X60 hard drive wiped, can I use a thumb drive to restore?

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Joseph Davis · #1 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Sun Jul 12, 2009 6:38 pm

The recovery partition is intact, but the primary partion has been formatted. I don't have a docking station or USB CD-ROM drive, and have been attempting to GRUB/U3 bootload XP via a thumb drive with no luck. Some variations I can get Setup to copy files but as soon as the install starts I get BSOD. I've also tried to boot from a CF card in the PCMCIA slot, the unit doesn't recognize it in BIOS (needs an OS).

I've also been trying to use a thumbdrive as a floppy, if I can restore the IBM bootloader to the MBR I can use the restore partition. Which is what I'd like to do.

Any assistance would be great, thanks in advance!

Joseph

#2 Post by **ZaZ** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 3:56 am

You can borrow a drive for a few hours?

Joseph Davis · #3 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 4:26 am

No other SATA 2.5" drives, no. I guess my T61 does, but it's HD is involatile.

Or were you asking about a USB CD-ROM? I have some USB-->IDE cables somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find them.

#4 Post by **Harryc** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 4:41 am

Do you have recovery CD's? If yes, then buy/borrow a USB CDROM drive. That is the easiest path to get you going. There is a diskette based MBR repair available from Lenovo, but if that fails you'll be looking at getting a USB CDROM drive anyway.

Joseph Davis · #5 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 2:08 pm

I tried to use the boot floppy affair stuck on a thumbdrive to restore the OE IBM MBR (I've verified the partition is still intact) but it also partially boots and then they system locks up. The message here is that the X60 has limited support for booting off of thumbdrives, or there's some hardware/software interaction that eludes my at best intermediate level of understanding.

Alright, I think the solution is pretty much clear. I'm going to try an interesting method of flashing over a network when I get home tonight, and if that doesn't take I'll see what eBay vs Newegg has to offer.

Thanks for your time!

Joseph

eatbuckshot · #6 Post by **eatbuckshot** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 2:16 pm

the x60 should support usb booting, if you even get as far as loading xp from your flash drive it is working. I know it works with a t60. The reason it's blue screening is because you're probably using an unmodified xp cd. In order to boot off usb, windows must be able to load the usb mass storage drivers during bootup, that's why it bluescreens. I've done this before, but that's if you really just want to run xp off of your flash drive. I recommend using ubcd4win for usb or bartpe; they are basically small installations of windows that can run all sorts of windows backup, recovery, and diagnostic utilities just from a cd or usb device.
this should get you started
http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showforum=38

Joseph Davis · #7 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Mon Jul 13, 2009 11:26 pm

No, there are no problems with the USB mass storage drivers on my XP install. I am also not booting XP from thumb, I am *installing* it. Fundimental difference. I should probably try that, but I'm sick of it and the USB CD drive will be here Wednesday.

When I get BSOD, it is the first time XP starts from my hard drive. As in I got through setup, was taunted that "Windows is about to run for the first time," system rebooted, and I got the XP loading screen that within 5 seconds turns to BSOD. That was using GRUB to load an .iso of XP, and it did it with --mem set as well as without. I tried all the other methods because of this, and some freeze up midway through running (DOS, floppy image of the IBM MBR fix diskette) while most just bring me to a blank screen with the cursor flashing in the upper left (Multiboot-10 which is another GRUB implementation, U3 installer, others).

FYI, loading an .iso of XP from GRUB worked fine on my T61 today. No BSOD. When I got home sure enough it didn't do anything for the X60.

Lars · #8 Post by **Lars** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:21 pm

Harryc wrote:There is a diskette based MBR repair available from Lenovo,

Do you have any more details about where that is at?

I tried searching Lenovo's site for MBR repair, but no hits at all.

#9 Post by **Harryc** » Sat Jul 18, 2009 4:24 pm

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54483

Joseph Davis · #10 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 8:42 am

No USB CD-ROM yet, supposedly delivered but I never saw it.

I dissassembled an external harddrive a few minutes ago and plugged in an old CD-R, set to cable select just like the HD that came out of it. Plugged into the USB port it causes the X60 to freeze after POSTing. I can unplug the USB cable and the X60 continues on, but that doesn't accomplish what I need from it since it never "sees" or uses the CD-R as a boot device.

Any ideas?

K0LO · #11 Post by **K0LO** » Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:12 pm

Joseph:

What about your idea in post #1 about using GRUB to boot into the recovery partition? If you can make a bootable USB flash drive that contains GRUB or Grub4DOS (preferred over GRUB since it understands NTFS partitions) then boot your machine from the flash drive and get to a GRUB command prompt. Using the command prompt, determine which disk and partition (hdx,y) corresponds to the recovery partition. Then boot into it manually.

This guide in ThinkWiki has typical GRUB commands needed to boot the recovery partition. Start at the second section MBR Written By GRUB for some examples. Since you don't have the IBM MBR, don't forget to hide the service partition before attempting to boot into Windows.

Joseph Davis · #12 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:25 am

K0LO, that looks like a feasible venue and I'll definitely try it when I get some time (Sundays are my only free day). I've been at a GRUB4DOS prompt but had *no* idea what to do as I've no linux-type experience and find the syntax confusing. I'm a Windows luser.

Just thought I'd bump this up to the top with some updates, as I am still having problems.

- Plugging the CD-R into the external USB harddrive's control board wouldn't work because the device recognizes as USB mass storage. It also locked up my T61 upon boot, and once in XP it recognized the setup as USB mass storage under Device Manager but it never mapped the drive with a letter. So that's why that failed.

- I have a shiny super nice X6 Ultrabase dock here, but my X60 tablet won't interface with it. My alignment hooks are off to the right instead of centered like the dock's, and the right rear charging post is a half inch too far inboard. Aside from that it *looks* like it should slip right together, but it doesn't. Anyone have any idea what that's all about, because Lenovo support says they are universal?

Joseph Davis · #13 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Fri Jul 24, 2009 9:25 am

Oh, and thanks for all the support I've gotten so far. I really do appreciate it.

Lars · #14 Post by **Lars** » Fri Jul 31, 2009 2:43 am

Harryc wrote:http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54483

Thanks. I've downloaded it but not used yet.

I wonder what happened to the OP in this thread, did he get his stuff up and running?

Joseph Davis · #15 Post by **Joseph Davis** » Sun Aug 09, 2009 11:34 am

Lars, installing XP via thumb has been an utter failure on this machine. I suspect there is some missing driver that I could slipstream into the XP image which would introduce stability, but I really do not know.

Anyway, I'm typing this reply to you from the X60, I intalled Win7 via thumb and it went smoothly the first try. Go figure.

rodman91 · #16 Post by **rodman91** » Sun Aug 30, 2009 4:49 am

Try to make a boot thumbdrive

CJR · #17 Post by **CJR** » Mon Aug 31, 2009 12:29 pm

I have used the instructions from this page along with an XP SP2 ISO image and had great luck with it - I've installed it not only on my x61s, but on other laptop and desktop machines as well:

http://www.liliputing.com/2008/04/insta ... e-usb.html

X60 hard drive wiped, can I use a thumb drive to restore?

X60 hard drive wiped, can I use a thumb drive to restore?

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