Problem Restoring from Rescue CD

[oaaltone]

I previously burned the rescue CD and DVD using IBM's Recovery software without any problems burning or testing the media.

When I went to restore my T41 yesterday, I get a lot of errors, and the restore fails. The process I used: boot from CD1 into the R&R OS, select Restore -> Factory -> Don't Save Data -> Next -> Restart. After booting, it sits at a DOS screen unpacking a ton of files, but after about 5 minutes there are a ton of errors like the following:

PKUNZIP: (W10) Warning! can't create: C:/IBMTOOLS/...
Incorrect password for file ...
Inconsistent local header for file ...

I'll also note that it hasn't reached a point to ask me for the restore DVD (2nd disc burned).

Any ideas?

[GomJabbar]

Your hard drive might be failing, or has failed. If you have a Windows install CD laying around, try deleting all partitions, then create a new partition, then format it (NTFS). If the format takes a very long time, or doesn't complete, that would indicated a bad hard drive. It has happened to me. AFAIK, formatting should normally take less than an hour, however this would depend upon the capacity and speed of your hard drive.

If you have a USB floppy drive, you can download and create a bootable floppy for testing your hard drive from the following sites:

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

http://www.fcpa.com/support/hard-drives ... ities.html

You could also download PC-Doctor for DOS and make a bootable CD for testing your system. I am not sure how thoroughly it tests the hard drive.

PC Doctor for DOS bootable CD - ThinkPad General

Two other possibilities. Your CD's are defective (or dirty/scratched) or your CD drive is not working (reading the CD's) well.

[oaaltone]

I should have included that info in my original post as well:
- This drive has passed the drive fitness test CD diagnostics
- This drive was recently completely formatted and scrubbed using DBAN

I think it's more a bad CD/DVD issue... but why wasn't it caught when I was creating the media. Doesn't it check specifically for this reason?

[GomJabbar]

Rereading your original post, I think you are right. That is why it is important to use quality media that you have hopefully had the opportunity to test. And it's important to be careful in the storage of the media. You can try using the disk's again, and maybe they will work. Sometimes I have been able to have a CD be read after a failure the first time. Make sure the lens is clean on your CD reader (use a CD drive cleaning kit available at many record/compact disc music stores).

[oaaltone]

I spoke to IBM this morning, and it turns out this is a known issue with the latest version of the Rescue and Recovery software. Apparently it almost always creates a bad image when you create your own recovery disks. Their resolution is to send factory pressed CDs out to anyone experiencing this problem at no charge.