IBM Rescue and Recovery - my own personal GroundHog Day...

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CraigR · #1 Post by **CraigR** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 6:42 am

I recently took delivery of a ThinkPad T42P. It's a nice machine and I like it a lot.

Because I wanted to change the way the HD was partioned, the first thing I did was take a backup to CD ( DVD ) by taking the "Create Recovery CDs" option. This process created to DVDs:

- IBM (R) Rescue & Recovery (TM) with Rapid Restore
- IBM (R) Product Recovery

Forgive my ignorance I not exactly sure which version of the R&R program I have, the help text in the program does not seem to tell me.

So - the GroundHog thing. Due to my thwarted partitioning attempts ( for the moment at least ) I am attempting to put the system back as it was by using my Recovery CDs. Now I find myself in the situation where I am pretty sure that I have performed the Recovery using the "Restore factory contents" option, but whenever I reboot I just get the "IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore" program running. The only ways I can see to exit that program are to take "Restart" from the menu, or to use the Power switch to power off ( I guess Ctrl Alt Del might do it to ) but this only results in the R&R screen coming back every time.

Here is the process I have followed ( twice ) to get to this situation:
- Insert my IBM(R) Rescue & Recovery(TM) with Rapid Restore CD and reboot.
- click on "Restore factory contents"
- the first thing that happened was it came back with a IBM Rapid Restore Ultra dialog box that seemed to be prompting me to Save some of my existing files. I have no new/changed data to save, so I cancelled out of this.
- The IBM PreDesktop Installer started running and copied lots of stuff from \i386 and \Preboot directories and then automatically rebooted.
- I was prompted to insert my "Product Recovery" CD which I duly did. After a time, the IBM PreDesktop Installer appeared again and seemed to copy a lot of files into C:\Preboot.
- The machine rebooted again and came back with a dialog box with 2 progress bars, the top one showing the progress of the current file and the bottom one showing total progress. This process ran for quite a while and then came back with a dialog box saying "You must restart your computer to complete the process"
- At this point, the first time I tried this process, I removed the "Product Recovery CD", the second time I left it in. Both cases leave me in the same state where the IBM R&R comes back and seems to be prompting me to do the "Product Recovery" again. Surely that is what I have just done!! The previous dialog box ( You must restart your computer to complete the process ) sounds to me like its all over bar a reboot - so why the R&R again...

I know I can restore my partion(s) using Powerquest, from Images I have on my network, but I would dearly like to know what I am doing wrong to get myself into this situation. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Sorry to take up yet more space on this forum with R&R questions but it does not seem to be a straightforward piece of software for many of us.

regards,
Craig

CraigR · #2 Post by **CraigR** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:02 am

Good Lord - reading that post, you wouldn't think that English is my first language!

From reading other messages on this board I am wondering if I screwed up by not going into the BIOS and setting the CD as first boot device. One post indicated that as the machine reboots several times during the restore process, it initially is rebooting from CD, but once it has rebuilt the HD to a certain point, it can boot off that and you end up with an incomplete recovery.

I have set the CD to be the first boot device and am trying again. Ho Hum..

CraigR · #3 Post by **CraigR** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 7:49 am

OK so much for that theory. Changing the boot sequence did nothing other than waste more of my time.

Once again, after I have received the "You must restart your computer to complete the process" I find myself back at the R&R screen with the "Restore factory contents" dialogue box which I had at the beginning.

Any ideas gratefully accepted. As I said, I know I can recover my system using DriveImage but this R&R process should work. It's getting personal! <glares at the thinkpad>

Craig

CraigR · #4 Post by **CraigR** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 8:15 am

OK so, After you get the message ( You must restart your computer to compete this process ) you are only about halfway there. You get thrown back to R&R and "Restore factory contents" and although you figure you have already done this, you need to go through the process again.

This time it seemed to be doing a lot of the same things but was running from HD ( I had removed the CD by now ) and eventually rebooted and started running scripts and stuff.

Sorry for wasting everyone's time - but IMHO the software or help text could be a little more user friendly to prevent folks from jumping to the conclusion that the software has got messed up and is repeating itself!

regards,
Craig

sktn77a · #5 Post by **sktn77a** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 8:19 am

Well, recovering from the CDs first creates a hidden partition on the hard drive (this is the first apparent "recovery" process). Then it restores the computer from the hidden partition (this is the second apparent "recovery"). So it essentially goes through what appears to be 2 recoveries, if I remember correctly.

You could have a corrupt recovery disk. You might try calling IBM and asking telling them that you have made a recovery CD but it doesn't work and to send you a real set

skanky · #6 Post by **skanky** » Sat Oct 23, 2004 1:16 pm

sktn77a wrote:Well, recovering from the CDs first creates a hidden partition on the hard drive (this is the first apparent "recovery" process). Then it restores the computer from the hidden partition (this is the second apparent "recovery"). So it essentially goes through what appears to be 2 recoveries, if I remember correctly.

thats right, the first time i did it it threw me totally. i even tried using the recovery cds again because i though they must've been broken but after countless attempts to figure out why it was trying to go through the recovery process again, i just let it run and it worked.

the on screen text should at least say "installing recovery partition" and "installing windows" so it at least looked different!

CraigR · #7 Post by **CraigR** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 3:42 pm

Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one to be fooled by this process!

Still, at least I know now how it works, and that it DOES work.

Makes me appreciate DriveImage a little more I guess.

as always, thanks for your comments.

Craig

lfeagan · #8 Post by **lfeagan** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 1:32 pm

Thanks for the help CraigR, I was getting a bit confused during my use of the software too.

IBM Rescue and Recovery - my own personal GroundHog Day...

IBM Rescue and Recovery - my own personal GroundHog Day...

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