factory restore

[laocoholic]

has anybody ever had problems with factory restore. ive just recently done this and it goes through the whole process but doesnt finish. it stops after it checks the hd and tries to convert it to ntfs from fat. ive called ibm and they are sending me some restore cds. i jus wanted to know if anybody here could help me. btw, i am using my r40 right now but it has a window open on the screen about system prepartion tool 2.0. dont ask me how im using it right now if it hasnt been converted? its to hard to explain how i got on.

[SeanM]

The Sysprep message usually means you restored from the CD, but only partway.

When the recovery runs, it has to boot to the CD multiple times. The first time through, it basically loads the operating system, and little else. Then it reboots. If, at this point, it boots to the hard drive, then you wind up with an incomplete recovery.

The easiest way to wind up in this boat is to hit F12 and select the CDROM drive as your boot device. What you should do instead is go into the bios and set the cdrom drive as the first boot device by default.