Well that was annoying.  I did a clean install of 64-bit Win 7 onto my new X100e and now the ability to do a Factory Restore from the hidden partition has gone away.

When I did the clean install (64-bit Win7 Pro replacing 32-bit Win7 Pro), I left the hidden partition alone, and I left the Lenovo Recovery partition alone.  I installed the OneKey Recovery software--but that was when I was just trying stuff--OKR's not really for the Factory Restore anyway (or at leasst it doesn't seem that way).  I did *not* install all the other drivers yet (audio, video, bluetooth, etc.) but I can't imagine that should make a difference. 

Anyway, so just as a test, as soon as I had the new version of Win 7 installed, I tested the Factory Restore operation ... Reboot, press Enter to interrupt it, Then press F11 to Restore.  Nothing.  It just proceeded into a normal boot--back into 64-bit Win 7.

Good thing I made the recovery disks and backed up SWTOOLS.  But I sure can't figure out how installing a new OS into the main partition--especially since I left the hidden and Lenovo Recovery partitions untouched--would affect how the BIOS handles the bootup and restore function.  The function was working perfectly before all this (I tested that, too.)  Maybe it's the drivers ... maybe something like the Device Experience drivers change the boot somehow?  Maybe some BIOS setting that installing Win 7 changes?  Like maybe Win 7 64 made a change to the boot record that changed that function ....

I'm drawing a blank ... any ideas?

Thanks!

(P.S.  Yes I know it seems odd to want to Factory Restore to 32-bit after installing 64-bit, but I'm really trying to fgiure out how the Factory Restore function got disabled.)

Factory restore is an incredibly fragile feature.

You have not only to avoid the mbr overwriting, but also not touch the boot settings stored inside BCD.

Is almost impossible to install anything W/O breaking  the F11 feature.

So the short answer is burn the recovery discks and don't count on F11 .

A bit longer answer can be: make active the second partiton ( C: ) before installing the vanilla  Win 7.

So the new installation will put it's bootloader there, leaving untouched the customized bootsector on the first one ( S: ).

P.S.You must create the recovery media before doing anything or the broken bootsector will be transferred on the recovery media.

P.S.2 there is a recovery floppy that rewrites the mbr, meant to fix the problem. Unluckily doesn't fix  the latest recovery sw.

Fortunately, I burned the recovery discs first, so that's good.

So I'm looking for that repair CD ...

(No diskette drive of course.)

Is this it?

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-74336

Another possibility is that System Repair Disk that they prompt you to create on the first day.

Thanks for the pointers!

Hey thanks for those links!

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But I repeat is unlikely that it will fix your problem.

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Fair enough.  But I'll give it one shot and see what happens--just 'cause I'm curious.

After that, I guess I'm deleting all the partitions, reinstalling, and goin' with Acronis.

Thanks for your help!

 

Thanks for your help!

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You are welcome :smileywink:

Success!

The CD image of the Repair Recovery Diskette actually failed on the X100e [UPDATE: originally I thought it had failed because it stopped responding at the Press Enter To Repair prompt ... turned out that the AbortRetryFail prompts were just hidden and that pressing F allowed it to continue. Once I got it to complete, though, it still didn't produce the desired result].  But arlab's write-up turned out to be the key! 

1. Just to follow it all the way through, I restored from my Recovery Discs--and that brought the F11 key back to life.
2. But now the Factory Restore option had disappeared!
3. Arlab had predicted that, and gave the procedure for bringing Factory Restore back to life (uninstall Rescue and Recovery), and sure enough ... there it was.
4. Even better ... I ran it and it worked perfectly.

Next up ... to see if I can install 64-bit on the second partition ( C: ) without touching the custom bootsector on the hidden one ( S: ).

Thanks for your help!

I' haven't directly linked that message because it was already mentioned in the first  post of the thred I linked, but surely is a procedure that sometimes works (depends on how F11 is broken).

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Next up ... to see if I can install 64-bit on the second partition ( C: ) without touching the custom bootsector on the hidden one ( S: ).

 

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I suggest also to backup the S: partiton with acronis/paragon/whatever imaging SW, to easily restore the f11 funcrion, even after a failed experiment with an os instalation or with bootloader configuration.

I tried ... (a lot :- ) ... but it just wouldn't work.

Just as you said ... every time I touched the machine, the F11 function broke.

And every attempt to restore it failed.

Finally, I found this posting that describes a way to fix it--involving Base Software Administrator and building my own custom manifest file for the hidden partition.  An encouraging idea that suffered from two flaws: It was explained for Vista (meaning that I'd have to make up some of the explanations myself), and even if I understood it thoroughly (which I didn't) it looked WAY too time-consuming.  (Been there.)

So I'm officially exhausted, and I'm just goin' with The_Solutor's assessment and recommendation ... i.e., F11 is too fragile to make it work, so I'm gonna just bail on that and opt for Acronis.