"product recovery failed to restore your system"

[uncle fani]

So I was messin around with my T60 laptop trying to install another operating system on it and in the process I ended up deleting the hidden partition with rescue and recovery on it (I deleted the newly installed OS too). No biggie I thought since I had made an R&R startup disc. So I ran it but then I realized that I never made the product recovery disks to go along with it. At this point I couldn’t load into windows anymore and so I called IBM to have them ship me all the recovery CDs. I wanted to reinstall everything to the original factory setting and everything seems to go fine until it asks for disk 2. When I insert disk 2 it doesn’t seem to do anything. So I restarted it and then it runs as if everything is fine but then it gives an error message of “product recovery failed to restore your system.” Not sure if this is related but when I restart without any CD in my drive I get the message “NTLDR is missing” I thought maybe this whole thing was a fluke but I tried running the product recovery CDs a couple of times and each time it does the same thing. Any ideas? Thanks!

[Harryc]

Run Pc-Doctor and erase the drive.

[uncle fani]

Thanks, but I'm not really familiar with that. Is that something I have to buy or can I download it?

[Harryc]

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 56222.html

[uncle fani]

I ran PC-Doctor and erased the drive like you suggested but it's still not working and giving the same error message of "product recovery failed to restore your system." What else can I try?

[emeraldgirl08]

did you completely and totally destroy whatever you had on that drive?

Use something like Killdisk b/c the drive has to be clean!

[uncle fani]

I tried to run killdisk from the laptop but it's not working. After I select the option to erase the HD and press enter it doesn't do anything.

Wouldn't me erasing the HD with pc doctor be enough anyway?

[Harryc]

Wouldn't me erasing the HD with pc doctor be enough anyway?

Yes, it is enough. I'd say you have bad media there, or an issue with the optical/CDROM drive.

[uncle fani]

I don't get how that's possible. I never had an issue with anything up until I deleted everything. There must be something else I can do...I hope?

[underclocker]

I've been through this one.

I also think the boot sector needs to be properly overwritten/wiped. Before running Killdisk or any other utility, you should disable the Predesktop Area option under Security in the BIOS (don't forget to re-enable it after a successful wipe).

For Hitachi drives, the boot sector wipe is easy, there is a quick erase option on the Hitachi DFT utility boot CD (downloadable from Hitachi --> http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm).

[uncle fani]

Still no good. I disabled predesktop, did the wipe, enabled it and still same error message at Disc #2.

[Brad]

You problem may be a bad disk 2.

I would request a replacement disk.

Brad

[underclocker]

You problem may be a bad disk 2.

I would request a replacement disk.

Brad

Agreed. I've seen bad recovery disks, too! (Yes, it's frustrating and time consuming...)

[sktn77a]

Do you have another drive you can experiment with?

[uncle fani]

Could the bad HD really be possible??? I never had any issues with it before I deleted everything. Can that really cause it to malfunction? Perhaps they sent me a faulty CD? I don't have a spare drive to try....I guess I'll try to get one. In the meantime, if you guys have any other ideas please let me know, thanks.

[uncle fani]

I dunno if this means anything but I was able to sucessfully install Ubuntu on the laptop. Does this rule out a problem with the hard drive and put the lenovo CDs at fault???

[Harryc]

Yes, Call IBM back and get them to send you a replacement set...don't pay for it. Tell them the first set was defective. Point them to this thread if you want to. If I am wrong, all it cost was some time.

[uncle fani]

Ok, I'll give IBM a call and hopefully the replacement CDs will work. I'll keep you guys updated. Thanks for all your help.

[uncle fani]

So after a few screw ups from IBM's side they finally sent me good CDs that worked and I was able to successfully reinstall everything. My experience with them has been terrible though. It's like the tech support people have no idea what they're doing. All I asked of them was to provide me with a working set of Recovery CDs and for them to be Home Edition and they managed to screw this up at least 3 times! So it was a really long and drawn out process. There's no way I'm ever going to own another lenovo laptop. They suck. On the bright side though, I really started to like Ubuntu.

Oh by the way, can anyone help me with the boot sequence? Lenovo had me change the order when I reinstalled and I never changed it back. Please someone help me and don't make me call them back!

[richk]

Start into the BIOS (hit F1 a couple of times at the sign of the splash screen at startup) Select startup. Then, select Boot. You can make it whatever you want or hit F9 for the default.

[Harryc]

I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to post results of my recent experience with this error in case someone else runs across it. In my research I found there are several things that can cause this error, a couple of which were mentioned in this thread. Often times this error is accompanied by a 7B (BSOD) error on boot, but only if you are installing an XP recovery image from Lenovo recovery CD's.

1.) Bad CD Media
2.) Defective RAM
3.) Defective Hard Drive
4.) Defective CD Drive
5. ) Previous installs on the hard drive, particularly linux. Turn off the predesktop area in the BIOS/Security section and then zero out the drive using activekilldisk or PC-Doctor Drive erasing utility....complete erase. Re-enable the predesktop area prior to trying to load the recovery CD's again.
6.) AHCI mode in BIOS under Config/SATA...change that to compatibility mode

This problem ate my lunch for several hours until it dawned on me to disable AHCI mode in BIOS. I was not getting the 7B stop error initially, until I zeroed out the drive with activekilldisk. My advice is to try the compatibility mode setting before anything else.