T61 Recovery

[Zimmerframe]

I'm in a bit of a muddle here.
Got a shiny new T61 from work last week.
It has a Vista Business licence sticker on the bottom, but my employers had installed their own custom version of Xp Pro.
Using the think vantage software I made a recovery dvd.
I and then proceeded to tinker with the machine, attempting to have a dual boot of :

1. the "work" Xp Pro image
2. A factory Lenovo image of either Xp Pro or Vista.

Eventually I destroyed the recovery partition etc. blah blah.
I then tried to recover the machine with the dvd I made, no joy.
I rang Lenovo, and they "can't " determine from their records which OS was installed on my laptop, and won't send me recovery cds unless I can provide proof of purchase. I don't like this route, as it involves ringing, my it dept, to get onto the purchasing dept etc etc, and admitting I messed up a brand new machine, 10 minutes after getting it lol.
I bid on a disc set on ebay UK, and the auction was "pulled" by Ebay for some reason.

So to eventually get to the question lol
If I can persuade some one on the sales forum, to get me a recovery dvd or even a burned copy , will the dvd I originally created myself work, to restore the "work" image.
And finally IF I ever get it, back the way I got it, whats the best way to arrange a dual boot setup, like I wanted above.

[Harryc]

You're going to have to go back to the IT dept anyway because there is no way to reinstall the recovery partition without reinstalling the entire drive to the factory image. Is the recovery partition gone or is it just that you can't get to it through Thinkvantage? If it's just that you can't get to it, there is a repair diskette that might help -

See creating a recovery repair diskette here

As far as the DVD you created, assuming it is a good image, make sure that the CDROM drive is first in the boot order in BIOS and just boot it up. Again, if you just created a rescue and recovery DVD, it will destroy what's on your drive and it will install a nice Vista Business for ya...
The best way to muck around with the drive would have been to create a cloned image on an external drive.

[Zimmerframe]

Thanks for the reply.

I thought, my rescue and recovery dvd which I made, would be the installed custom version of Xp as was installed on the laptop when I received it
I presumed that the rescue and recovery dvd that I made wouldn't work only because I had destroyed the partition info which I would get back if I used the original recovery cd. ??