Predesktop area not working ?

[psychocandy]

Am I right in saying that pressing ACCESS IBM during boot should take
you into the Pre-desktop program to allow you to do a restore?

Mine does'nt. It just gives me a menu saying F1 for Bios, F12 for
alternative startup etc. Is my PreDesktop area screwed? Or am I doing
something wrong?

BTW. Pre-Desktop is set to NORMAL in BIOS.

Also, I dont have any restore CDs (bought this laptop 2nd hand off
ebay). Where can I get these (for free)?

[wackydan]

The blue button is highly dependent on an 8k bootstrap in the Master Boot Record.

If it is not running the factory preload, does not have Rescue and Recovery installed, or if one of the MBR repair utilities was run, it won't work.

So... first steps...

1. open %SystemRoot%\system32\compmgmt.msc /s or just type compmgmt.msc at the CMD prompt.

2. Within that open the disk management tool - look to see if the unit still has the service partition.

3. If the unit does not have the service partition, you will not be able to perform a factory recovery.

4. If the service partition is there, you can try downloading rescue and recovery from Lenovo's site, installing, and that should give you access to use the blue button on boot, and more than likely kick of a factory restore from the service partition.

If you get an MBR error while installing RnR, PM me.

[psychocandy]

The blue button is highly dependent on an 8k bootstrap in the Master Boot Record.

If it is not running the factory preload, does not have Rescue and Recovery installed, or if one of the MBR repair utilities was run, it won't work.

So... first steps...

1. open %SystemRoot%\system32\compmgmt.msc /s or just type compmgmt.msc at the CMD prompt.

2. Within that open the disk management tool - look to see if the unit still has the service partition.

3. If the unit does not have the service partition, you will not be able to perform a factory recovery.

4. If the service partition is there, you can try downloading rescue and recovery from Lenovo's site, installing, and that should give you access to use the blue button on boot, and more than likely kick of a factory restore from the service partition.

If you get an MBR error while installing RnR, PM me.

Thanks I 'll give that a try...

Luckily I was able to get my laptop to boot after I ran chkdsk /r after booting from a "spare" Windows XP CD, but it'll be useful to be able to recover in the future !!!