Thinkpads Forum

My trusted 23 month old X-201 threw a hissy fit a couple of days ago, I (vaguely) recall clicking the "install" button on a legitimate looking Adobe Acrobat or Flash update, and sometime thereafter I started seeing "System Message – Write Fault Error" errors on screen, and more of these error message kept popping up, eventually I ended up with no icons left on my desktop after several reboot except the Recycle Bin and the "S.M.A.R.T. Check" utility window telling me all kinds of systems blocks were not found, and hard drive boot sector reading error messages, and ask me to purchase and make payment for the software solution to repair the faulty elements......, sure, kick me when I am down.

I can still get into Windows 7 desktop, I do see some program icons if I click the "Start" button on the bottom left corner of the task bar, however I get an "(empty)" response when I hover/click a program such as Microsoft Office Tools, there are no "recent document" list either.

After contemplating downing a few shots of Scotch Whisky, I powered down the X-201, powered it back up and went into the ThinkVantage Rescue & Recovery mode, and found that I was able to navigate to my user directory and see all the folders on my desktop and elsewhere under the "document" directory, I can also see the Favorite folder along with the Music folder, so I used the File Recovery feature to copy these folders/files to an external USB drive last night, it took a long time and never showed more than 2% complete for the two hours I monitored the progress before I went to bed, in fact it would cycle between 0% to 1% and back to 0%, sometimes to 2% and then back to 0%. I was able to verify this morning that I am able to see the files and open them from my 5 year old T-60 even though the thumbnail icons are slightly grayed shadow, not sure what this means.

I am now running PC-Doctor tests on the X-201, the one-pass test passed without any issues identified anywhere in the system including the Hitachi 500GB 7,200RPM drive, I have now ran the Full System Test including the SMART Extended Self Test for Hitachi drive which also passed without any problems reported.

I suspect I have to do a Full System Restore at this point along with reinstalling all my third-party programs and data files, but I do not quite understand how I am able to see all the folders and files from Rescue & Recovery and looks like the hard drive may be OK, yet things seem to have failed big time from Windows 7 environment especially with symptoms of hard drive failure from this "S.M.A.R.T" software utility? I am actually somewhat suspicious if this was a virus attack? (I do have full Norton Internet Security pkg installed with up-to-date subscription)

(Hind sight I wished I had done the Rescue & Recovery back-up on a regular basis.......)

Have I actually suffered a hard drive failure?

Have I somehow corrupted the Windows environment?

Should I perform the full restore just to be safe?

Any suggestions and/or comments would be very much appreciated.

aviography wrote:My trusted 23 month old X-201 threw a hissy fit a couple of days ago...

I had a similar experience a few weeks ago on my wife's T400. I even had the drive replaced under warranty by Samsung (64GB SSD) but in reality discovered the drive was fine and the files were all there. I ended up using Norton 360 to clean up the system, and had to reinstall a few programs to get everything to show properly. It appears it was a virus or trojan, I cannot remember which by name now, but I would try and clean up your system (also now your T60). Good luck. She also had clicked on "some update" just prior to the catastrophe.

Decided to just rebuild the system, however I was not able to directly rebuild the system from the Rescue & Recovery, so I pulled out the Lenovo provided Win 7 and Applications an dDrivers Recovery disk sets, loaded them, and initiated the recovery.

No luck either, I get a black screen with "BOOTMGR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del", which puts me into the ThinkPad screen and then the same "BOOTMGR is missing, Press Ctl+Alt+Del to restart" error message.

Can certainly use some help at this point..........

TIA

Are you absolutely certain you're booting from the recovery disks, not your hard drive?

Thanks.

I followed the instruction that came with the Lenovo disc set, went through the process of copying Win 7 OS (1 disc) and Applications/Drivers Recovery (2 discs) with an external DVD R/W drive, then removed the disc and disconnected the external DVD R/W drive, and restarted the laptop, this is when I ran into the "BOOTMGR" error message.......

aviography wrote:Thanks.

I followed the instruction that came with the Lenovo disc set, went through the process of copying Win 7 OS (1 disc) and Applications/Drivers Recovery (2 discs) with an external DVD R/W drive, then removed the disc and disconnected the external DVD R/W drive, and restarted the laptop, this is when I ran into the "BOOTMGR" error message.......

My advice, first make sure you have cleaned up the virus/trojan. Next, I would repartition/reformat the drive. Then run the recovery disks. Hope that helps.

I had forgotten that I had made a clone of the drive 1.5 years ago, I attempted to clone this good drive over the buggered drive using Acronis True Image Home edition 2010 which is what I had used to clone the drive.

The cloning operation failed shortly after it got started, so I used the disk clean program from Acronis to wipe the drive before attempting again but without any luck, I then found a short thread on Acronis support forum http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29783 where someone had similar problem but was able to use CHKDSK command to repair corrupted sectors etc. and made the drive work again.

I didn't have such luck, I tried to connect the wiped drive to the X-201 after it was powered up with the known good drive, the only drive that came up was the Sys Drv with very small disk space stated, I think this is the Windows 7 hidden recovery space, the "main" drive was nowhere to be seen.

I'm not going to fuss around with this anymore, I will have a go on the warranty claim with the manufacturer since I don't think this was a virus attack as I had initially thought since the Adobe Flash upgrade didn't come in as a link in an email which a lot of these viruses do, it was as legit as any past Adobe upgrades that I have clicked, installed, and never suffered any similar problems as this time, it was likely just coincidental in timing.

I used the good drive and generated Rescue Recovery DVD and backed the drive to an external USB hard drive, I then started with a brand new drive and used the R&R DVD in conjunction with the USB hard drive to recreate a working drive like the good drive I had started with.

Windows 7 booted up normally with no surprises, however I noticed the Q: partition for the R&R on the newly created drive has almost no data rather than some 7+ GB of data of the good drive, so decided I will shut down and use Acronis True Image to clone the good drive to this new drive so I can retain the Q: partition content.

This is where I ran into an unexpected problem, the X20 has now stuck on the "Shutting down" screen for the last hour and half now with no signs of any activity from the hard drive light, I am hesitant to force power down by pressing and holding the power button from concerns in corrupting file(s).

Any suggestions please? I am going to let it run for some time and see if it would shut down......., if not then eventually I will have to used the power button to turn it off.

Did you put the new blank drive in the x201 and the old good drive in the external enclosure, then boot from the Acronis rescue cd?

mpcook wrote:Did you put the new blank drive in the x201 and the old good drive in the external enclosure, then boot from the Acronis rescue cd?

I hadn't gotten there yet although that *was* my planned next step, and yes that is how I had cloned the drives in the past on the X-201 and T-60, it works well cloneing both the C: drive and the Q: recovery space drive, I guess the Thinkvantage Rescue & Recovery does not clone the Q: partition......

I've since forced a power-down, things "seem" to be OK after I started it back up again so I will hold off cloneing the original known good drive to this "rescue recovered" drive, I will use it as is for a bit and see if there is anything funky before I use the Acronis True Image to clone from the original good drive.

I had forgotten about this thread I started a few years ago until I searched for "BOOTMGR" this morning.....

Somehow I got things going again 3.5 years ago with the source drive, so I never continued to sort out the BOOTMGR issue.

However I recently ran into a problem cloning the 500 GB source drive to a 1 TB drive, the machine was working fine (but slow) otherwise, so I decided to do a full recovery from the recovery partition on the 500 GB drive, I ended up with the "BOOTMGR missing, press Alt+Ctl+Delete to restart" message.

I searched the web and found "Partition Wizard" software which I tried to use to activate the partitions, didn't work.

I then wiped the 500 GB drive clean using Partition Wizard, then did a Surface Scan, absolutely no issues with the now totally blank drive.

I then used the Lenovo supplied OS and Application/Driver recovery DVDs to regenerate the system, at the end it still produced the "BOOTMGR missing, press Alt+Ctl+Del to restart" error message.

I am totally out of ideas, and would appreciate any help from the gurus here.

The only other information I can offer is Lenovo did not send me any "supplementary recovery" DVD to be installed after the on OS DVD and two "applications and drivers recovery" DVDs, however the instruction sheet said not all recovery disk set will need the supplementary DVD, so I did not question back then.

Should I have received the "supplementary recovery" DVD?

FWIW this is a Type 3249CTO machine from May 2010, running Win 7 64bit OS.

Many thanks in advance for any ideas or directions you can offer.

Try this: http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2023 ... error.html

Did you have the "new/target" drive in the bay, and the "old/source" one in the USB enclosure?

ajkula66 wrote:Did you have the "new/target" drive in the bay, and the "old/source" one in the USB enclosure?

This a recovery process from Lnono recovery DVD in the external USB DVD drive to a HDD in the internal bay of the X201.

Apologies. I misunderstood your post and was under incorrect impression that you were cloning one drive to another.

My experience is that "supplemental disk" is not required. At all.

I'd suggest attempting a clean install with a "vanilla" DVD of W7 Pro 64 and seeing what happens.

Good luck.

No worries. Yes a clean install is what the IT guy at work suggests too after hearing my description.....

Have the dig into my file and box for this to see if I have the Win 7 license number.

I don't recall exactly how it is on X201, but your COA might be under the battery...

Thanks, the COA is directly under the base and not protected by the battery pack, I remember looking at it recently and thinking it looks worn.

Not near this laptop at the moment, will have to check later.