Thinkpads Forum

I have a W500 for a few years running on Vista Business 64bits. As the machine got slower overtime, I used to do some housekeeping by uninstalling obsolete and not frequently used apps via control panel.

However on the last occasion, believe I might have on a quick-finger moment deleted the window client module (not really sure myself). Anyway the machine subsequently would boot up until the before the final desktop screen with error message to the effect that there is a missing window component. Also the Rescue and Recovery feature was unable to be loaded apparently for same reason - therefore unable to reset it to factory (inital backup) version.

My next attempt was to reinstall vista from optical drive. The installation process would go thru the dialogue prompts for selecting language/time/keyboard http://pbrd.co/1em6vXa; accept t&c http://pbrd.co/1em6K4y; Where to install Windows http://pbrd.co/1em6XVk and Option 2 was selected. And it would continue to start copying window files for a good 15mins and then "hang" at this particular stage "Collection Information" http://pbrd.co/1em74Ag.

Repeated attempts experienced the same outcome. Even try using a Windows7 installation disk and the result is the same. Never got to the stage where you are asked on the product id number. Initially I would still do a safe mode bootup and the system would load the original installed operating system to till near the desktop screen (as described 2nd para above). But many installation attempts, the safe mode would "hang" at this stage http://pbrd.co/1em6qCR. And the normal bootup would go to a process of setting up windows (while booting from original installed windows) http://pbrd.co/1em6e6P and just "hang" there perpetually.

I am not stuck and appreciate some guidance from experts here as how to go forward. I just want to restore/rescue my machine with a clean vista installation if possible. Or have I really messed up and scr**** myself for good?

Thank you.

IF you have the recovery CD set or a windows install CD I can't see anything you could delete from control panel doing something to permanently prevent the installation of windows..

if you have a blank/vacant hard drive try loading on that or if you are brave enough just select format when loading a fresh version of windows..

I HOPE you have a set of recovery CD's since that would make everything easier..

basically you want to load or recover to what is seen as a blank hard drive..

welcome to the forum..

Thank you for the welcome.

BillMorrow wrote:if you have a blank/vacant hard drive try loading on that or if you are brave enough just select format when loading a fresh version of windows..

Unfortunately I don't have any recovery on a CD - have been using 'Rescue and Recover' did not forsee the need for it before this happened.

BillMorrow wrote:if you have a blank/vacant hard drive try loading on that or if you are brave enough just select format when loading a fresh version of windows..

basically you want to load or recover to what is seen as a blank hard drive..

How difficult is it to install fresh assuming we can get to reformat the current fdisk? Just want to get an understanding what I will be getting into before jumping into the deeper end.

Kinda depends on whether you did it before.

You can let Lenovo stuff figure out all the drivers it needs or you can pick them manually off the Lenovo website. All in all shouldn't take more than a few hours.