I am attempting to restore to factory settings after installing a new 40GB hard drive in my T42.

 

I have the original Recovery CDs.

I booted from the Startup CD and then followed the instructions as laid out in support article MIGR-70803

"How do I recover my system using ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery?"

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-70803 

 

Everything went smoothly - I was prompted to insert each of the 6 recovery CDs and they seemed to copy over fine.

 

According to Step Twenty of the article, after the 6th CD is copied, the system needs to reboot. It is supposed to prompt the user "Do you want to restart now?"   I did not receive this prompt.  Instead the system just rebooted on its own. The system did not display lots of DOS windows and progress screens as indicated in the article.

 

Instead, it rebooted back to the Rescue and Recovery subsystem, with the full screen GUI as illustrated in Step Six. It's booting that off the hard drive, so at least I know that the recovery process installed something on the new drive. But that's it. R&R gives me the option of starting the recovery all over again.

 

I've done a hard restart, but the R&R subsystem starts up again. I suppose I'll try the 2-hour recovery process again, while hoping someone reading this has some insights on what else to try.

 

Thanks!

Dave 

In some versions of Rescue and Recovery it will boot back into Rescue and Recovery after the discs have run. Thye discs merely installed the recovery partition. Then tell it to restore to factory condition a second time and it will do the restore for you.

Hi,

 

I am having similiar problem as described on this thread.  Do I need to be connected to internet when doing R&R the 2nd time?

Heman,

No you do not have to be connected to the internet. The Rescue/Recovery process is entirely stand-alone.

 

I can provide some additional information on my dilemma.  As reported above, I went through the entire Factory Restore procedure a second time. I thought I had been successful, but I later discovered that my newly installed ThinkPad did NOT contain the R&R application.  Even though the procedure is supposed to restore the machine back to "factory-fresh", it did not.

 

I spent over two weeks troubleshooting this, and here's what I think happened.

When the Factory Restore procedue runs, one of the many many installers that it runs is the installer for the R&R application.  It is attempting to install R&R onto the C: drive.  In doing so, it appears to look inside the hidden IBM partition (SERVICE001) to decide if it needs to update the software that is there.  If it finds a newer version of the R&R software on the hidden paritition, I believe the installer fails. As a result, you are left with a "new" ThinkPad, but it's missing the R&R application, which means you can't do any backups for recoveries.

 

What I ended up doing was using EASEUS Partition Manager to reformat the SERVICE001 partition. It's a free downloaded partition manager.  Once the SERVICE001 partition was empty,  I booted from the Recovery CD, and went through the entire Factory Recovery installation again, loading all of the 6 CD images. At the end of the recovery, I left the 6th CD in the drive. I'm not sure if this is important or not. The system rebooted into the special R&R recovery environment which had been reinstalled onto the SERVICE001 partition. After the reboot, it then continued with the recovery process on its own. A pop-up appeared "Recovering your system. Please wait...".  Fifteen minutes later, it rebooted again. Now, I saw thousands of lines of code flashing by in what looked like a DOS window.  The recovery process is running hundred of scripts as it expands, installs, and configures everything.  The overall process took another hour, during which time it rebooted at least 6 more times.

 

This was all unattended (i.e. no human intervention). 

 

Two full hours after I had first booted from the R&R boot CD, a nice new Windows XP start-up window appeared. In my case, it was WinXP SP2, since that is what was on my original system. At this point, I ejected disc 6 of the R&R recovery set.

 

But don't stop now. There's so much more to do.

 

I first made an image backup of the brand-new C: partition and the SERVICE001 partition. I don't ever want to have to go through this again. If you don't already have a good backup program, download a copy of Macrium Reflect (free), preferably on another system that is already running. Put it on a USB drive and copy it to your fresh ThinkPad. Then use it to backup C: and SERVICE001 onto an external USB drive.

 

Now you can plug the ThinkPad into your LAN. The first thing I did was disable Norton Anti-virus, so it won't get in the way of any of the subsequent updates.

 

Next I ran the IBM System Update utility. The first thing it found out of date was itself! It downloaded and installed the latest Lenovo System Update, which I think was 3.14.0019.

 

Next I ran the new System Update. It downloaded/installed about a dozen fixes and patches from IBM/Lenovo. After SU had brought the system up to date, I ran Reflect again and made another copy of C:.

 

One component that SU did not update was R&R.  The system still had R&R with Ultra Restore V1.0 on it -- that's what came from the factory when I got the T42. You'll probably want to update R&R to the latest.  WARNING - be sure to get the right version. If you have a T42, the latest supported version is 3.1. The installer is tvtrnr31, found on the Lenovo web site.  Do not install R&R V4 or higher on a T42 unless you want to risk having to do this all over again. I removed the older version 1.0 of R&R before installing the new package (using Add/Remove Programs). May not be essential, but it can't hurt.

 

If you have a newer ThinkPad, you might be able to use a more recent release of R&R. Read the IBM Release Notes carefully.  

WARNING - some of IBM's posted compatibility information about R&R is incorrect. I found a 'bug' in their documents which led me to think that I could run V4 on my T42.  They have since corrected their on-line documents.

 

Now it's time for SP3. I went off to the Microsoft support website, searched around and found the WinXP SP3 updater (in ISO format).  I downloaded the update, burned a CD, and applied the SP3 update from the CD.  Actually, I made the CD long before I started this recovery procedure. I wanted to have it available when I got to this point in the process. You could try doing SP3 via the Windows Update website, but a chap at IBM support recommended I do it via the download.

 

After SP3 was installed, I then went to the Windows Update website, and let it update the system with the dozens of security patches and other fixes that have issued since SP3 came out. After that was done, I used Reflect to backup the C: partition again. This effectively is my 'gold disc' for subsequent disaster recovery.

 

Finally, (I think this is the last step), I downloaded and/or installed useful programs like Firefox, Safari, iTunes, Sandboxie, my VPN client,  MS Office, Jungle Disk, and various other bits. All told, this took me the better part of a weekend. But I now have a nice, clean, speedy ThinkPad, and I haven't had a BSOD yet!

 

Good luck getting your ThinkPad back on the air.

Hi there--

  I am experiencing a similar problem, only not because I am installing a new hard drive; I just wanted to get a clean start with my system.  I also have gone to the end of the 6 CD recovery process, and it now just boots into R&R and I'm not sure what to do from here.  I was considering the EASUS partition solution, but was wondering if it would work the same even since this is the factory HD.  One other thing I wondered:  I read somewhere that it could be important to have the same amount of RAM installed as was installed when it came from the factory.  I had 256MB from factory and now have over 1 GB installed...possible this is messing this up?

 

Thanks,

 

ASP 

I don't believe that adding additional RAM has any impact on the R&R process.

 

Yes - you can use EASEUS Partition Manager on the original disk. After the recovery process completes, you should have a drive with one big C: partition, and the hidden IBM SERVICE001 partition. I found that the C: partition was located at the beginning of the drive, and the hidden partition was all the way at the end.  I used  EPM to reduce the size of C: and create a new D:. (which fit in between the shrunken C: and SERVICE001).

 

As for your fundamental problem, I don't know what to tell you. After I completed loading the 6 recovery CDs, my system booted up into the R&R environment, then kept on going with the recovery process. A message appeared "Recovering your system. Please wait...". A progress bar appeared. This phase took 16 minutes. Then the T42 rebooted again, at which time a plethora of DOS-like screens went flashing by.  After 2 minutes of that, it rebooted and Windows appeared. Note that through all this, CD#6 was still in the drive. I don't know if this is a requirement or not. 

 

I read another thread somewhere that suggested clicking on Restore to Factory after the first reboot (i.e. immediately after the 6 CDs are read in). 

 

Hope this helps.

My hard drive crashed and I bought a new 40G drive. I ordered the Recovery CD's (paid 49.91 including shipping) and received the CD's today.

The CD's have Thinkvantage version 5.7 and the 7 Product Recovery CD's. I follow Lenovo's instructions and when I get to step 5 which reads: "When the Rescue an Recovery workspace opens, click Continue on the Welcome screen and then click Restore factory contents" which I do. The application responds with "In order to proceed, your system must be rebooted, do you want to continue? Yes or No. Obviosuly I chose Yes and the application responds, "Please remove all diskettes, CD Media, USB memory keys and hard drives, power off the system and reboot." so I remove the Rescue and Recovery bootable CD from the drive, hold the power switch until the computer shuts down and then power back on which reboots the system and starts all the DOS extracts and inflating. It never asks for all the Product Recovery CD's and only reinstalls Windows XP.

I called Lenovo and since my machine is out of warranty, they will not help even though their instructions are incorrect. So if anyone has had a similar issue and figured out how to resolve the problem I would be greatly appreciative if you can respond to my email at *@*.

 

Moderator edit: SPAMbots crawl through here, so I masked the personal email address... please use the Private Message feature (click on the member's name and "Send this user a private message").