Cant restore from rescue and recovery discs [ Edited ]

[ng_au]

Hi Guys

I bought a set of Windows 7 64bit Lenovo Rescue and Recovery Discs approx. 18 months ago so I could "restore" my X201 if and when the hard disk died, well the day has come and the discs dont work !!!

I have attempted to "restore" to the new hard disk 3 times and this is now starting to become a joke.

I boot the 1st disk, then I'm asked to insert the 2nd and then 3rd disks, I dont have a 4th disk but the process asks me for one. I believe that this is all working as it takes a number of hours and the drive lights is flickering except when I'm being asked to insert the next disc.

After the final re-boot. following the "Setting up drivers - 100%" on the screen I get a message box that says "Setup cant configure windows for your configuration", this is after I have had the "Starting Windows 7" booting on the screen.

Has anyone had any experience with Win 7 64bit R & R discs for a X201 ???

TIA

NG

[x220forMe]

Is your laptop configured for boot in legacy mode, not in UEFI?
Also, Factory Recovery Discs set we make using Control Panel applet consists 4 discs (for x220, I don't know the clear information about x201) - 1 is bootable with WinRE environment and 3 with data. How do you boot your laptop for recovery process?

[ng_au]

Hey X220

I dont know how its configured to boot, but remember this laptop was booting fine yesterday with old disk, do I check the BIOS to confirm if it is UEFI ?

If after many hours of restoring the new hard disk 3 times, I dont even get a warning to say I'm in "legacy Mode" I'm not going to be very happy with Lenovo, possibly they should have checked this before I restored the drive !!!

I bought the DVDs from Lenovo, they only sent me 3 x DVDs, I have just download the latest Rescue & recovery 4.5 - http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-4Q2QAK & I will make a set from that, but now I'm wondering why I paid $120+ for a set of discs that dont work

I boot the 1st DVD from a Lenovo DVD drive in a Lenovo Ultrabase.

Its not the booting that is the problem, it appears to me to be the very last step, I have booted into Windows 7 from the new drive & it says "Installing Drivers" counts up to 100% & then gives me the very unhelpful message - "Cant configure ..." & then boots over & over & over with this message coming up each time then re-boots.

TIA

NG

[x220forMe]

I assume your issue is laptop boot mode related.
In order to restore from Lenovo Recovery discs set laptop should be in legacy boot mode. Check out this option in BIOS setup. Unfortunately you'll can't change boot mode later. But this mode just speeds up a boot process only 2-3 secs.
Boot and installation processes don't inform the customer about error boot mode related.

Check out the 1st disc. If it consists a folder like BOOT and files like BOOTMGR and WINRE.WIM (all of them are for boot process) and folder like FACTORYRECOVERY - it's OK and your 1st data disk is bootable too.

If you had partition like Lenovo_Recovery (Q: usually) on your x201 with factory images you could make Factory_Recovery Discs set yourself w/o purchasing it from Lenovo.

[ng_au]

Hi Guys

I have called up Lenovo support again & they are now advising me that only their 500gb hard disk are compatible for use in Lenovo products.

So if you dont buy from Lenovo then the hard disks are not "compatible".

Well now my only choice is to buy a 500gb hard disk from Lenovo at $130 + $30 shipping and handling

I think I will go & buy a new laptop from Dell at that price !!!

NG

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

When you finish using recovery discs, is your recovery partition present? If it is then try a recovery from the recovery partition. Otherwise we can figure out other way to solve the issue.

[ng_au]

Hey lead

I cant access recover part., I'm going to try 1 more install with BIOS set to "compatibility" mode.

I have also tried setting Admin. acct. to enabled but this didnt give any joy.

TIA

NG

[richk]

What is the model number of the hard disk? That error message usually means you are trying to use recovery disks to install win7 without SP1 onto an advanced format (4k sectors) drive, which is not supported. I know my set of X201 win-64 recovery disks are pre-sp1 so yours probably are also. If this is the problem, you need a different hard drive.

[x220forMe]

richk, usually Hitachi HDDs are applied in x220, they are ready for pre SP1/SP1 and "4k sectors" feature. Even in x220 laptops which manufactured in March of 2011.

[richk]

Yes, but the original poster was talking about x201.  X220 recovery disks have SP1 included; x201 disks do not.