Uh oh.. IBM T43 Recovery CDs don't work?

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Ground Loop · #1 Post by **Ground Loop** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 7:25 pm

I wanted to start over again with a clean factory-fresh hard disk image, so I first ran DBAN (boot-and-nuke) to wipe the drive clean. This removes all partitions, data, boot sector, everything.

Then I booted the IBM Rescue & Recovery CD that this machine burned earlier.

It boots fine, and begins the factory-fresh restore, but partway through the intial (copy) phase of running it presents this error box:

[IBM Product Recovery]
There was an error during initialization.
[OK]

No... not OKAY! This sucks. Has anyone used their T43 recovery CDs with better success?

jjfcpa · #2 Post by **jjfcpa** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 8:40 pm

I had the same thing happen to me a while back. I was actually trying to install a new hard drive (100 gig Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM drive), but it failed and gave a similar result.

I finally called IBM and told them what happened and they sent me a set of recovery CD's. They normally charge you $ 45 for the recovery set.

Not surprisingly, the recovery CD's didn't work either. I still have the hard drive sitting on the shelf. I later heard that Thinkpads will only accept hard drives that are configured for their bios. And I don't believe the 100 gig is being recognized by the bios on my T43. Proprietary IBM... what a pain!

#3 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Aug 01, 2005 10:04 pm

Ground Loop wrote:I wanted to start over again with a clean factory-fresh hard disk image, so I first ran DBAN (boot-and-nuke) to wipe the drive clean. This removes all partitions, data, boot sector, everything.

Then I booted the IBM Rescue & Recovery CD that this machine burned earlier.

It boots fine, and begins the factory-fresh restore, but partway through the intial (copy) phase of running it presents this error box:

[IBM Product Recovery]
There was an error during initialization.
[OK]

No... not OKAY! This sucks. Has anyone used their T43 recovery CDs with better success?

Question (1). Have you disabled the hidden protected area in the BIOS (under security)? I believe this should have been disabled before nuking the drive. Probably it should be disabled when doing a restore, but I am not sure about this.

Question (2). If the answer to (1) is yes, has the factory installed hard drive been replaced with a different one?

Zeitgeist · #4 Post by **Zeitgeist** » Tue Aug 02, 2005 3:55 am

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... =groundhog

Uh oh.. IBM T43 Recovery CDs don't work?

Uh oh.. IBM T43 Recovery CDs don't work?

Re: Uh oh.. IBM T43 Recovery CDs don't work?

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