Problems transferring a german T60 preload to a U.S. T60

[Yutani]

Hi,

as the subject says, I have a quite difficult problem here. I would like to transform a US T60 into a german one (including keyboard and power cord).

On my german T60 (which runs fine), I created the Rescue & Recovery CDs (V4.2). I booted from them and the GUI appears and everything looks ok.

Now the problem: When I boot the US T60 with these CDs, it resets itself after some time during "Initializing the services". It never reaches the GUI, even after man reboots. No error message appears.

I've plugged the US HDD into my german machine to check if some kind of "software or BIOS lock" is present, but same problem here -> reset loop.

But: when I plug the german HDD in the US machine, Windows boots without problems, which leads me to the next question/conclusion:

I guess that RnR checks the partitions and refuses to start because of the different language or something like that. Do I have to wipe the complete destination HDD including the HPA, so that RnR can rebuild the system from scratch?

Any help is appreciated!

Regards,
Yutani

PS: I hope my English is transparent enough.

[Ken Fox]

Hi,

as the subject says, I have a quite difficult problem here. I would like to transform a US T60 into a german one (including keyboard and power cord).

I don't know what the problem is, but there are several solutions that could work. If the idea is to get a clean install, you could clone over the disk in the German thinkpad over to the disk you are going to put into the (originally) American one, using either a USB enclosure or an ultrabay adapter. This will wipe off anything that was on the recipient disk in the process of receiving the clone. When you boot up the first time, just hit the blue button and then have the system restored to factory contents. If you do this I would take the selective restore (I think they call it "Custom Restore") option and avoid the installation of the bloatware including everything Norton/Symantec, plus whatever Thinkvantage applications you don't use. You will need cloning software, which comes in many forms, some free and some not, which includes Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image and Apricorn EZ Gig II. There are trial versions of Acronis that can be downloaded for free and which would serve your purposes.

Or, if you are happy with what is on the German thinkpad, you could simply use the clone you made of the disk in that one, in the originally USA one. Or, you could put the new drive in the German machine and install the drive after R&R does its thing into the USA one.

If there is something on the disk that is preventing R&R from working, you could try downloading a non-Windows disk utility such as qparted and have that delete all the partitions in the disk and start from scratch.

Most probably your impression of what is happening is correct, in that Lenovo doesn't supply recovery disks in another language for a Thinkpad bought elsewhere. Presumably they are doing this to prevent the gray market trade in laptops across borders due to the disparity in local prices which would make this an attractive buying strategy. Since you presumably have a Windows license on the machine, I doubt that MS cares what language you run the OS in.

In any event, I doubt that this problem will prove to be very challenging to overcome.

[ryengineer]

snip....I guess that RnR checks the partitions and refuses to start because of the different language or something like that. Do I have to wipe the complete destination HDD including the HPA, so that RnR can rebuild the system from scratch?....snip

Yes, Rescue and Recovery becomes unstable at times if you try to overlap another version on top of it. The best thing is to always format the HDD before attempting to restore via Product recovery disks.

[Yutani]

It works!

I used GPartEd and deleted all partitions. Now R&R starts as expected!

I thank you very much for your help!

Best Regards,
Yutani

[frankiepankie]

The power adapter is compatible with 110 -240V~, so you only have to attach an other powercord from the wall socket to the AC Adapter.