R51: Factory restore with broken recovery partition

[keinstevil]

I have an R51, and I want to do a factory restore. I've already wiped out the main partition and installed linux. I don't have recovery disks of any kind.

When I try to boot into the recovery partition, it starts to boot up, but then the computer restarts when it gets to the splash screen that says "IBM Rescue and Recovery". I've tried fixing the MBR using the IBM/Lenovo tools, I've tried adding the partition to my grub list, and I've tried setting the recovery partition as active to boot into it directly, all with the same result.

I can see the contents of the partition from linux, and from what I can tell, they still seem to be intact. Is there any way to do a factory restore without actually booting into the rescue and recovery software? Or does anyone have any suggestions as to what is wrong with the partition and how to fix it? My main priority is to do the factory restore; if I can't fix the boot problem, I'll just be sure to make recovery disks. Any help would be appreciated.