Thinkpads Forum

I can't believe there's such a dearth of info on this.

I wiped my drive using 'dd' on a Ubunti LiveCD. Now I boot up with the recovery CD from Lenovo, and in the "System Recovery Options" screen (right after selecting language) I only has "Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows" and "restore using a system image created earlier".

The first option is not seeing any drives in that little window with columns "Operating System", "Partition Size", and "Location".

If I click the first option, it will say "You must log in to access System Recovery Options" with the only option being "OK" to restart. What BS is this? Yey, another 10 minute reboot process for me.

If I hit the second option, the process wants a recovery image, which I don't have, even though I have the Windows 7 data DVD.

Why is this so frigging difficult? Anyone have any tips on getting Win7 back on the drive?

You may not have created the factory recovery CDs/DVDs back when. Instead you may have created Windows recovery CDs/DVDs that only recover from a Windows crash and do not restore a system to factory condition. You will need to find someone who can send you W500 factory recovery CDs/DVDs.

Thanks, that's quite possible. Lenovo's software is so stupid. IIRC, I had an issue making recovery CDs on my T61, where making the Windows data CD was a separate process altogether, and I only made the boot DVD (why couldn't they fit everything on a single DVD is another mystery). No wonder Apple is taking their market share.

There is a file somewhere on the OS that you need to run, separate from ThinkVantage software, to create the CDs/DVDs.

Anyway, this is always a headache and the first thing I take care off once I boot up a ThinkPad for the first time (unless I buy a refurbished ThinkPad without OS in which case it is OEM Windows + driver downloads).

Good luck!