banana dance now?

UH,....... YEa!