Cannot factory restore?

Ok.

So I own a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 which came with Windows Vista Ultimate. I made recovery disks and installed Windows XP, but decided after a while (this is several months later) that I wanted to reinstall Vista and try the new service pack. I tried my recovery disks and they weren't even recognized - I assume they weren't burned properly.

I attempted to factory restore my machine via the F11 menu. I selected the option and clicked Next, but I was simply given an (extremely user friendly) error: "System restore failed" (or something of that nature). Since then, I've tried installing an OEM copy of Vista and again trying the restore - it still didnt work.

I resorted to the so called recovery partition repair diskettes with an external floppy drive - this still didnt work and actually gave me the message on boot "Operating system missing". I've also tried using the Base Software Administrator tool and even THAT says "Unable to access service partition". How can I possibly reinstall vista?

 

After much frustration, I think I'm going to just attempt a clean install of Vista.

That said, I have a question - is it possible to somehow retrieve the activation key that came with my laptop? As I mentioned, I have already installed Windows XP, so my original install has been erased and my recovery disks aren't working. Is it possible to extract the key from the service partition?

Thank you.

 

Does anyone know if this is possible? I did search the forums before posting, but could not find anything that could answer my question.

Thanks in advance.

 

You could just use the product key at COA on the bottom of the machine to activate online. That would work just fine.