Hints neded: use 2645 restore CD

[Dabard051]

I'm trying to restore on a TP600E the original Win98 OS from my original system recovery CDs (part#00N6270) onto a (new to me, anyway) 12GB hard drive.

I follow the directions per the user reference manual (mostly, use EZ Setup to tell it to boot from the CD drive). I select the option to partition and format all drives to factory spec (not use any existing partitions). The process starts, it creates a 2GB and a 10 GB partition, makes the first partition active, formats it, then the system does a restart... after the restart, it complains that drive D is "unrecognized media" and the restore stalls.

Now, I can only guess that this is because the software doesn't expect a larger HD and the fact that FDISK function creates 2 partitions is confusing the issue.

No, I don't have the boot floppy that is part of this set (somehow, it vanished, but I have the original install CDs).

The Lenovo website says that the restore may fail on some FAT32 partitioned HDs, and recommends partitioning for FAT16 (!).

here's the link to the lenovo site notes:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... WIK-3TSPLM

Any hints as to proceed, or pointers to someone who has already solved the problem?

Thanks in advance,

dabard051

[BillP]

Do you have the latest bios?

[Dabard051]

yup, latest BIOS is flashed... I don't suspect that would be a problem because the restore CD is what IBM used to build the system, with the (now ancient) OEM-issue BIOS... any particular reason why you suspect BIOS level? I can plug another HD which has Win98 already installed, and it runs fine... I just can't figure out how to get the restore to function the way the manual sez it should.

Maybe the HD is too big, it will only restore to a 2GB HD? That seems silly...

Thanks,

dabard051

[BillP]

Sometimes the bios can impose a limit on hard disk size but since you have the latest, that is not the problem. I would download a boot disk for Win98 first edition from www.bootdisk.com. Create the boot floppy and use fdisk to remove all hard drive partitions and then create one 12 GB partition. Format /s the hard drive and try to boot the PC from the hard drive. If all is well you will be at a DOS prompt. Then shut the PC off and boot from the restore CD and see if it works any better.

[Dabard051]

well, after some scrounging around I found a 2.1GB hard drive, set up the 600E, and after some grumbling, it seemed to install correctly.

The trick is to use the BIOS configuration utility to make the CD ROM the first boot drive.

I selected "set factory default partition sizes" as the install option.

When I was finished (two hours later, yup), I had a 2GB C: drive with Win98 install, plus a teensy (15MB) D: drive, which rather surprised me. No diagnostic partition, that I can see, tho...

So it could deal with at least one partition/drive between the target drive and the CD-ROM during the file transfer process... which I thought it could have been able to do with a larger drive, shouldn't matter (to my mind) what the size of that drive is. Drive letters is drive letters, y'know.

I will repeat the experiment with a larger HD, just to see..

--dabard051

[whizkid]

None of the 600's (plain, E or X) came with a restore partition, but they did come with restore media. Those discs will not create a restore partition.

[Dabard051]

ok, so I got it to work... here's what I think is happening.

The restore CD is happy with a 2GB HD, and probably with a 4GB HD, but because the restore CD is based on Win95, it somehow only understands FAT16, which has the 2047MB partition limit (never mind the dialog in the beginning about enabling large HD support when it runs...)

I started by selecting "restore by formatting all disks to factory default", which creates a 2047MB C: drive and puts whatever is left over into a D: drive. If the D: drive is larger than 2047 MB, then a couple minutes later, the restore fails with the message "Invalid media reading drive D:"

So: the solution:
1) stop the restore process there
2) boot from a Win98 Emergency Boot Disk disk
3) use FDISK to eliminate the logical drive in the extended partition
4) restart the restore
5) select "restore to the existing partitions" - the "factory default" will not work.
6) wait for the restore to complete
7) boot from W98 Emergency Boot Disk
8) use FDISK and created the logical drive D: drive in the extended partition
9) format the D: drive
10) now the system is ready to boot from C:

So yes, a successful restore does depend on the size of the hard drive. The restore instructions in the User Guide are necessary, but not sufficient. The instructions and the restore software assume a 4.0GB or SMALLER HD.

...and yup, no diagnostic partition.

Thanks to all for the helpful suggestions,