[HELP]Problem with HPA

[edmonton]

Windows crashes.

A couple of days ago, I decided to restore my computer to a previous status using Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore (v2.00.0170). But since the program itself encountered some problem, I decided to restore my thinkpad to its factory content.

After that, I tried to update the Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore program so I can do a backup of my OS as well as the applications such as Office and Acrobat.

Well, to my surprise, I was not able to do it. I got the error message shown below:


Time and time again, I was mad and decided to restore it to factory content again.

I couldn't do that, actually I couldn't get access to HPA at all since Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore was not properly installed.

I then tried to restore using recovery CDs from IBM, but after it reformating my C:, there's a DATA error in CD1. I tried several times, but CD1 failed to work.

After sitting there helplessly for a couple of hours, I decided to install Windows XP myself using CD from Microsoft.

It works fine now, but I could not get access to HPA. I tried to install Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore on my machine so I can probably access to it, but the same error message prompt.

Anybody has any idea what happened? Is there anything I can do to get HPA back alive?

Thanks!

WHu

P.S. Sorry that my first post was a request for help.

[jdhurst]

IBM has been known to manufacture faulty recovery CD's. It has happened to me twice. Ask IBM to replace the recovery CD's and consider trying again. Proper CD's *will* recover your system including the hidden partition.

One trick I learned from IBM:

Start the recovery, and at the main recovery menu, press ESC, then press F3 to quit. That will leave you at a DOS prompt. You are at (or navigate to) X:\recovery. Run FDISK, and remove all partitions. Then set the BIOS to boot from the CD (Do not use the keyboard command (F12, I think it is). Turn off, restart, and recover. This (according to IBM) provides a cleaner recovery and can eliminate some errors.
... JDHurst

[edmonton]

But my system is out of warranty. I don't think they will replace the recovery CD for me.

Thanks for the hint though.