Help! Windows 8 - Can't Rescue and Recovery

[mstrneal]

Thanks in advance for the help! I was having a few issues with the laptop and was planning on wiping it and starting over, but though I could try out the Win8 developers preview.

It actually isn't very good for my purposes, and I now want to perform a full factory reset (Rescue and Recovery). But I can't access that menu during boot (F11)!! In addition, I do not have a CD rom drive, so I cannot order the rescue disks.

Help?!

[Maliha Community Moderator]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

For Win 7 you could just install RnR to enable F11 and recover your system, and for prior OSes you can use RnR repair CD; however neither are supported on Win 8 developer's preview, don't have to since Win 8 full version is still at least a year in the future, that is to say we can't blame lenovo for not providing a fix today.

Your best bet is to call lenovo support and get a recovery media for your ThinkPad from them. They might charge you some fee, though. As for optical drive, you can borrow a USB DVD drive from someone or if you have a desktop PC with a SATA CD/DVD drive then you can use cheap alternative like this:- http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-ThinkPad-Laptops/Cheap-optical-drive-solution-Thumbnail-pics/td...

Hope this helps.

[mstrneal · Accepted solution]

tl;dr - solution for this issue

Hey!

Thanks for the input! I tried many things to get it to work, but unfortunately Lenovo requires RnR installation through Win 7 in order for it to work. Recovery disks don't work because I don't have an optical drive, and nobody I knows has an optical drive.

I have called lenovo support, and thanks to my warranty, I am getting a preloaded replacement harddrive. They were very helpful, and sent it very fast (I just got it after ordering 2 days ago).

I did solve the problem myself before getting the HDD, which makes me wonder why Lenovo doesn't have a contingency case available for those without optical drives. So Lenovo, if you are listening, here is a suggestion: just like you sell your bootable RnR cds, make a bootable flashdrive with exactly the same information. Such an easy solution to this problem, and its exactly what I did. I created a bootable USB flash drive and ran the OS recovery through that. It bypasses whatever kind of OS you are using (I did the same thing a year back with a lenovo thinkpad and an ubuntu distro).

Thanks!

[JonathanChan]

this may be a little late but i have a solution.

1. backup the files in the q drive to an external harddrive just incase. use a usb bootable ubuntu by downloading ubuntu cd iso and installing it to a usb. articles on internet to teach you

2. if you have another computer, download the windows 7 cd iso and install it onto a flash drive. there are articles on the internet that teaches how to get it on a flash drive

3. now install windows 7 and get the thinkpad tools. get rescue and recovery. update lenovo tools.

4. if the q drive is still there leave it. if not, make a new partition and paste the q drive backup onto it

5. shutdown, and run rescue and recovery from the bootup thing

6. restore  system to factory state

so mainly, u are installing windows 7 to install rescue and recovery which will change the mbr which will boot r&r which will restore your system

[beau77]

JonathanChan - thanks for the solution.

I just had an ordeal recovering win7 after upgrading to win8.  Fortunately, I had the Q drive in tact so I was eventually able to restore back to defaults.  I ended up installing win7 and created the Recovery Media onto a USB hard drive then reflashed the whole system.

I did the following:

1) Installed a new copy of Win7 over the Win8 install

2) Installed Rescue and Recovery 4.5 (not sure if I needed this in the end)

3) Installed System Update and Thinkvantage Toolbox (was looking for the utils to create the recovery disk)

- At this point, was able to boot into the RR at startup but could not restore anything.

- Eventually gave up and focused on trying to create recovery media.

4) Copied over my old C:\Program Files\Lenovo\Factory Recovery folder from the old win8 install (e.g. Windows.old folder). 

5) Recreated the recovery media and restored to to defaults.

Things that I got stuck on were:

-  After installing Resuce and Recovery, I could use the boot button to get into RR4.5 but could not do a restore.  I'd click all the buttons then go into the new win7 install's recovery mode.

-  The files in the Q drive are all hidden as system protected files.  The key file being the LenovoQDrive.exe which launches the "Create Recovery Media" process.  Had to unhide them using Explorer, View, Options...

-  Created recovery on a usb hard drive but it would not boot.  I manually copied the recovery files to another usb harddrive I had setup before and was able to boot.  Not sure what it was exactly, but the Create Recovery Media utility didn't set the drive up correctly for booting!