X61: Restoring access to recovery partition

[hairoun]

Hello everyone,
This is my first post. And in case someone has posted a similar question; I apologize. I have searched this site and even the internet extensively for a solution with not much help.

I recently tried exploring Ubuntu 7 on my X61t. As you know, there are no internal drives so I installed from the iso using UNetbootin (a great utility).
I installed the Ubuntu on a 16GB USB flash drive and it went great. My only problem was when I attempted to restart my PC without the USB inserted. I found out that I could not boot, getting a Grub load error 21. Once I replaced the USB flash drive, I was able to select the OS to load and everything was fine.

Realizing the problems that could arise from this (losing the drive, becoming corrupted, forgetting it) I began searching for methods to fix this; allowing me to boot with out the flash drive. I booted into Rescue and Recovery Mode then
I tried the BootRec.exe /fixboot but this did not work giving some sort of error message. I then ran BootRec.exe /rebuildbcd which ran successfully but with undesired results.
Now I am unable to to press F11 or the blue ThinkVantage button to enter the rescue and recovery partition. Instead it boots directly into Vista Ultimate.
I have found many suggestion/fixes online but they all require me to use the Vista DVD and as I mentioned I have no CD/DVD drives or even the actual DVD. And now I can't even access the recovery partition.

I would greatly appreciate any help. In my searches online, I cam across someone with similar problem but no solution.

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=10186