Thinkpads Forum

From one of the threads in forum FAQs:

Q: What do Product Recovery disks do?
A: They wipe out your HDD 1st and put your machine to an out of the box factory state.

FAQ "How to use Recovery CD Disc Set"

Now the format they perform is not a LLF (Low-Level Format) but is just a quick format of all data on your HDD, if you're interested in doing a LLF then consult another thread in the forum How To's & FAQ's: Hard drive utility links, preferably the utility corresponding to your HDD manufacturer.

somemale wrote:I know this has been asked to death, but I have searched for over an hour and couldnt find a clear answer...

I have a X40 that has been running really slow lately, and want to do a fresh install. I have the IBM Rescue and Recover and Product Recovery CD's (7cds total) that were sent to me from IBM a few years back when I had hard drive problems.

When I run these CD's, does it format my hard drive at the same time? I backed up everything already, so I want my computer to be running just like when I opened it out of the box....
If these CD's don't format my hard drive, what is the best way to go about doing this?

Sorry if it is a newbie question, however this is my first time formatting a hard drive and want to make sure it is done correctly.

Thanks!

In my experience with a couple of T4x machines and T60s, yes the Rescue & Recovery program will format the drive first. If you have more than one partition (say, C: and D:, ) it will ask if you want to format just C: The other partition would then be undisturbed. The hidden recovery partition from Lenovo will not be over written either.

My Grandaughter has an OLD thinkpad 380ED mod 2635 that was given to her to play with. Until recently it was working fine. Suddenly it will not boot. An error code 174 configuration error now appears. The screen shows an image using a recovery disk. Unfortunatly no one in our family can locate the disk or even remember if its a floppy or a CD it has both types of drives. The OS was Windows 98 with bare bones programs. Can anyone help me, & tell me where i can obtain a startup disk. My grandaughter thinks old Gramp can fix anything, but this has me stimied.

Gene44, my advice would be to post a WTB ad in the marketplace section of the forum, and I'm sure that someone will come up with restoration media that you require...

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your quest!

The better news is that it might be as simple as an exhausted CMOS backup battery. Go to the Lenovo website (www dot lenovo dot com) and search on your full model number (2635-3au, for example) and hunt around for information on replacing the CMOS backup battery. If you have some luck and ingenuity, you may be able to replace the existing backup battery with its watch battery equivalent and get back up in a relative jiffy.

The less good news is that the hard disk may have decided to give up the ghost. If the computer can boot from any MS-DOS floppy disk and the computer can remember what day and time it is, then the system board and CMOS battery are probably okay.

Then a dead hard drive becomes the more likely case

It then becomes a matter of how much ($ & hours) you want to spend to restore a venerable old computer... maybe $50 or so for a hard disk, plus hunting on ebay for a Win98 operating system to reinstall, and then your time rebuilding...