Windows 7 R&R on bootup (thinkpad x61)

[shareme99]

Hello! My x61 thinkpad came preloaded with vista business and I have recently purchased a copy of Windows 7. I did a fresh copy of windows 7 onto the laptop and found out that the "think vantage" button when booting up..no longer brings me to R&R. Is there a way to fix this so that it is compatible with windows 7? I have phoned lenovo thinkpad support in Canada and they said its not supported on my laptop. I was thinking of installing a fresh copy of vista from the recovery disks I have and try installing a fresh copy of 7 afterward. I suspect that it was my xp/vista dual boot that corrupted the MBR before. does anyone know how to fix this? thank you very very much!

[EOMtp]

Here is the solution:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... Q2QAK.html

Good luck!

[shareme99]

thank you for the reply EOMtp. However I still can't fix it. I have already installed Rescue and Recovery 4.3 before and the only thing addition to what I have installed after reading your post is the Sysprepbackup accessory package. I downloaded that package to my desktop and double-clicked it to install it. It installed in less than one minute. However, when i rebooted my computer and pressed "thinkvantage" then f11, it says missing "NTLDR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Can you point me the right direction to how to fix this? thank you very much. I'm using the 32-bit edition of win7.

[EOMtp]

You need the Windows 7 equivalent of the following, but I do not know if it exists yet or where to get it:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54483

I know what is wrong but I do not recall the precise sequence to fix the problem manually. Perhaps someone else will contribute the details.

The issue is that Windows 7 was installed before R&R was in place. You have to use the Windows Recovery Console to recreate NTLDR so that NTLDR knows about the multiple partitions, including R&R. One way is to reinstall Windows 7 on top of the existing installation and select Repair. Another way is to repair NTLDR manually, which can be done if you know how to walk between raindrops, i.e., very carefully ... the details of which escape me as it has been a long time since I did this.

[shareme99]

I do hope I can fix it. By any chance will recovering from a copy of windows 7 from recovery disks made by a t400 work? Or will it fix it if I recover from my original set of vista business and reinstall 7 from there on help fix it? I hope someone knows how to solve this problem. thank you.

[EOMtp]

If you have backup software with which you can image the C: drive for later "recovery", then your idea with the T400 disks is perfect.

Install the T400 system on the X60 as if the X60 were a T400 -- this will create the R&R partition and "link" the boot loader to it the way you want. Then use the backup program you used to image your C: drive to move the image back to the C: partition, overwriting the T400 Windows image.

I am assuming that you will use a USB drive of some kind (disk or flash drive) off of which to boot/run the backup/restore software.

[shareme99]

I am assuming that you will use a USB drive of some kind (disk or flash drive) off of which to boot/run the backup/restore software.

What do you mean by this? I was thinking of using Acronis True Image if I were to backup the system. But would it be easier if I just reinstalled a copy of 7 on top of the version for t400?