Help cleaning out someone's garbage.....thinkpad t61 recovery help

[Model40-770]

ok...trying to recover a friends of mines laptop.....its a thinkpad t61.......it was factory vista but was downgraded to xp pro for the purpose of running some older equipment checking software.....now his new company laptop is in and he wanted to go back to vista on his personal lap top......he started system restore back to as far as it would go thinking it would restore it to when he had vista (give him a brake he is in his 50's and not that tech swavy)......he said the process went normal....windows logged off and the system restarted.....windows xp started to load then it went to a blue screen.......(i wasn't there at the time i came back all most a week later).........well he kept turning it own and off hopeing something would happen......another member of our crew said he could fix it and would up putting in his computer restore disk in (older hp pavilion...windows xp home sp1 discs....didn't use the driver disk i was told)......the load went normaly through the 5 disk set........went to reboot.......same think....windows xp logo......then it went to a blue screen.......i come back and now trying to get it back up and going for him now....we are currenty offshore in the middle east and he didn't bring any of his recovery disks......it will be allmost a year before he goes back home to the states so i am here looking for a solution...........i don't have alot of experince with think pads......i know they have the disk space for recovery built in but.........

1: Has the installation of windows xp sp1 off another computers restore disk damaged/coppied over the restore area of the hard drive?

2. The windows vista sticker is still on the bottom with the product codes is there a place to download it and then install your numbers to make the copy legal?

3. We get to make trips to town from time to time if one of us purchased a new copy of vista or windows xp would that solve this problem or would there be damaged drivers that will need to be downloaded?

4: If there is damaged drivers what all would needed to be downloaded and how would it be installed to get this system back to factory original specs?

(oh yea.......all his important stuff is backed up on cd's so that is not a issues here........)

[billbolton Community Moderator]

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Model40-770 wrote:

1: Has the installation of windows xp sp1 off another computers restore disk damaged/coppied over the restore area of the hard drive?

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Yes, running a recovery disk set will blow away the existing hard disk contents entirely.

Your friend should have made a set of Vista revovery disks before installing the XP recovery set!

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3. We get to make trips to town from time to time if one of us purchased a new copy of vista or windows xp would that solve this problem or would there be damaged drivers that will need to be downloaded?

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If your frined didn't make a Vista recovery set (as per above), your simplest course of action is to purchase a Vista recovery set from Levono.  This will install all the correct drivers etc and will not requitre you to enter any key numbers etc, and will probably cost less than any retail version of Vista you woul dbuy over  the counter

Cheers,

Bill

[Model40-770]

Thank you for your quick reply......That is what i was afraid of going behind someone who turned a easy fix into a can of worms....i had done alot of reading on this model and was hopeing the recovery area wasn't "seen" at all by the computer so it would still be there undamaged.......I was hopeing to get a new copy of windows (not really worried about price)and just install it because it would be months before we could get the recovery cds here(working in middle east and our supply line really sucks....some parts take nearly a year to get here to where we are at)  but the drivers seem to be the big problem with this with out them it still won't work right even with a fresh windows install....well i guess i am left with calling support and seeing what i can do about getting the software shipped or at least on it's way.....anyone else know of anyother options?????

[Model40-770]

I have a new copy of vista and xp on the way......i have been on the support website downloading drivers and putting them on disk to install after the fresh OS upload........any tricks or tips right now will be very helpfull as this is my first time going through this with a thinkpad........the factory restore disks would be nice but would be months before they would get here so doing what i can with what we got.......wish me luck.........

[JHEM]

Have you read this? Particularly page 29 "Restoring factory contents".

Running the recovery CDs from the HP Pavilion should have had no effect on the hidden recovery partition of the Thinkpad.

[Model40-770]

Well i missed this manual.......i found one to take apart and service the unit but not the basic manual........i was under the impression that it formated that hidden area that was one of my origional questions............i have gotten the computer to boot......i tried a linux live cd i had and hadn't tried it on anything yet......and while looking at the drive partions it showed 4......one was windows, swap and not sure about the other too....i have pushed the blue button before and didn't see anything about recovery.........it took me straight to bios settings.........well time to try it again before i try a complete reinstall.......anything else i might of missed.......much thanks.......

[billbolton Community Moderator]

JHEM wrote:

Running the recovery CDs from the HP Pavilion should have had no effect on the hidden recovery partition of the Thinkpad.

Its highly likely that the HP recovery CDs would have rewritten the MBR (Master Boot Record) to suit whatever HP does with it, so even if the Lenovo recovery partition is still there it may not be readily accessible without running the Lenovo MBR restore utility!

Cheers,

Bill

[Model40-770]

Well it seems the boot file has been damaged and something is still in there....hopefully........i ran the live linux cd again with out install and checked the partions again...it goes like this......10GB......windows(the hp restore disk one)........7.8GB.(don't know but has a file called lost and found).....3.9GB...swap partion........71GB .....open.......that is 92.70GB of a 100GB hard drive....so either the 7.8 GB is the "hidden partion" or the part it didn't show is.......is there some kind of process to get it open with out being allready in windows......i read in a search about a utility to do this but didn't find it on the main site......

[Ideasmiths]

Don't worry too much

I have experience from T40, T41, T43, X60, T61, X60Tablet, T61p and I have done countless factory reinstallation and custom configuration. Here are my experience and perhaps some assistance to your problem.

1) The hidden partition should still be safe, so don't worry.

2) The HP recovery MAY work if you set the T61 Bios correctly, you see, the HP harddisk could be set to compatibility mode while the T61 is in ACHI mode. So the disc may froze. Going into Bios of T61 (press F1) and changing to compatibility mode would normally do the job. BUT DON'T DO IT because a simpler and safer solution is below

3) Each T61 has TWO vista license keys, the one at the bottom of the laptop normally is NOT utilize. The other one is the OEM licence that is in the hidden partion and also comes preset when the laptop is delivered. What this means is that once you do the factory recovery, the vista will be set to the OEM keys. The key at the bottom of the laptop is for people who really screwed up and delete the hidden partition and they have to carry out step 4.

4) So, my proposal is that you find a NORMAL window XP or vista installation disks, run the setup until the laptop is functional. Note: DO NOT USE the HP recovery disk because it's set to something else......

These installations disks should be easy to find, see if anyone that has a desktop and ask for the disks.

5) Once the operations system such as Xp or vista is running on the T61, THEN you can do a factory restore using the hidden partiiton. Lenovo has a good software called the Base Software Administrator under their Thinkvantage technology, it is 2MB in size and allows you to access and wake up the hidden partition.

If you can print out and follow my guide here in this blog, it should be easy

http://the-trusted-adviser.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2880A69A9408F8CC!505.entry

6) Hope that helps..... 

Message Edited by Ideasmiths on 02-21-2008 12:07 PM

[Model40-770]

Thanks.....i am just now getting back to tinkering with this thinkpad.....it will still be about a week till both versions of windows get here.......i don't even know what versions i am getting besides one is vista and the other xp........all they had was two so we figured we might as well get a spare since we have a few more years over here.....bound to happen to someone else by that time.....i'll let you all know what happens..........