Possibilites with only one "rescue and recovery"CD

[maja]

Hello,

I dont know how to start but my thinkpad is in a dead loop right now. It's a z61m.

I wanted to make a fresh out of the box factory settings installation. Since after 2 years the system became somewhat slow. I saved all the personal data and.....:

--I made the rescue and recovery CD.
- I made no additional restore/data recovery CDs, since i wanted "an out of the box experience" once more ...
- I put the cd into the cdrom and restarted the laptop.
- in rescue and recovery i choose the factory settings. wiping everything else out.
- i left the cd in the cdrom ..the screen turned to "please wait" ..and stayed for an hour like that. after a while i checked if anything was working / as in making any noises in the computer/ everything still/ so i manually restarted the laptop.
- i dont know why it froze, i predict it is cos it got that hot?

- the problem is that I am in a loop cos I have no data recovery CDs.
- it restarts, loads into rescue and recovery, then wants the "product recovery supplemnt disc(i click NO), then it wants "product widertellung"(its german, i think it means product recovery?- which as i read on this forum consist of multiple cds) now i only am able to choose from " yes or abort". and since i do not have those cds i only can go for abort. which makes the laptop restart and again in the rescue and recovery ......with other words into the "LOOP".

I made the step with the (false) understanding that the predesktop area is there to build up the sistem to factory settings with no additional CDS - since the "rescue and recovery" CD is only the tool to connect to the predesktop area.

As for my knowledge the predesktop area is still fully functional* or rather said THERE. I made no chages of visibiliy in the BIOS and did not try to install any linux OS.

-I tried fixing the MBR section with the ibm diskette - found an error. but it had absolutly no effect on the "dead loop".
- i burned the FWOD08.iso boot recovery CD - which only wanted to renew my drivers...but there where no new ones out there.



SO is there any possibility to recovery win xp without calling IBM for recovery CDs?


I read all about the predesktop clonning but not sure what does this do except free space on the hdd? Would it in any way help me to restore factory settings as in out of the box setting to my laptop?

Please help!



Greetings,

Maja
-

[Tõnis]

Unfortunately, I can't tell you whether there is a way, because I don't know. I can only tell you that something similar happened to me, and I had to order the disks.

When I first got my 3000 N100, I paid a major retailer's tech support counter to make my recovery CD's, because I didn't want to mess up the task. I was given "the recovery CD." Later, when I tried to restore my computer to factory state using the disc instead of the recovery partition, I ran into the same problem. I called IBM, and asked what to do. I was told that I should have about five recovery CD's, and that the only way to remedy the problem was to order the discs. I explained to tech support what had happened -- why I only had one disc -- and asked if there was any other way. The tech support guy said, "Not that I know of." Needless to say, when I got my R61, I made my own recovery discs.

Best of luck with this. In my case it happened at the beginning of a long holiday weekend here in the US, so I was left sad and frustrated, without my computer, until the middle of the following week.

Tony

[GomJabbar]

The Rescue and Recovery CD is primarily for booting into Rescue and Recovery when you cannot boot the hard drive. You still need the "Product Recovery Disc Set" (or DVD) to restore factory contents if booting from the Rescue and Recovery CD.

Normally, if you press the ThinkVantage button, or Access IBM button, or F11 at the beginning of the boot sequence, that should boot you into Rescue and Recovery from the hard drive (in other words, not using any CD's or DVD's). From Rescue and Recovery you should be able to restore factory contents (without needing any CD's or DVD's).

With my T42 there was an option to create Product Recovery Media. I don't know if this is still available with the latest models or not. You can only create one set of Product Recovery Media until you restore factory contents.

If you use optical media to restore factory contents, after the media is read, you will be booted up into Rescue and Recovery again. You need to choose to restore factory contents a second time to complete the restore. When you use the optical media to restore factory contents, ALL existing partitions and files are deleted. When you restore factory contents from the hard drive, only the C drive is deleted.

The above is true for my T42 and I believe most ThinkPads of the last 3 years or so. However I have not really kept up with these procedures on the latest models, so things may have changed.