TP 600X recovery cd not working?

[Jefferson]

I have Thinkpad 600X and I was able to get the factory recovery ISO thanks to two generous members here.

However, it appears that those ISOs are not working. I got the recovery ISO for W98 from those two members. While they appear to be bit-to-bit identical,

I created two CDs anyways but neither works. I'm aware that the W98 recovery has some issues and is supposed to halt in the middle of the process.

But in my case, after it boots and loads the necessary CD drivers, it asks me to hit "enter" to continue the recovery process. I hit enter and it does nothing. It stops right there...

I know my hardware is fine because one member also sent me the recovery for W2K and it installs just fine without an issue.

I also tried smaller hard drive (40gb at first, and then 3gb because sometimes the recovery cds can't deal with larger hard drive) but the result were the same.



has anyone received recovery iso for 98 from the members here and succeeded in recovering the system to the factory default?

[fultontech]

Unfortunately I can't find the notes I made to finish the install. There are about 4 or 5 large zip files on that CD and it was either the 3rd or 4th one that has the bad file inside it causing it to hang during the copy files to disk phase of the restore.
As I recall, if you break or exit out of the process and execute the commands manually without attempting to overwrite the one bad file, the restore will eventually complete. You just have to keep pressing the letter to skip files.
The drive letters get reassigned and it was a goofy xcopy string, but it's all it the bat and config files.
I thought I saved or posted the steps somewhere, but I can't seem to locate them.

[Jefferson]

Thanks for your help and comment.

Actually, I do have the text file that's included by someone stating the problem during the installation and how to get around it.

However, I think I'm experiencing a different problem.

The known problem seems to happen during the installation. In my case, the process never even gets started; it just quits when I hit "enter" to start the process.

At this point, I can really use a comment from someone who successfully ran the factory-recovery process on 600X in recent times...

Thanks again!

[pkiff]

I don't recall if I ever ran the recovery process on one of my 600X's. But if you decide to give up on the recovery CDs and install Windows 98 from scratch, then here is an old set of instructions you can try following:
http://thinkpads.kiff.ca/600x/install_w98se

Many of the links on that page may now be broken. And if I were doing this today, I would probably look for a more recent fan-made service pack for Windows 98, but I haven't kept up with the Windows 98 fan scene, so I have no idea who might be maintaining a good all-in-one update service pack these days.

Phil.

[Jefferson]

hi, pkiff,

i'm leaning toward fresh windows install rather than factory recovery as you suggested.
your guide is awesome! it will be immensely helpful.

thank you so much!