Strange X31 Recovery CD Issue - Hangs at Disc 4 !

[blue2]

I'm having a strange X31 recovery CD issue.

I just sold my X31, used Dban to wipe the drive clean and then have been attempting to re-install the Factory Preload using the X31 Recovery CD set.

So I boot off Recovery CD1 in the X3 Ultrabase and the dvd drive gets recoginized at bootup, completes CD1 and then it prompts me to "Insert Media 2" which contains the file "X:\Recovery\Cmapbus.002" I assumed that this referred to CD2 and when I inserted it, the recovery process continued. CD2 reported 100% completed at the end of CD2, the sytem automatically reboots and upon boot up it asks me for CD1 again. (I assume that is because only CD1 is a boot disc). That quickly finishes, asks for CD2 which then shows what appears to be DOS (rather than the previous graphical interface) the unpacking of varsious files and drivers. On to CD3 (also showing DOS unpacking) and when that finishes, it prompts for CD4. But when I insert CD4 and hit "enter", there is no response. The system sits there.

I tried wiping the drive and starting again, and it happens again in exactly the same way. Then I tried my second Recovery CD set in case a bad CD caused the problem. But the same thing happens again.

Anyone have any idea what might be going on? I haven't used the X31 or the recovery CDs for it for some time, so I can't figure out what is hanging the recovery process. Just in case, I ran PC Doctor for DOS on the system before I even begain installing the OS, so I don't think there are any problems of any kind such as bad sectors on the hard drive.

This one really has me stumped. Since I usually Acronis to do my system backups, and it's been some time since I worked with the IBM Recovery CD sets, I can't figure out what I might be doing wrong. Anyone have any thoughts/solutions?

[jronald]

I have had 2 issues with the X31 recovery disks.
#1 The disc/CD-Rom/Media slice did not play well with each other. This has happened several times. Normally a swap of discs or the CD-Rom will take care of it.
#2 The HDD must be completely virgin. The long way I do it is load Linux onto the whole disk, then slap it back in the X31 (or T30). This has happened a couple of times.
It sounds like a portion of the discs are loading, then when you retry, it is seeing that portion. Im thinking you should have 5 discs total, but Im not where I can grab mine and confirm.

Ron

[blue2]

Yes, there are five discs total. So the hang on CD4 was not a good sign. The fact that it consitently hangs at the spot, and that the process is the same CD1 to CD2 then back to CD1, CD2, CD3, and then the hang (even when I use the second CD set) suggests that it is NOT related to a bad disc. However, I'm not sure if I ever used the Recovery Set since I always migrate using Acronis.

I'm inclined to believe that wiping with Dban does something (the MBR or something else?) and that this is what causes the Recovery CD process to hang. But I wanted to insure that the drive was clean. I wonder if it would make any difference if I removed the drive from the X31, inserted it as a secondary drive in one of my other Thinkpads and then formatted it, if that would help.

[jronald]

I do remember that it can NOT be formatted. It must be a blank HDD (or totally the wrong OS). Im thinking maybe part of the issue is the blank HDD. Seems like I had some luck with deleting the partion with windows, then reinstalling it and getting it to work. NOT running a format at all.

Ron

[rkawakami]

My usual procedure when loading a factory restore set is to first wipe the hard drive with PC Doctor for DOS' "Full erase hard drive" option (under the Utility menu). I typically just run it until 5% of the drive is erased since that should be enough to get rid of any partitioning information; unlike some other disk erasure utilities, it does not ask you which partition(s) to erase. It starts from sector 0 and goes through them all.

Also, you should verify that CD4 can be read by your optical drive. DVDInfoPro is a program which tries to read all of the sectors on your disk and will report if there's any errors. It can be downloaded from here:

http://www.dvdinfopro.com/

It has a demo mode that will operate for 14 days and runs under WinXP, Vista and W7. Which of course means you will need to have an OS running on your X31 (or are able to move the optical drive to a system that has Windows).

[blue2]

Thanks for both of those suggestions. It's been a while since I worked with the Recovey set. I supect that Dban nuking the drive is the problem. So I will try PC Doctor for DOS Wipe. Then I'll try it again. As for the optical drive, while it could possibly have a problem, it would be unlikely for it to only occur on the same CD (the fourth one) on two different sets. I'll report back and thanks again for your advice.

[blue2]

I did the full erase with PC Doctor for DOS just until the end. This time the discs went in order (previously at CD2, it then asked me to insert CD1, then back again to CD2, and so on until it hung at CD4.) However, when I got to CD4 this time too, it hung again.

That makes me wonder if there are two problems: The first being trying to recover on a drive that was just nuked with Dban. So doing the PC Doctor erase solved that one. However, the other problem is either a problem with the optical drive, the two sets of recovrery discs, or something else.

I'm doing the full erase again with PC Doctor and will then try a different optical drive. If that fails, how likely would it be to have two defective sets of recovery CDs so that they fail each time on CD4?

I can't imagine what else it can be now. Can you?

EDIT: Tried the second optical drive and the second set of recovery cds and it hung at CD4 just like before. So if the optical drives were defective, it would be unlikely that they'd read the first three CDs but not the 4th. So I either have two defective sets of recovery CDs or there is some other issue that prevents the installation from continuing, even after I did the full drive erase to completion within PC Doctor for DOS. It obviously isn't an issue with the boot sequence. So what else can this possibly be?

[jronald]

Are the Recovery Sets OE or a copy? If they are a copy its possible the error was duplicated? Im guessing here. I had a copy of W2kPro that was bad from the get go, I burned it several times and it never worked.

Ron

[blue2]

The two sets are the OE sets, imprinted with the labels from IBM. So either I got two bad sets or something else is wrong here. As I've been using Acronis True Image for some time, I don't remember if I ever used the Recovery sets before or if I just had them for security.

From appearances, it is as if CD4 is not recognized as an inserted disc. So either something is wrong at the end of CD3 so that the "enter" command is not enabled for continuation or something is wrong with CD4 so that it is not recogzized as a finalized CD.

Perhaps what would help is is someone could check the file sizes on each of the CDs so that I could see if there was something obviously wrong with them. Other than that, I can't figure out what else it could be and I've migrated machines at least a dozen times and that was a lot more complicated than using the Recovery Cds!

I wonder if anyone else has had this kind of problem with any Thinkpad using a Recovery CD set that just would not recognize one CD in the set. It seems to have happened here too with the Ultrabay in the docking station (perhaps a more demaning interface than models with the ultrabay built into the machine). http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 38#p420053

[sjthinkpader]

If you have another Ultrabay drive, I would give that a try.

[blue2]

Yes, I'll try another Ultrabay as well. That will make two sets of Recovery CDs, two optical drives and two Ultrabays.

But even if everything were brand new, it would be awful hard to explain to IBM/Lenovo that something is defective because it can't read CD4 each time but reads the first three CDs without problem...

[automobus]

To second Ray's advice, I recommend you verify the disc.

Also, you should verify that CD4 can be read by your optical drive. DVDInfoPro is a program which tries to read all of the sectors on your disk and will report if there's any errors.
It has a demo mode that will operate for 14 days and runs under WinXP, Vista and W7.

Only I recommend you use a different tool. InfraRecorder is free software for Windows. Go ahead and install it, and keep it forever.

• Have the fourth disc in your optical drive, and run InfraRecorder.
• From the Actions menu, Manage Tracks….
• There should only be one track listed. Click the Scan the selected track(s) for errors. button (magnifying glass icon) at the bottom of the Tracks windows.
• When results are stated, there should ideally be zero C2 errors. C2 errors can be caught and corrected, but bigger problems are non-correctable. A total lack of C2 errors is very good, as it means your computer can read the disc well.

[blue2]

I appreciate both of your suggestions regarding DVDInfoPro and InfraRecorder but I'm always cautious when installing burning or media software. They have a tendency to make system changes and I've had conflicts before. Smply removing the program did not remove the changes that were made to various system files. I use Record Now DX for data burning and ImgBurn for dvds and I'd be hesitant to install a third.

Wouldn't someone telling me the file size of CD4 give me a good idea of whether the CD is correct or not? How likely would it be that two copies of CD4 are bad and no one else has had this problem?

[automobus]

There is a portable version of InfraRecorder, which should make no changes at all. But it seems ImgBurn has the same functionality. I have not read the documentation, but this screenshot makes the task look self-explanatory.

It would also be good to compare against a known-good disc, if you can find somebody with a set. But comparing file sizes alone is not sufficient. To ensure that the files are all the same, you should compare hashes. Such a task is easy enough with GNU/Linux, but I gave-up finding a simple solution for Windows. (I settled on winMd5Sum, but it is only for individual files.)