Hidden partition

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evensteven · #1 Post by **evensteven** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 7:48 am

A while bac I upgraded my hard disk on my T41 and I used the product recovery CD's to do it (5 of them).

Well I have everything installed and everything works perfectly except the Thinkvantage button. Upon start-up if I push the button it does not give me the option to restore to factory settings. All it does is let me enter the the BIOS or continue with start-up. It seems the partition is not there. I used the disks to redo the whole procedure again in case i missed something but it is still the same.

Am I doing something wrong?

Zeitgeist · #2 Post by **Zeitgeist** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:01 am

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=25861

evensteven · #3 Post by **evensteven** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 8:12 pm

The link that was posted on that thread said that it will work only if the partition has not been deleted. If I did a clean install with the recovery CD's would that have deleted the partition??
Well I tried it anyways. Not solving my problem.
Firstly I tried to repair the MBR with the disk, nothing
secondly I tried to install a new MBR with the floppy and it gave me 2 options:
1) Option A; Supports the newer IBM Rescue and Recovery Environment with Rapid Restore and the main operating system environment
So I did this and when I hit the Access IBM button at startup I get 5 options instead of 3. When I try to restore to factory settings it says NTLDR missing.
What is that?
I also tried Option B; Support previous versions of rapid restore and the operating system environment. Same result.

Can someone help me on this? I would greatly appreciate it

#4 Post by **GomJabbar** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:12 pm

EDIT: Sorry wrong info.

semaj · #5 Post by **semaj** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:52 pm

I had the same problem and had two fixes. To enable the rapid restore feature i needed to add the 245 meg recovery software that isnt on the image to my machine. Recently i attacked the problem again and this is what i did. I made sure that i deleted the MBr nto just the partition this time. I tried to do it in windows xp and i dont htink it worked. I made a boot disk for windows 98 se and ran comand fdisk /mbr
wiped it all clean and the hidden partition comes up as it did when i first got it. Mind you i also have the hidden partition in the bios set to normal, not secure. If you need specifics i can boot up a thinkpad and get you the specific names of everything.

Semaj

evensteven · #6 Post by **evensteven** » Sat Jul 08, 2006 4:54 am

the whole thing is driving me crazy. I want to retain the use of the Access IBM button. I do not want to have to carry the disks around with me all the time. I have re-loaded the entire system with the product recovery CD's and tried it all over again with the same result. I tried and got the NTLDR junk again. I used the floppy to repair the MBR, then I replaced the MBR and still the same .

Anyone help me on this or is this machine going to get the ball pean hammer?

I have such a headache...

geoffrey · #7 Post by **geoffrey** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 2:03 am

Have you made sure the BIOS settings for the hidden recovery/pre-desktop area are enabled?

Hidden partition

Hidden partition

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