Having problems with recovery discs

[Uncletoad]

I've been trying to take a blank hard drive and use the 8 IBM discs to start all over again with a fresh hard drive. The rescue/recovery is the only thing it boots to. It won't find WinXP. I've tried starting with the first of the 7discs but the bios won't see it. With all the discs loaded it still just boots into the R&R section.

Am I missing a procedure?

[Uncletoad]

Any ideas?

[andrey]

Once you're in R&R you should have an option to restore computer to factory settings. The recovery link is on the left side in the list of options.

-- Andrey

[nasa]

I ran into the same problem....try this:

Enter into the BIOS (by starting up and pressing F1 immediately)
Under Security, click on Disable IBM Predesktop Area
Run R&R again

Hopefully it works for you...it did for me!

[GomJabbar]

You shouldn't have to "Disable" the Predesktop Area. Setting to "Normal" should be fine. Rescue and Recovery can write to the Predesktop area in the "Normal" setting. In fact I read that you cannot boot to the Predesktop Area with it's setting set to "Disabled".

EDIT:

Note: Your computer might restart during the recovery process, possibly more than once. When the recovery process is finished, your computer displays a message to let you know that the recovery is complete.

[Uncletoad]

Once you're in R&R you should have an option to restore computer to factory settings. The recovery link is on the left side in the list of options.

-- Andrey

I did that several times and it kept stopping itself before it got started very far. This morning however I tried again and it worked. Thanks for responding.

[carbon_unit]

If you are using the cd's to restore you need to set the bios to boot from cd first. Don't mess around with F12.