How to get the Access IBM key's recover function back

[dapry]

I have an x32. Now when I power on the machine and press the blue ACCESS IBM button, instead of showing R&R, it shows three options:

1. Press ESC to resume normal boot
2. Press F1 to enter BIOS
3. Press F12 to choose boot devices

I did use factory recovery days ago. But I needed XP-Pro for some reason and I installed XP-PRO with my own discs. Then the problem was there.

I used R&R 3.0 to try to get the function back but in vain. Also tried bmgr32.exe (I copied from another thinkpad) also failed. I found the predesktop area was there and I did no modification on it (As told by IBM, I use the new FDISK to do partition before I used factory recovery successfully).

Can anybody help me?

[GomJabbar]

Hopefully the following thread will answer your question.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=16470

[Zeitgeist]

Try this:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54483

[mephie]

Do you mean you installed RnR 3? If you did, you shouldn't have to get bmgr32 from another system, it's part of RnR 3, also. I'd also be interested to know what switches you ran with bmgr32, as it's easy to do more harm than good with that program if you're not sure of what you're doing.

There are a couple of things you can do (these suggestions assume you've installed a version of RnR after your re-install of the OS). Run bmgr32 /info and look at the output. The first line should say something like "Using version x.xx of IBM TVT Boot Manager" or something of that nature. If it doesn't, the RnR boot manager isn't in the MBR and you'll have to put it in there.

Another interesting thing to find out would be does it boot into PE properly when you press F11 as opposed to Access IBM?

If the boot manager IS in the MBR (meaning you see the line mentioned above) you should be able to run bmgr32 /refresh to have it re-detect the partition table and rewrite the boot manager appropriately.

If it's NOT in the mbr, find the bootmgr.bin file (usually somewhere under \ibmtools\utils) and run bmgr32 /fbootmgr.bin /m1 /ibm That'll force the RnR boot manager in to the MBR.

As for being told to manually partition your drive prior to recovery, I'm guessing in an effort to save the service partition(?), that doesn't really make any sense, so I'm not sure why you'd have been told to do that, but I may be missing something.

[Zeitgeist]

Do you mean you installed RnR 3?

No, just run the repair diskette.
"This package creates a bootable diskette that can be used to repair a corrupt boot sector on your primary hard drive. This package can also be used to reenable the F11 function as long as the service partition has not been removed from your hard drive."

[mephie]

Okay, yeah. You'll need to reinstall a version of Rescue and Recovery to get access to the predesktop area. Since you installed from a retail cd, as opposed to a preload, the predesktop area wasn't recreated.

The service partition is still there, but keep in mind the service partition does not house the RnR WinPE predesktop environment. It just holds the files used for a recovery to factory contents, nothing more.