How to restore OS to factory settings?

[mattbiernat]

Hi guys,
I have created factory restore disk on my 16GB SD card. How do I restore my computer from this card? I tried pressing F8 and then I did get restore option but it was only from the internal hard drive. Can someone walk me through this?

[Neil]

Pressing F8 at boot will take you into Windows Safe Mode.

Pressing F11 will take you to the Rescue & Recovery partition, if there is one present on your HDD.

You can run "restore to factory" from R&R, if that is what you really want to do. That action will delete everything on the disk and reinstall the factory OS.

If you are installing a new HDD, or a HDD that does not have the hidden partition, and want to reinstall R&R on it, you will need to burn the restore disk(s) to DVD so you can boot R&R and rebuild the hidden partition.

[Bot13]

[mattbiernat]

Okay let me rephrase my question. I created factory recovery disk using my 16GB SD card. How do I check if that card will restore my system to original factory settings?
I want to make sure I got my original system backed up before I load Windows 8 on my laptop. I don't want to load Windows 8 and then end up without having any operating system.
Thanks,
Matt

[Neil]

Matt, I'm not sure I understand what you did with the 16GB SD card. Did you use R&R to make a back-up of your installation, and store that backup on the SD card?

Or, do you have ISO image files of the restore disks on the SD card. If so, maybe you could burn them to CD/DVD disks and see if you can boot with them. AFAIK, recovery disks must be burned to CD/DVD to work, I don't think you can boot most (any?) ThinkPads from an SD card.

[mattbiernat]

okay here is what I did:
1. lenovo thinkvantage tools
2. factory recovery disks
3. inserted 16GB SD card
so the system created a back up with original factory settings.
here is the PROBLEM:
- now I took out my hard drive and replaced with SSD. When computer booted, I clicked ENTER and Bios screen opened asking me to pick an option. I picked boot from external device and I inserted my 16GB SD card. I selected HD Removable Card for booting but nothing happens. The screen goes blank and then goes back to bios asking me which device to boot from. What I went back and tried making factory recovery disks into external hard drive, the factory recovery disks program said that I am allowed to have only 1 copy of operating system. What do I do next? Why can't I boot my comptuer from an SD card???
- Im pretty upset cause I have 64GB SSD sitting in here and I can't use it.

[GomJabbar]

Haven't tried this with an SD card. What might work would be to have both the hard drive in the main hard drive slot and the SD card in it's slot (or connected via an external drive enclosure or cable). At the BIOS splash screen press F12 to get the BIOS boot menu, then choose the SD card to boot. That said, I am not sure that an SD card would ever be bootable - although that likely would depend upon how new your machine is.

My experience in using the product recovery disk set is that you have a bootable CD (or DVD) that you boot from, followed by data CD's or DVD. However see the following:

Using Recovery Media
You can use recovery media to restore your system drive or hard disk drive to the original factory contents depending on your individual needs.

Attention: When you restore the factory contents using recovery media, all files currently on the system drive or hard disk drive will be deleted and replaced by the original factory contents.

To use your recovery media, do the following:

Depending on the type of your recovery media, connect your boot media (memory key or USB hard disk drive) to your system, or insert the boot disc into your CD or DVD drive.

Restart your computer.

Press F12. The Boot Menu window opens.

Depending on the type of your recovery media, select the proper boot device and press Enter. After a short delay, the Product Recovery program opens.

Depending on your needs, select your preferred language in the drop-down list box. Click Next.

Select I agree to these terms and conditions check box and click Next.

Select the recovery media in the drop-down list box.

Note: If your recovery media do not display in the drop-down list box, click Refresh to refresh the recovery media list.


Select Restore Windows partition (C partition) only. or Restore to factory default state (all data on the system hard disk drive will be lost). depending on your needs. Click Next.

Follow the instructions on the screen.

Note: After restoring your hard disk drive to the original factory contents, you might have to reinstall some software or device drivers.

I believe you should be able to create the "Boot Media" more than once, but probably not the "Data Media". Could be wrong though.

The Create Recovery Media program enables you to create recovery media to restore the contents of the system drive or hard disk drive to the same state as when the computer was originally shipped from the factory. You can create the recovery media on a memory key, a USB hard disk drive, or a set of discs if your computer is equipped with a recordable CD or DVD drive.

Recovery media are useful if you transfer the computer to another area, sell the computer, recycle the computer, or as a last resort put the computer in an operational state after all other methods of recovery have failed. As a precautionary measure, it is important to create recovery media as soon as possible.

Note: The recovery operations you can perform using recovery media vary depending on the system from which they are created. Your Microsoft(R) Windows(R) license permits you to create only one data medium, so it is important that you store the medium in a safe place after you make it.

To create recovery media, do the following:

Click Start > All Programs > Lenovo ThinkVantage Tools > Factory Recovery Disks.

Select The recovery media you are going to create can only be used on this system. Do you want to proceed? in the Recovery Media section.

Select the Boot Media check box or Data Media check box depending on your needs. Click OK.

Note: It is recommend to create both boot media and data media if you are creating the recovery media for the first time.

Select the medium on which you are going to create the recovery media in the drop-down list box.

Click OK and follow the instructions on the screen.

To learn how to use recovery media, see Using Recovery Media.

[Neil]

Im pretty upset cause I have 64GB SSD sitting in here and I can't use it.

No need to fret, we all make mistakes from time to time. If you can't get what you have to work, you could always put a WTB ad in the Market Place for a set of recovery disks for your machine, and someone will probably come to the rescue.

[robert213]

What I went back and tried making factory recovery disks into external hard drive, the factory recovery disks program said that I am allowed to have only 1 copy of operating system.

For those who used "Google" to stumble upon this post...

Yes, only 1 set of Windows XP/Vista (perhaps 7) factory recovery DVD/CD disks can be created from the hard drive as configured by Lenovo when the computer was new.

Brand-new factory recovery (i.e. Windows install) DVD/CD disks can be purchased from Lenovo for approximately $45. Customer reps of Lenovo require your machine's type/model number and serial number and the current owner's name and address.

I have Lenovo's phone number listed in another related post.
--EDIT--
Any of the following phone numbers ought to work...
800-IBM-SERV (800-426-7378)
800-426-8741 (option #2)
800-426-2255
800-388-7080 (Mechanicsburg, PA / Boulder, CO)
--\EDIT--

[mattbiernat]

Okay round #2
I downloaded R&R, made a back up to a USB Hard Disk. I've placed new SSD into my thinkpad, booted the computer using external USB, I loaded R&R and started my restore process. The restore subsequently fails at 4% and states that the target hard drive is too small and that it needs to be reformatted. This doesn't make sense: 1) my R&R back up is 20GB max while my SSD is 64GB 2) My new SSD is formatted at the beginning of the restore process... What is going on??

[sarbin]

Brand-new factory recovery (i.e. Windows install) DVD/CD disks can be purchased from Lenovo for approximately $45. Customer reps of Lenovo require your machine's type/model number and serial number and the current owner's name and address.

I have Lenovo's phone number listed in another related post.

care to repost the phone # or point to the related post? i searched, but it was not readily obvious.

thanks.

[GomJabbar]

Are you still trying to use the SD card? Doesn't seem like it from your last post.

See if the following is possibly the issue:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail. ... 963#396899

See also:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... d-p/319137

Also, it would seem to me if you booted from your external hard drive, that would likely be listed as drive C and your SSD as drive D. This should be fine for a restore, but make sure that R&R is not trying to restore to the external drive (C). You can check which drive letter each drive has been assigned after booting up - either from Windows Disk Management (Administrative Tools) or from the command prompt.

[mattbiernat]

Thanks Gom but none of the above are my issues:
1) I gave up on the SD cards and it's just a paperweight with a useless factory recovery. I have made a bootable USB drive but unfortunetly I cannot bypass one recovery disk per operating system rule....
2) I used R&R to back up my windows operating system to external hard drive. The error that I get states that there is not enough space on my 64GB SSD to restore 20GB of Back up.... It suggests that I increase partition size on my SSD. THE PROBMLE IS, I can't partition SSD inside lenovo recovery..... kind of annoying - 2 weeks now that I have my SSD and still no use of it, Im considering returning it and just giving up.

[Neil]

Why not use Acronis True Image, Clonezilla or similar to make an image of your currently installed OS, and then restore that image to the new SSD? That would work a lot better than trying to get R&R to do something it was not designed to do.

[mattbiernat]

*R&R was not designed to restore a system after a windows failure?
*Acronis true Image - similar problem. I create a back up and boot media. I boot using USB, I insert external HDD and load my back up from there. Acornis completes restoration, then I boot my computer and I get DOS error stating that Windows 7 did not install completely.
*Clonezilla ---> "Limitations: The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one." My current 5200RPM HDD is a 320GB partition and my SSD is 64GB partition.
Obviously at this stage you wonder whether the SSD is defective. I have however installed without any problem Ubuntu from my USB and loaded Ubuntu to desktop environment. So there is something wrong with software not hardware... I really wish Lenovo included a $10 option to have restore disks sent on a USB. Paying $50 for restore CDs which cost maybe 25c each is a rip off...

Round #3
- I found out on PC world that you can legally download windows 7, put it on a USB and do a fresh install. (REF: http://www.pcworld.com/article/248995/h ... _disc.html).
- The only thing missing is the windows key, but since I bought my thinkpad legally, my windows key must work to activate windows. Im downloading ISO image right now. Im keeping my fingers crossed that it will work this time.

[RealBlackStuff]

That key will ONLY work for your download if it is a W7 key!
A key from an XP or Vista COA will NOT work with W7!

[mattbiernat]

The machine came preloaded with windows 7.

[GomJabbar]

*Clonezilla ---> "Limitations: The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one." My current 5200RPM HDD is a 320GB partition and my SSD is 64GB partition.

If you have is less than 64GB of files on a partition on the 320GB drive, you should be able to clone that partition. You need to empty your recycle bin, defragment the drive, then use Windows Disk Management to shrink the partition to less than 64GB. If you are successful shrinking the partition enough, then this should work.

I have done this before without any problem, but there could be some risk when shrinking the disk. Caveat: I have not worked at all with SSD's (not sure what special problems they might create).

[mattbiernat]

Okay I figured out what the problem was. When I first got my thinkpad I tried Acronis True image hard disk clone utility. What happened is that Acronis failed to complete disk cloning and left my external hard drive partitioned at 1.12GB and 54GB of unallocated space. How did I find out? The second time I tried cloning my disk, Acronis did the same to my main HDD, making the operating system unbootable.
Now with main partition of 1.12GB, R&R would always get stuck at 4%. Acronis back up recovery would also stall and there was no way to load the operating system. I had to buy Acronis Disk Director (I guess good business for Acronis...) to format the hard drive and restore the partition to 64GB. After that I was able to use R&R to restore my main HDD. As for my new SSD, it's still a paperweight. I was able to restore the partition to 64GB but R&R would still fail the restore and I would get an error message that the new hard drive is smaller than the one that once backed up (even thou only 20GB was backed up).
Now, I did download Windows 7 (legally) and I used the Microsoft Windows USB tool to put it on a DVD. When I booted via the DVD, the computer states that drivers for external DVD are missing?!?! I use external DVD player but who in their sane mind would not include DVD drivers in x120e!!!! So again SSD is a paperweight....
So I bought 2x8GB USBs, I use the Windows USB tool but it fails to recognize the iso image of windows 7. So after some googling I find out that I have to buy PowerISO to fix the iso image (which I did) and now Im giving it a 2nd try.
To sum it up:
1) Acronis Ture Image disk cloning utility made my SSD and HHD useless and I had to buy disk director to restore the partition. And my main Windows 7 partition was made unbootable!
2) The new R&R no longer supports restore back up on a disk smaller than the original one that the back up was created from. Even if the back up is smaller than the new drive. I was previously able to do it for my x300 but it was with older version of R&R.
3) Creating factory recovery disk doesn't work for SD cards. Lenovo messed up on this one by allowing one to be created and thus locking me out of this restore option.
4) There is some kind of bug in the x120e that doesn't recognize external DVD player when trying to install Windows 7 via a DVD rom - UPDATE: that one I finally solved as well. The windows 7 iso was a corrupted download....
---------------------------------------------
Finally after 2 weeks I replaced my HDD with SSD. I wasn't able to use R&R or Acronis. I didn't try Clonezilla but instead used clean install with windows 7 legally downloaded from the internet. I called MS to activate via the phone. I wish I had done that in the beginning, it would have saved me lots of trouble. Makes me wonder why lenovo doesn't provide restore USB with every laptop. It would have made things for general public a lot more easier.