Recovery Partition help

[obpsym]

The story so far, getting rid of this laptop and want to clean install from recovery partition.

X60 with Recovery Partition, Vista Business and Solaris

I removed Solaris by deleting the partition in windows.

I used a Vista DVD to recover the MBR and was back into Windows

I repaired the Recovery MBR using the bootable CD made from the Lenovo floppy.

Problem.


I can see the recovery partition is still there, but R&R cannot see it either at boot or from within Vista. (F11 starts Vista)

I then installed Ubuntu to see if grub would let me access the recovery partition. Grub can see the partition, I made it active, I can mount it RO and see all the files but trying different settings in menu.lst just boots me into Vista when selecting R&R. I've tried hiding Vista, unhiding R&R, changing the partition type 0x27 ect.

title Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Vista
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

I noticed that the last time I did a full R&R backup to USB drive that
Vista accessed the Z:\Preboot area while copying files, it just looks like some boot information is pointing to c:\windows instead of R&R

Any ideas? I don't have my recovery CD's as I'm traveling at the moment.

Trying another atempt at Creating recovery Media to USB drive..
(EDIT)

I downloaded the Vista Recovery Disc fixed boot, now windows can see the recovery partition and I'm burning a new set of discs.

I think Solaris changed the partition type or boot flag anyway, it's working now.

Link to bootable Vista recovery disc

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-v ... -download/

[obpsym]

I spoke too soon.

The recovery discs burned fine but the CD and R&R are pointing to c:/windows/system32/ ect and they just boot into Vista, not the recovery partition.

I tried without the hard drive installed, same result. The boot manager is not pointed at the correct location to start the recovery program.

Can someone run bcdedit.exe with Administrative privileges and post the output here so I can add the correct path to the recovery startup program.

Many thanks.

[EarloftheWest]

Obpsym,

I purchased:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit ... ration.htm

In addition to being a great application for partitioning and resizing partitions, it's very strong on the boot menu front.

After I reinstalled my recovery partition, after having hosed it, I made an image of it and the fresh Windows partition it created. I believe that after I installed BootItNG, I could boot into the recovery partition.

I deleted the recovery partition after imaging it and the Windows partition (running XP) and then installed Ubuntu on a separate partition.

I installed grub onto the root partition of Ubuntu not the MBR. I have BootItNG act as the boot manager. Haven't had a problem.

The application can do a lot with MBRs and you can make extended MBRS so your disk can have more that 4 logical partitions.

Nice app.

My 2 cents.