Recovery Discs Not Working - Help!

[metazone]

I have an IBM Thinkpad T42 that was changed to dual-boot w/ Linux and a ‘temporary’ copy of Windows XP. I now want to restore the T42 to its original state (single partition, windows-only). I paid IBM to send me the recovery discs (1 bootable ‘Rescue and Recovery w/ Rapid Restore’ disc; 7 ‘Product Recovery’ discs).

I first made my CD ROM the first bootable drive and my hard drive the second. I then followed the instructions: (1) Put in the bootable ‘Rescue and Recovery’ disc. It copied files and seemed to work. (2) When done, it told me to insert disc 1 of the 7 Product Recovery discs. Product Recovery disc 1 never seems to do anything and I get the following error: ‘There was an error during initialization’.

I noticed during step (1) -- when the ‘Rescue and Recovery’ disc was copying files -- that the CD ROM drive was shown as the F drive. When it told me to insert disc 1 of the Product Recovery CDs in step 2, it specified the CD ROM drive as D. After the error, I clicked OK and it tried again; it now told me to insert disc 1 into drive E (saying the CD ROM was drive E). Note that I had 3 partitions on the hard drive: C, D, E.

I then created a boot disc of a demo version of Partition Doctor & selected ‘Erase MBR’ (master boot record) to delete all the partitions. I repeated the recovery procedure and felt like it was going to work because both steps 1 and 2 showed the CD ROM drive as the same (drive D). But I received the same error.

I then downloaded the ibm utility, rnr31_rrd.iso, to repair the MBR. I burned it onto CD, ran it, and selected the option to 'repair the MBR'. I then repeated the recovery sequence and this time step 1 showed the CD ROM as the E drive and step 2 saw it as the D drive. Then the same error.

I then tried rnr31_rrd.iso w/ the second option (create/replace the MBR) and same error.

I’ve called IBM support 3 times and I was told to try ‘Secure Data Disposal’ to wipe the disk. But they were unable to tell me how to run it from a boot disk (I downloaded it onto my other computer and tried to install it there but it said it needed .Net 1.1 framework). One guy said to try fdisk to remove the partitions instead (I haven’t tried this).

Any suggestions?

[Kyocera]

Welcome to the community!

Did tech support say anything about the possibility of a bad disc #1? I've had dual boots linux and XP on my t42 and never had that problem when wanting to reinstall to factory with the CD's.

I'd call and tell them to get you another set fedex'd asap.

If they give you the run around I have a set I copied from my machine before I sold it, I'll send them to you to try.

[carbon_unit]

Same here. I've wiped my drive several times and never had any trouble.
I would go to http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ and download the basic ubcd ISO and burn it to a cd. Then boot to it and run the "Hitachi Drive Fitness Test" just to make sure the drive is OK.
Then boot to it again and use Ranish Partition editor to delete all the partitions. Then the restore cd's should work properly.
The ubcd is a nice tool to have laying around anyway. Lots of good programs on there.

[metazone]

Thanks very much for all the replies. I tried a couple of more things -- including using an (invalid) windows disk from another computer to wipe out the partitions and then trying the recovery disks again but ... it didn't work. I then created the ultimate boot cd & ran Ranish Partition Manager but didn't see any option for delete. I E(rased) each one (and it said it filled it with 0's). I tried the recovery disks again and it didn't work. I noticed that the restory&recovery file-copy phase saw the CD ROM as drive E but when disc1 of the Product Recovery discs was requested, it was drive D. I then used the (invalid) version of windows and saw 2 partitions (I assume the restore&recovery disk created them). So ... I used the (invalid) windows copy to delete the 2 partitions and then used it to do a quick NTFS format. I stopped the (invalid) installation during its first reboot and I tried the IBM recovery disks again. I felt good when I saw that both steps saw the CD ROM drive as D. But then ... I got the same error . I'm now installing the (invalid) windows again and see if I can get that going ok (when I do, it shows 3 partitions -- C, D, and E ... presumably created by the restore&recovery disk). I then deleted the partitions again and am going ahead w/ the 'invalid' version. It's very very very frustrating.

Note that I see the following in RPM (#3 is 33,702,480):

# - Type - Row - File System Type - Starting - Ending - Partition Size
0 - MBR - - Master Boot Record - 0 0 1 - 0 0 1 - 0
1 - Pri - - Unused - 0 0 2 - 0 0 63 - 31
2 - >Pri - 4 - Windows FAT-32 - 0 1 1 - 54 239 63 - 415,768
3 - Pri - 1 - Windows FAT-32 LBA - 55 0 1 - 4,512 239 63 - 33..
4 - Pri - - Unused - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 - 0
5 - Pri - Unused - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 - 0
6 - Pri - Unused - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 - 0
7 - Pri - Unused - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 - 0

[agarza]

Download here the Secure Data Disposal ISO (need to burn it to a CDROM using RecordNow! or Nero)

http://rapidshare.com/files/711143/sdd.iso.html

Then set the option of m to erase the entire disk with 0's and 1's

Have you checked in your BIOS if you have Enabled the Predesktop Area, under Security. It should be in Normal

It should work with SDD

[metazone]

Again, thanks for the great replies. I spent a great deal of time yesterday trying to get things to work -- I used Secure Data Disposal (and made sure the predesktop area was set to normal in the bios). I tried copying the disk1 of the 7-disk product recovery disks to another cd and using that one. Nothing worked . I finally had IBM send me another set of disks. I haven't tried them out yet.