Create Recovery Media gone missing - what to do?

[jamess]

A friend of mine has a T61 and he wanted to make recovery media. there is no recovery media option only rescue media. How come? Is it any different with T61 than it is with X61T of mine? I guess not, but still, when i click on Rescue and Recovery media i get both options available whereas he only gets to choose Rescue media.

Thanks

[bill bolton]

A friend of mine has a T61 and he wanted to make recovery media. there is no recovery media option only rescue media. How come?

If he has a standard Lenovo operating system install, that means that a copy of the recovery media has already been made. If he has a corporate SOE operating system install, or similar, there will be no have been opportunity at any time to make recovery media.

You can only make one copy of the recovery media per installation from a standard Lenovo operating system installation. That is a Microsoft licence requirement, not something specific to Lenovo.

If you do a completely new installation from the recovery media you can make one new set of recovery media.

Since your friend no longer has the opportunity to make a set of recpovery media, he will need to get one from somewhere else. Lenovo will sell him a copy.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[jamess]

He has a standard Lenovo oper.sys. but he has NOT performed the recovery media process. Even if he did, as did I, the would have been an option to make Recovery media, only that it would have been "gray" and non-clickable, explaining what you've already explained - that MS limits and permits only 1 copy to be made etc.

The option is simply not there and he hasn't made the Recovery media. He did however perform Rescue media! Is it possible that you can only choose which one of these you make and that's it?

Thanks again for help.

[NathanA]

If he just got the machine and hasn't invested a whole lot of time in set up and configuration, then have him do a full system restore from the Rescue and Recovery partition on the hard drive, and then see if the option shows up.

-- Nathan

[GomJabbar]

One of the other moderators, Kyocera, ran into the same problem sometime back...

Unable to find files to create recovery CD's. 2623D7U

[Steerpike]

Just ran into this on a new Vista T61 I'm configuring. Took it out of the box yesterday, ran through the typical update process, got all the way through, and finally ran into an issue after activating the security chip; found that each reboot caused a 'chkdsk' to run, couldn't figure out a resolution (rebooted at least 10 times to see if it would 'cure' itself), so finally decided to do a full factory restore by booting into the thinkvantage R&R.

Got the second attempt nicely updated, and then tried to generate the recovery media. The option is simply not there. On the Programs/ThinkVantage menu, I see 15 entries, starting with 'Access Connections' and ending with 'System Update' plus a folder 'ThinkVantage Fingerprint software'. On my other Vista system, I see ThinkVantage/Create Rescue media; nothing like that on this new T61. I've read the above thread; I have not tried to generate media before on this machine.

On the machine that has the option, I see it's pointing to 'RRMedia.exe'; no such executable exists on the 'bad' machine. I also looked for reccd.exe and pcrecsa.exe, just in case they were relevant, but no go.

I guess I need to call Lenovo.

Any thoughts?
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UPDATE:
Well, what do you know ... I thought I'd fully updated the ThinkVantage software (countless cycles of reboots, etc) but ... I just gave it one more shot, and this time, noticed 'Rescue and Recovery' on the third tab (not critical, not recommended, but just 'optional'). I chose this option (as well as about 12 'recommended' items that showed up) and ... voila ... I now see 'create rescue media' on the ThinkVantage menu (highlighted, confirming it's newly installed!).

So go figure - the ability to create recovery media appears not to be available in the 'out of the box' state of the computer; you have to go through hours of updates in order to get to it, and remember to install updates to 'optional' items. Oh well, I have got it now!